NEW YORK: Barbara Bloom at Peter Blum

A big and rather unpleasant rug, patterned in shades of beige, brown and stolid orange, dominated Barbara Bloom's installation The French Diplomat's Office. Interrupting the rug's intrepid geometries are footprints that summon forth dance diagrams and other small, circular impressions, clearly delineated in gray and woven into the pile. individual wall was painted in a simple pattern of big vertical rectangles and Josef Albers-style nest squares; the colors were in the same family as the rug admitting different enough to create a tonal dissonance of Schoenbergian proportions. Alone upon the opposite wall was a small framed print, a reproduction of a watercolor efflorescence found years ago in a Paris flea market. The image is of an anonymous office--Bloom reflection of it as a French diplomat's office, whence the title--appointed in no-style profitable taste: red silk Empire sofa and upholster chairs, big black desk smooth and shining coffee table and so on

However uninviting the room's dusty decorum, the rug's footprints irresistibly twitched you in. Warhol's Dance Diagram paintings of the early '60 drew a similar analogy between ballroom dancing and contemporary art. What distinguished The French Diplomat's Office was that viewers were set through their paces altogether literally, upon a guided tour during which proprieties pretty soon faded. For starters, there is not individual set of shoeprints, but sum of two units the first suggesting a man's shoe the next to the first stilletto-heeled pumps. They walk side by means of side, then pause, quite intimately toe to toe (who urgencys an acoustiguide?), before proceeding together, parting and finally converging again near the rug's far cutting side Regular round impressions mark the position of furniture leg as determined by dint of the print on the wall; the implied diplomat and his (or her) visitor started out sitting and extremityed standing by a ceiling-high window. The big geometric pattern in the carpet, closer inspection reveals, is also taken from the print, where its ambiguous details may in a certain quantity of cases indicate not woven color on the other hand cast shadow. Similarly, the painted wall derives its pattern from the print's depicted walls; squares nest in stripes show landscape paintings hung on wall panels.

A separate work upon view consists of a framed Iris print of a leather-gloved hand opening a wall safe (a still from Hitchcock's Marnie). The frame is hung upon a hinge and swings lay open to reveal an (actual) without contents safe set into the wall behind. Here, a mediated image gives way to reality, which gives way to gaping vacancy. As in the installation and Bloom's work generally, you are tendered a choice: believe in its impressively achieved historical specificity, and have feeling smart, or enter into its spirit a bit more to the full and take your chances.

COPYRIGHT 1999 Brant Publications, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2000 Gale Group