Barbara Bloom (b. 1951, Los Angeles, USA; lives and works in New York, USA)

Susan Sontag vs. SUSAN SONTAG (2021)
Deconstructed (Blow-Up) (2021)
Homage to Jean-Luc Godard (Corrected) (1986-2021)

In the 1980’s Barbara Bloom produced a number of works referred to as Stand-Ins. Each consisted of an unfurled roll of seamless backdrop paper, on which was placed a piece of furniture accompanied by objects or props and framed images. These works hover somewhere between sculpture and mise en scene, like forensic clues left in a photographer’s studio. A photographer rolls down a swath of backdrop paper in order to frame what is placed in front of its isolated seamless color. This color field framing divorces the objects from the world, rendering them contextless, set apart. But in these works, there is no photographer, and no photographs are taken. We see just the set up — one that implies an event that has already happened or will happen soon. Though the objects and paper are physically in front of you, they seem strangely to exist not in the present tense, but are somehow atemporal, timeless. In 2020, Bloom returned to this form and created a number of new works. In Susan Sontag vs. SUSAN SONTAG (2021), for example, Peter Hujar’s iconic 1975 portrait of the celebrated American author Susan Sontag is presented next to an installation of contact sheets from the shoot spread on a daybed resembling the backdrop in the portrait. The proliferation of images of the famed photography theorist brings us into the act of selecting and framing and offers glimpses of her more vulnerable moods.

The work stems more from the traditions of literature than from painting or sculpture. Bloom has noted: “I am probably a novelist, but somehow ended up standing in the wrong line, and inadvertently signed up to be an artist.”

Bloom’s presence at OFFSCREEN comes ahead of an upcoming exhibition at Palazzo Cini i in Venice (2027).

In 1998, Bloom received a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in Fine Arts. In 1988, she received the Duemila Prize for Best Young Artist at the Venice Biennale, among other distinctions. She has held institutional solo exhibitions at the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin (2018); Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington (2017); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Project Arts Centre, Dublin (2014); The Jewish Museum, New York (2013); and Dia Art Foundation, New York; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; and the International Center of Photography, New York (all 2008), Carnegie Museum, Pittsburgh (1992); The Serpentine Gallery, London (1990); Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam (1985); among others.

Galerie Gisela Capitain was founded in 1986 in Cologne. The gallery developed an ongoing vibrant program with international artists from various disciplines. For soon over 40 years, the gallery’s artistic agenda has remained focused on, though not limited to, European and American Contemporary Art from the 1980s until now. In October 2008 Gisela Capitain has opened a new space in a 1960s glass pavilion in Berlin in collaboration with Friedrich Petzel Gallery, New York, to continue and extend the gallery‘s program of exhibitions and projects. In 2022 Galerie Gisela Capitain launched „Zweigstelle Capitain“, a temporary exhibition space. The first exhibitions took place in Rome and since 2023 the Zweigstelle is located in Naples, Italy.