Louise Bloom has created a whole collection of paintings, engravings and artist books that reinterpret the fabulous universe of Lewis Carroll.
Bloom employs the iconography of the world of our dear Alice in Wonderland, weaving poetry and image with a finesse and brilliance inspired by childhood memories of the enthusiasm with which her father introduced her to this extravagant world.
Whatever the medium, paint, print or book work, this artist preserves the essential character of the original sense and no-sense story, juxtaposing and exploiting opposites; the imaginary and the real, the extraordinary and the mundane, the absurd and the sensible, the dream-like and the logical, to shock us into awareness about the abusive nature of our consumer culture.
The resulting ironies serve to influence our perceptions, and like reversed images in a mirror, alter our gaze on a transforming world, disturbing us in the process.
At a time when we face prospects of ecological disasters, Bloom’s images impact us as they raise a multitude of questions: principally, what predictions for our world are revealed on the other side of the mirror?
Manon Régimbald
Directrice artistique du Centre des arts contemporains
du Québec à Montréal