Barbara Bloom
"Fascination is with the relationships between objects or images--and the meanings implicit in their placement and combination."
The placement of objects, the image that it represents, the reality that it may reveal... Barbara's works about chairs can certainly fit into the successive phases that Baudrillard stated in her book:
"it is a reflection of a basic reality"
the shadows of the chairs simply are images of chairs--one side of truth that people can see; a basic reflection of a basic truth;
"it masks and perverts a basic reality"
The photograph is framed so that the backdrop paper is clearly revealed for what it is, functioning, as in BB’s pieces, to isolate the subject while revealing the complete artificiality of the arrangement.
"It masks the absence of a basic reality"
"it is its own pure simulacrum"
"the seat for the body, the presence for the absence"
the image does not tell the fact that it is just pure artificial placement or chairs, without any hint of a possible history; on the contrary, we see this just as a site for happenings, a space that we fill our imaginary realities in.
