Lucas Blalock
Lucas Blalock: Imperfect Grace
Reality is always a partially cloaked thing: the some of sociopolitical structures and strictures, the warp and weft of interpersonal dynamics, and so on. It is created largely through instances of alchemy that evade the realm of the visual, in which photography traffics. Attempts to touch something of the real through photography, to extend the medium beyond its doglike loyalty to the indexical, can nevertheless be made; this is where art comes in.
In the face of the failures of representation, as Bertolt Brecht once claimed, “what we actually need is to ‘construct something,’ something ‘artificial,’ ‘posed.’ “We need, in other words, to create a form of what might be termed “constructed representation” - aligned with Brecht’s theatrical techniques of alienation, which call attention to the workings of the theatrical apparatus in order to provide the audience a space for intellectual analysis of the events onstage. This constructed representation exists in opposition to the smooth, consumable forms of representation associated with the spectacle. It is rough; it produces friction.
Consider, in this context, Lucas Blalock’s use of Photoshop. He’s horrible at it. Or so he’d have you believe: you can follow all his technical steps; they are ham-fisted. But these bald-faced moves stand in direct contradiction to the standard, seamless operations of digital legerdemain that are designed to fade into the background of the collective dream worlds fashioned for us by advertising executives and other promoters of the spurious and the seductive. The mechanisms of the digital are here laid bare, allowing us to see them for what they are: cheap tricks. But to shine light on this reality, which can be seen as a kind of critique, is not to identify what’s at the bottom of the well.
Blalock’s photographs are awkward. They trip themselves up, cross their own wires, scramble their own energies. They are not “well done.” But of course most things aren't. We live amid a profusion of the jury-rigged and the half-baked, those thoughts and objects that are at best nice tries, tries, but never successes. Like most things pathetic, however, there is also a sweetness about Blalock’s pictures, a certain imperfect grace that exists at cross-purposes with their atmosphere of failure. They recall the writer Donald Barthelem's memorable remark on accuracy in his fiction. “The confusing signals, the impurity of the signal,” he observed, “gives you verisimilitude. As when you attend a funeral and notice, against your will, that it’s being poorly done.” Above and beyond critique, Blalock's photographs carve out an idiosyncratic form of photographic realism, on the that moves beyond the merely depictive and into a more direct realm of representation: the embodied.
Chris Wiley in Aperture, Issue 208, Fall 2012
BIOGRAPHY
Born in 1978, Asheville, NC USA
Lives and works in New York, NY USA
Education
2013
MFA, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA USA
2011
Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME USA
2002
BA, Photography, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY USA
Solo Exhibitions
2021
Lucas Blalock in T-E-L-E-P-H-O-N-E, Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts (AEIVA), Birmingham, AL USA
Florida, 1989, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, New York, NY USA
2020
Insoluble Pancakes, rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium
2019
Lucas Blalock ... or, Or, Museum Kurhaus Kleve, Kleve, Germany
Lucas Blalock: An Enormous Oar, ICA, Los Angeles, CA USA
2018
Ketchup As A Vegetable, Galerie Eva Presenhuber, Zurich, Switzerland
2017
Making Memeries, Espace Images Vevey à la Ferblanterie, Vevey, Switzerland
2016
Low Comedy, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
2015
A Farmer’s Knowledge, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
2014
Lucas Blalock: Late Work, White Flag Projects, Saint Louis, MO USA
2013
Inside the White Cube, White Cube, London, UK
Assisted Camera, Peder Lund, Oslo, Norway
Id, Ed, Ad, Od, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
2011
xyz, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
Group Exhibitions
2022
Sausage Party, rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium
2021
Interior Scroll or What I Did on My Vacation, organized by Soft Network, Stanley and Sons, The Art Building, Springs, NY USA
Breakfast Club, rodolphe janssen, Brussels, Belgium
2020
New Visions, The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Med, Høvikodden, Norway
2019
Whitney Biennale 2019, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY USA
The Extreme Present, organised by Jeffery Deitch and Larry Gagosian, Moore Building, Miami, FL USA
2018
You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred, Curated by Paul Luckraft, MAMM, Moscow, Russia
roesler hotel #28: screenspace, curated by Vik Muniz, Lucas Blalock and Barney Kulok, Galeria Nara Roesler, São Paulo, Brazil
Ami Omo, Barbara Walters Gallery, Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY USA
2017
Lucie Fontaine: A Show Yet to be Titled, 83 Pitt Street, New York, NY USA
Optical Illusions, Contemporary Still Life, C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany
More Simply Put, Sikkema Jenkins & Co., New York, NY USA
Vanishing Points, James Cohan Gallery, curated by Andrianna Campbell, New York, NY USA
You Are Looking At Something That Never Occurred, The Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK
Homo Mundus Minor, T293, Rome, Italy
Commercial Break, Public Art Fund, New York, NY USA
2016
Trans-Dimensional, Aichi Trienniale 2016, Aichi, Japan
C.Ar.D: Contemporary Art and Design 2016, Pianello Val Tidone , Italy
Fabulous Failures (curated by Erik Kessels), Rencontres d'Arles, Arles, France
A Modest Proposal, Hauser & Wirth New York, New York, NY USA
See Sun, And Think Shadow, Barbara Gladstone, New York, NY
Good Dreams, Bad Dreams - American Mythologies (curated by Massimiliano Gioni), Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon
Ordinary Pictures, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN USA
The 5th of July, Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA USA
Image Support, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway
2015
Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY USA USA
Part Pictures, Curated by Chris Wiley, Museum of Contemporary Canadian Art (MOCCA), Toronto, Canada
Perfect Likeness : Photography and Composition, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA USA
Give a man a mask and he will tell you the truth – Oscar Wilde, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels, Belgium
Walks and displacements, Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York, NY USA
Camera of Wonders, Centro de la Imagen, Mexico City, Mexico
Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY USA
The Pure Products of America / Go Crazy, (curated by Joshua Chuang), Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ USA
2014
Tongue Mops and Bunny Pictures, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
Fixed Variable, Hauser & Wirth, New York, NY USA
Never Enough: Recent Acquisitions of Contemporary Art, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX USA
Rites of Spring (curated by Dean Daderko), Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston, TX USA
Depression, François Ghebaly Gallery, Los Angeles, CA USA
2013
Time Machine, M-ARCO, Marseille, France
Lens Drawings (curated by Jens Hoffmann), Marian Goodman Gallery, Paris, France
Made In Space (curated by Peter Harkawik and Laura Owens), Gavin Brown’s enterprise & Venus Over Manhattan, New York, NY USA
Of Love, Pain, and Passioned Revolt. (Then Farewell, My Beloved, ‘til It’s Freedom Day), ZERO…, Milano, Italy
Camp Paradox Days, Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, PA USA
B.B.S.Q, Wallspace Gallery, New York, NY USA
Made In Space (curated by Peter Harkawik and Laura Owens), Night Gallery, Los Angeles, CA USA
New Pictures of Common Objects (curated by Christopher Y. Lew), MoMA PS1, Queens, NY USA
2012
Coquilles mécaniques (curated by Joanna Fiduccia), Crac Alsace, Alt kirch, France
It’s When It’s Gone That You Really Notice It, Simone Subal Gallery, New York, NY USA
Mexico City Blues (curated by Chris Sharp), Shanaynay, Paris, France
Lucie Fontaine : Estate, 2012, Marianne Boesky Gallery, New York, NY USA
Formwandler, Richard Telles Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA USA
second nature: abstract photography then and now, deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA USA
Towards a Warm Math (curated by Chris Wiley), On Stellar Rays, New York, NY USA
Photography Is, Higher Pictures, New York, NY USA
2011
Talent, Foam Photography Museum Annex, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Wax Apple, Bodega, Philadelphia, PA USA
Chinese Take-Out, New Commissions Program, Art In General, New York, NY USA
Lucas Blalock and Jessica Eaton, Contact Gallery, Toronto, Canada
WIN LAST DON’T CARE, Ramiken, New York, NY USA
2010
Mouthful of Poison, Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
Things Just Aren’t The Way They Used To Be (curated by Beth Camp bell), Kate Werble Gallery, New York, NY USA
New Genre Pictures, Flanders Gallery, Raleigh, NC USA
Green Honey (curated by Andrea Cashman and Borden Capalino), Ramiken Crucible, New York, NY USA
Self Publish, Be Happy, Photographers’ Gallery, London, UK
50 Artists Photograph the Future, curated by Dean Daderko, Higher Pictures, New York, NY USA
Use Me Abuse Me, curated by Erik Kessels, Photo Festival, Smack Melon, BK, NY USA
Collections
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY USA
Aïshti Foundation, Jal El Dib, Lebanon
Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ USA
Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX USA
Guggenheim Museum, New York, NY USA
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA USA
Hessel Foundation, New York, NY USA
Kadist Art Foundation, San Fransisco, CA USA
Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA USA
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY USA
Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL USA
Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY USA
Portland Museum of Art, Portland, ME USA
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY USA