Japanese Couple

Barbara Bloom’s focus on minute detail stems from herinterest in the implicit, in possible meanings—hers is a“detective gaze.” Bloom employs ambiguity and suggestionto investigate how we bestow value and meaning ontoimages and objects and how we view, remember, collect,and consume them. Here a folding screen partially cordonsoff a single, shadowy photograph of a Japanese couple. Thescreen alternately shields the picture from view or invitesintimate, even private engagement. The work emphasizesthe physicality in the act of seeing and renders the viewercomplicit, not merely as voyeurs but as full participants inan exchange between the subject and object of spectatorship.“Can we,” Bloom asks, “think of images or objectsas the recipients of a gaze, aware of our looking at them,affected by our looking?”