Andrea Blum: Biota

A 40-year overview of Blum’s career working at the interface of art, architecture and design, leading up to her focus on our engagement with the natural world Andrea Blum (born 1950) is a New York–based artist who has worked at the intersection of art, architecture and design since the 1970s. She has exhibited at a wide range of venues and has built projects in Europe and the United States that include public installations, furniture, exhibition design, libraries and other designs for living. Blum’s work considers the relationship of the sociopolitical world to the private psychological one, zooming in and out of the conditions that organize us as a culture, with a focus on the "down time"—when one eats, reads and is in repose—as the time when the border between private behavior and public etiquette is most evidenced. Accompanying an expansive exhibition of the same name at Hunter College Art Galleries, Biota is lavishly illustrated with extensive photography of Blum’s early sculpture, public works, exhibitions, installations and propositions of the past 40 years. The book includes new essays and a conversation between the artist and Allan Schwartzman, all of which explore Blum’s practice and artmaking philosophy. This book was published in association with Hunter College Art Galleries