JULIE BLOOM
I embrace dualities”
Flat, texture. Black and white, colour. Familiar, alien. Meditation, Intensity. Stillness, Speed. Nature, Cityscape. Julie Bloom’s creative practice is inspired by her deeply rooted connections with cities, buildings, and city life, intertwined with nature and their contrasts and similarities. The artist realized that cities mimic the shapes and structures of nature from plants to the natural landscape – are cities the new nature now?
We follow the artist into her cityscapes, in her ‘Metropolis’ series, for example, we enter the dynamic and fervent space weaved and created by the artist’s white acrylic pen. Like the unforgiving nature of the city, the artist cannot undo her delicate lines which she places directly onto the canvas. “I enjoy executing extreme patience and accuracy in order to form intricate patterns and shapes” – Julie Bloom
Experienced over the artist’s lifetime, she explores notions of identity, boundaries and displacement as well speed, scale, noise. In her video work, ‘Finding Space’, she explores her vulnerability and strengths moving through the constructed space.
“I love as well to paint with total abandon, without sense of self or design” The artist also works with the essence and shapeliness of cities. Not confined by regimented order, she experiments with loose expressions fashioned over a lifetime of experiencing cities all over the world.
How can this space be navigated? How do our senses react? Like nature, like the city, one has to adapt. The intense system of the city is mapped out for us; this intensity is heightened further through the artist’s usage of striking colours.
Bloom is fascinated by the unseen elements of the city which keep it working; after all, they are its life force. A key example is the artist’s installations using nuts, bolts and screws – hidden yet fundamental elements allowing the city to work.
Akin to roots from a tree, or veins in the human body, the artist often works with the hidden black pipes that carry a city’s electricity, in which she cuts outlines of cityscapes. The energy is reinstated and then amplified by the addition of changing coloured lights. Now, the pipes that carry electricity are carrying the artist’s energy.
Written by Kurt Vally
Julie Bloom