Andrea Blum, Mobile Home
1996
at the Galerie des Archives
Andrea Blum, Library
1996
at the Galerie des Archives
letter from paris by Jeff Rian
andrea blum
at galerie des archives
Andrea Blum showed a 3-to-1 scale, modular
interior structure called Mobile Home,
wall-sized Xeroxes of the work in different
configurations, and an actual desk and
portable library. A well-known maker of
plazas and other outdoor public art works,
here she explores interiors and ways to
structure and restructure space. Masonite
is her commonest material, which she
manipulates and personalizes. The artistic
subtext stems from postwar prefab
construction and the generic-brand mindset
that generated things like Levittown, the
Gap and those raceless, personalized and
now-forgotten Cabbage Patch dolls. If her
goal is to have us look at her works as
sculptures, they raise the issue of the
industrialization of lifestyle and the
marketing of preferences. But her objects
also infuse industrial sameness with
personality. Her subject, ultimately, is
lifestyle and habitat in a world where the
future promises simplicity, TV and all, and
a nomadic lifestyle with a preference for
compactness and portability. Somehow Blum's
works are all that.
