A numbered limited print edition
of 18 copies of these ALICE PAINTINGS
on BFK RIVES archival paper.
Although current technologies are challenging the conventions of the book, the “artist book” is gaining popularity as an art form. It is an apt vehicle for a print artist such as myself who is preoccupied with form as metaphor. By emphasizing the materiality of text, I import the textural and aesthetic dimensions of language into visual art. The artist book is therefore an intuitive genre that permits me to explore the symbolic interplay between text and image.
3 dimensional print work incorporating iPad keyboard and HB pencils as part of the structure. Printed scroll (Japanese paper – Baika) includes my original poems expressing the nature of cursive writing and it’s energetic importance in the face of possible obsolescence.
This piece is part of the group exhibition, Hors D’usage hosted by the artists of Atelier de l’Île in 2015.
As an inspiration for the artists of Atelier de l’Île, Jean-Paul Daoust wrote a 40 line poem about the nature and spirit of our unique and beloved printmaking studio in Val-David, QC.
The reading of the poetic dedication of Jean-Paul Daoust, inspired a short poem that wrote itself – a borrowed essence that echoed a personal experience of the process of creation from the first spark of an “idea” unto the matter in hand.
The resulting text began with the final phrase and climbed back to the beginning where we encounter the “Archipel’, Daoust’s title.
Souffler
fil fragile
affronter le labyrinthe
risque
saisir
oser
imaginer
foncer la matiers
le résultat …
l’Atelier de l’Ïle
La beauté de l’Archipel
L. Bloom
What occurred was the desire to create a piece that at once climbs and descends, that holds small remembrances of my own icons in print – a kind of staircase of word and image, fragments of both Daoust’s marvelous offering and of my own experiences over these many years of image making in print.
In the studio in the past few weeks a new series of paintings is being born.
These are portraits of men in their worlds, some of strangers and some of personal companions over time.
Photo recordings of events that span 50 years are the inspiration for this work.
The mystery of each human nature calls out from behind the painted surface; either a candid viewpoint or
a conscious pose.
I am searching each face and figure as if I might discover the backstory of each life lived until this static moment.
The goal is always to imbue this image with “life”, demanding that the picture “breathe” the past and the future into being.
Oil on canvas, Camaïeu (also called en camaïeu) is a technique that employs two or three tints of a single color, other than gray, to create a monochromatic image without regard to local or realistic color. When a picture is monochromatically rendered in gray, it is called grisaille; when in yellow, cirage [1].
Here below are a selection of “details” from this active focus that seems to swallows the hours in minutes .
While doing this work I came across an article in THE GUARDIAN online.
ART AS WE KNOW IT IS FINISHED
The economic collapse is hitting the art world in some surreal ways. Gagosian Gallery in Los Angeles has just had to postpone a planned exhibition, by the maverick performance and conceptual artist Chris Burden, that involves the use of 100kg of gold bricks. Gagosian purchased these – wow! How much does 100kg of gold bricks even cost? – from a company called Stanford Coins and Bullion. This company is a subsidiary of Stanford Financial Group, that is, it’s part of the empire of Texas financier Allen Stanford who is now at the centre of a massive fraud investigation. Now, announces Gagosian, “the gallery’s gold has been frozen while the SEC investigates Stanford.” So the stories are spinning as the marriage of art and money unravels. Not so long ago the British painter Leon Kossoff held an exhibition at the National Gallery. His drawings after the Old Masters got almost no press attention that I can recall – yet Kossoff is a veteran artist with great achievements to his name. He has painted the life of London’s East End with a sombre honesty and compassion. Artists such as Kossoff, or Frank Auerbach, or Paula Rego are a lot less fashionable today than artists who do things with gold bricks. Why is that? No, it is not because they are “figurative”. Marc Quinn is figurative; Antony Gormley is figurative. What makes artists such as Kossoff seem out of date? It is their melancholia. The contemporary art world can cope with melancholy as style, but taste revolts at the reality of sad, severe, serious life in these painters’ work. The problem is, you can’t parlay it. You can’t fantasise on it. The authenticity of these artists annoys us because it tells us there are realities that rule us, The world, since the 1980s, has stopped believing in such a thing as reality. Money was unleashed from facts of any kind. Art became its delusive mirror. Art is fun, it’s a laugh, it’s entertainment, it’s spectacular, it’s cool … art now aspires to be all the things fashion is. And so it cannot accomodate the awkwardness of a Kossoff: cannot be a bone in anyone’s throat. Its success is totally bound up with the same fiction that anything is possible that has inspired banks to lead us all into a looking-glass world. I’ve tried to resist this fact for a few months, but I’m done with illusion. Art as we know it is finished. It is about to be exposed as nothing more than the decor of an age of mercantile madness. On what bedrock might a new art arise? Anyone for Kossoff? Jonathan Jones Thursday 5 March 2009 16.34 GMT guardian.co.uk Article history
Louise Bloom has created a whole collection of paintings, engravings and artist books that reinterpret the fabulous universe of Lewis Carroll.
Bloom employs the iconography of the world of our dear Alice in Wonderland, weaving poetry and image with a finesse and brilliance inspired by childhood memories of the enthusiasm with which her father introduced her to this extravagant world.
Whatever the medium, paint, print or book work, this artist preserves the essential character of the original sense and no-sense story, juxtaposing and exploiting opposites; the imaginary and the real, the extraordinary and the mundane, the absurd and the sensible, the dream-like and the logical, to shock us into awareness about the abusive nature of our consumer culture.
The resulting ironies serve to influence our perceptions, and like reversed images in a mirror, alter our gaze on a transforming world, disturbing us in the process.
At a time when we face prospects of ecological disasters, Bloom’s images impact us as they raise a multitude of questions: principally, what predictions for our world are revealed on the other side of the mirror?
Manon Régimbald
Directrice artistique du Centre des arts contemporains
du Québec à Montréal
Click on above image to see Blogue Projet Boréal – Louise Bloom/Maude Durocher-Séguin.
.
Dear Alice draws inspiration from the allegorical potential of Lewis Caroll s texts, which remain as prescient as ever. Like Alice, we struggle to make sense of dizzying systems of power and the lure of consumer culture. And like Alice, we also journey to pursue the dream.
.
Pia Bouman School of Ballet Exhibition Space
.
.
First Toronto solo exhibition of Quebec artist Louise Bloom
Bloom’s “Dear Alice” collection of prints and paintings explore consumerism, gender, and environmental decimation, as well as antidotes for the spirit in the 21st century.
On view from November 16 through January 30, “Dear Alice” draws its inspiration from the allegorical potential of Lewis Carroll’s texts, which remain as prescient as ever. The eponymous character from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking-Glass (1871) has been Bloom’s chief muse since 2000. Bloom has produced numerous original prints (etchings and lithographs), hanging scrolls, artist books, oversized book pages, diptychs, and collage series that reinterpret and reconfigure illustrations from Carroll’s novels. The works incite a dialogue between iconographic images from the past and present-day imagery pertaining to consumer capitalism, appetite, desire, destruction, and spiritual rebirth.
Bloom’s creative process derives from a sincere conviction that narrative is a vehicle for transformation. The works invite close readings and aim to surprise, stimulate, and even unsettle. At times reminiscent of Daumier and other visual satirists who have been concerned throughout history with systems of power and their abuses, Bloom’s “Dear Alice” collection explores themes that range from the false promise of the American dream and ecological devastation, to gender inequality and desire.
The sumptuous color and fluid draftsmanship of the larger paintings marry caricature and realism, producing works of penetrating and fantastic symbolism. The print works combine both illustration and text; the result is a merging of medium and message that mobilizes irony to unseat viewers’ expectations. Thus, the collection celebrates Carroll’s thematics and Sir John Tenniel’s masterful illustrations while also redeploying them to inventive and potent effect.
About the Artist
Bloom’s professional career spans 30 years of exhibition, teaching, and mentoring in Canada and abroad. Since 1987, she has cultivated her printmaking skills at notable studios such as “l’Atelier de l’Ile” (Val David, QC), “Atelier Circulaire” (Montreal, QC), and “Equinox Press” (Carmel, CA). She has developed a trademark aesthetic in the process—one that often combines text and image. Bloom also paints in oil, creates in mixed media, writes poetry, and teaches yoga and meditation; she coaches artists in life skills and supports their creative process.
Opening Reception Friday November 16, 6-9
at
PIA BOUMAN SCHOOL FOR BALLET AND CREATIVE MOVEMENT
6 Noble Street, Toronto (Queen and Dufferin)
Information: Esther Bouman – 416-533-3706
Contact the artist:
louisebloom@me.com
450-560-1317
www.louisebloom.com
Link to: