In celebration of the Design Library’s 50th Anniversary we are pleased to announce that Barbara Bloom is our first Artist-in-Residence.
As 2022/23 Artist-in-Residence at The Design Library, Barbara Bloom has been inspired to create new works using pattern in the fore and background. These works will be premiered in a solo exhibition at Galerie Gisela Capitain, Cologne, Germany in Spring 2023.
This by-invitation residency marks an exciting first for the Design Library. We all love patterns and experience them in our personal ways. Barbara Bloom sees patterns in her very particular way, differently from most, as signifiers of underlying relationships and overarching meaning. Plainly put, there is a lot going on above and below the surface in Bloom’s use of patterns.
DH Lawrence argued that the source of wisdom resides in the quality of attention we pay to the world. This can apply to anything in our experience and nature. In our case it often applies to pattern--designs, inspiration, ideas for surface decoration; whether printed, woven or embroidered.
Barbara Bloom’s work seldom concentrates on a single image or object. Instead, her fascination is with relationships between objects or images and the meanings implicit in their placement and combination.
According to Dave Hickey the primary task of high modernist art has always been to restore to us those aspects of living that modern science and technology have suppressed.
Bloom’s art is a pure high modern art; it requires an engaged beholder who is something more than a sightseer. Having looked at Barbara Bloom’s work, we are invited to look through it at the world beyond… and there to feel the happy embrace of moments when we find ourselves “rhyming” with the world, and things “rhyming” with one another.
We are eager to see these finished works this Spring. Stay tuned to share this experience with us.
Peter Koepke and
The Team at the Design Library
Barbara Bloom has been the recipient of many awards including winner of the Due Mille Prize at the Venice Biennale and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work is represented in numerous public (and private) collections worldwide including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; MOMA, New York; and The Art Institute of Chicago. She has held teaching positions at many institutions including Columbia University, Cooper Union School of Art, and Yale University.
For more information on Barbara Bloom:
The Collections of Barbara Bloom