Artweek: 3/18/93 vol.
25 #6, page 20
Breaking the Rules: Lisa
Bloomfield at UC Riverside
Women artists sometimes tend to
underestimate their work. Without realizing
it, they have been undermined by the art world's
"wait and see" attitude. The
two are linked: the fraudulent and the tolerant,
the passive and the aggressive. Lisa
Bloomfield claims her "generic" portraits
of ten women represent a "work in progress." These
untitled biographies, currently at UC Riverside's
University Art Gallery, serve her vision
well. Fragmented "bits," narrated against
a background reminiscent of Victorian wallpaper,
reveal a complex, condensed universe
as Bloomfield assumes a cultural connection
that women can appreciate. She utilizes
the "same-but-different" definition of metaphor
to shape five triptychs of intertwined personal
histories.
In a way that recalls Medieval
manuscripts, Bloomfield's iconic approach
conventionalizes the women for aesthetic purposes. Though
illuminating, the portraits remain dependent
upon the printed biographical material for
identification. These five paired portraits,
each with a panel of text, combine in a symbolic
fictional construct. The fictionalized
anxiety recalls modern themes: always
trying to escape the hugeness of our landscape;
moving interiorly to the "heart of darkness." Sara,
set against a green leafy background, searches
through the "blank index cards" of her life's
work for a meaning where maybe none exists. Her
opposite, Emily, working diligently, has a
commercial breakthrough.
Bloomfield's three-part inventions
work contrapuntally, bringing together fragmented
histories written in a "dialogic" alternation:
the narrative comes to a provisional end in
which one history takes on the characteristics
of the other, thus losing identity to a composite
expression of an unresolved conflict. The
individual women find meaning from the illusions
they harbor: whether in business transactions,
socially specific relationshps, family ties, gender
roles. Their portraits objectify them
to a specific symbolic order. The viewer
struggles in the symbolic doubling process
of mirror-imaging an identity.
We know these women externally, but
see them from within ourselves. We perceive
their portraits as being the "same-but-different."
But when considered with the text, the
portraits create an immediacy and alter the
way we view their opposing histories. To
some degree, the narratives become autobiographical. Before
I had a strong idea of what Bloomfield's exhibit
was about, her use of narrative caught my
attention and held it. There is nothing
shaky or ambiguous about her biographies.
We recognize immediately the obsessive necessity
for approval spliced into the dialogic text. The
metonymic world of language works: to be given
only essentials instead of full knowledge,
to be given only the women's first names,
shows how we, ourselves, want to be thought of
as being the "same-but-different" in today's
postmodern world of verbal symbolism. The
combined patterns and information as simultaneous
visual elements build the contextual tonality
that characterizes Bloomfield's work. To
see the portraits without a text or text without
an image denies the viewer critical clues
to the logic of the presentation. The
face, the narrator's voice and words translate
in the strictest cognitive sense a passionate
meaning. Each composed triptych functions
independently within the presentation of the
other five triptychs.
"Emerging artists," working in
image and text, have put the discursive back
to work for the big issues they want to illuminate. And
like Lisa Bloomfield, they look for ways to
link the external world (as being natural
and civilized) to the private one (that divides
us into a body and brain). Breaking
the rules of fiction for rhetorical purposes
might go against traditional notions of what
makes a good story; nevertheless, breaking
the rules causes the viewer to ask questions
where everything is open for interpretation
-- as if the fragments (that part belonging
in a historical mainstream) could tell the
structure of the life revealed.
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