Barbara Bloom

For nearly twenty years she lived in Europe, first in Amsterdam then Berlin. Since 1992, she has lived in New York City with her husband, the writer-composer Chris Mann, and their daughter.

Barbara Bloom studied at Bennington College and California Institute of the Arts. The recorded working language is English. Places of work recorded in the authority are Groningen, Amsterdam and Berlin. Work by Barbara Bloom is recorded in the collections of Art Institute of Chicago, Finnish National Gallery, National Gallery of Victoria, Museum of Modern Art and Museum Arnhem. Distinctions recorded are Guggenheim Fellowship.

• Name — Barbara Bloom • Born — 1951 • Birthplace — Los Angeles, California, US • Training — Bennington College (BFA) California Institute of the Arts 1972

Bloom attended Bennington College in Bennington, Vermont, from 1968 to 1969, and in 1972 received her BFA from the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California where her mentor was John Baldessari.

Bloom is a visual artist whose conceptual practice relies mainly on photography and installation. Beginning in the 1970s, Bloom has created work in a variety of different mediums including photography, installation, film, and books. In conversation with Susan Tallman, Barbara Bloom has referred to herself as a “novelist who somehow ended up in a ‘visual artist’ queue”. Bloom has often compared herself, and the viewer of her work, to a 'detective' who is confronted with disparate clues and is asked to form some kind of visual narrative. Her work is often about the nature of looking. She engages her viewer, seducing him/her into a beautifully constructed visual world, one that is underlaid by subversive wrenches thrown in. Bloom has an ongoing interest in the value and meaning we collectively and individually bestow upon objects and images. She has not been concerned with showing single objects or images, rather with highlighting the relationships between them, and the meanings implicit in their placement and combination. The objects are placeholders for thoughts, and when they are situated in proximity to one another, meanings can reverberate and ricochet off of each other. Additionally, Bloom states in an artist's statement that her "fascination is with the relationships between objects or images—and the meanings implicit in their placement and combination." Bloom's use of shadows, traces, Braille, broken objects, partially-obstructed images, watermarks, and micro-images all demonstrate an ongoing interest in visualizing the fragile workings of memory, the invisible, the ephemeral, and the absent. These “aesthetic underdogs, sheltered under Bloom’s wing [...] provide yet another lens for looking at how we seek value in objects and why.” “During the last year, I produced and exhibited a work titled The Weather... In this work, hovering in varying heights above the floor are carpets, each a subtle shade of gray-green-blue. The carpets have raised-dot patterns forming texts in Braille... The production of the carpets was a complex one, and it was not easy to find a manufacturer able to accurately produce the intricate patterns of raised dots. Working with Classic Rug Collections in New York, a factory in Thailand was found that could produce the work perfectly. ” (Bloom on her artistic process of creating The Weather)

• DAAD, Berlin Artist's-in-Residence (1986) • Visual Artist's Fellowship in Photography, The National Endowment for the Arts (1986) • The 43rd Venice Biennale - Due Mille Prize (1988) • John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts (1988) • The Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Award (1989) • The Frederick Weisman Foundation Award (1991) • Wexner Center for the Arts Fellowship (1997) • Visual Artist's Fellowship in Photography, The National Endowment for the Arts (2006) • Getty Research Institute Visiting Scholar (2007) • Wynn Newhouse Award (2009) • Visual Arts Grant, Foundation of Contemporary Arts (2016)

Bloom's work has been shown widely including exhibitions at: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; Museum Boijmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; the Venice Biennale; Kunstverein München, Munich; Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney; The Serpentine Gallery, London; Kunsthalle Zürich; Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Leo Castelli Gallery, New York; SITE Santa Fe; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; La Bienale de Venezuela, Caracas; Museum Friedricianum, Kassel; Parrish Art Museum, Southampton; Wexner Center for the Arts; Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum; International Center of Photography, New York; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; The Jewish Museum, New York; The Front Triennial, The Allen Memorial Art Museum, Ohio. She is represented by David Lewis Gallery, New York; Capitain Petzel, Berlin; Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milano; and Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne.

Barbara Bloom is recorded as plastic artist, lithographer, photographer, installation artist and video artist. Recognition and collections. Bloom received Guggenheim Fellowship.

Barbara Bloom's works are featured in a variety of public collections including: Museum of Modern Art, New York; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; The Art Institute of Chicago; Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles; MAK Museum of Applied Art, Vienna; International Center of Photography, New York; Israel Museum, Jerusalem; Australian National Gallery, Canberra; Groninger Museum, The Netherlands; Museum of Contemporary Art, Helsinki, Finland; Yokohama Museum of Art, Yokohama, Japan, the CU Art Museum at the University of Colorado Boulder, among others.