Blalock resists the immediacy that we have come to expect from photography—that each photograph should communicate its message without delay. Within the dark obscurity of three, three, three (2013), he frustrates and complicates this conditioned response to the photographic medium, questioning the photograph’s purpose.
Lucas Blalock received his MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. In his photographic work he fuses analog and digital technologies, relying on both the tactility of a four-by-five camera and the wide-open possibilities of digital manipulation. While many makers of photographic images may use digital tools while simultaneously burying the fact of that use, Blalock makes his manipulations evident.
The photograph Exquisite Eco Living is part of a larger series titled Executive Properties in which he digitally manipulated the images to insert iconic buildings of Kuala Lumpur in the view of derelict spaces also found in the city...
Blind Spencer is part of the series “Blind Stars” including hundreds of works in which the artist cut out the eyes of Hollywood stars, in a symbolically violent manner...
Untitled (Grate I/II: Shan Mei Playground/ Grand Fortune Mansion) is part of a series drawn from architectural objects that mark the boundary of public and private spaces Wong encountered while strolling in Hong Kong...
Like many of his other sculptural works, the source of I am the Greatest is actually a historical photograph of an identical button pin from the 1960s...
Collectors’ Favorites is an episode of local cable program from the mid-1990s in which ordinary people were invited to present their personal collections—a concept that in many ways anticipates current reality TV shows and internet videos...
In Monster (1996-97), the artist’s face becomes grotesque through the application of strips of transparent adhesive tape, typical of Gordon’s performance-based films that often depict his own body in action...
Douglas Gordon’s single-channel video The Left Hand Can’t See That The Right Hand is Blind, captures an unfolding scene between two hands in leather gloves—at first seemingly comfortable to be entwined, and later, engaged in a struggle...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Intentionally Left Blanc alludes to the technical process of its own (non)production; a procedure known as retro-reflective screen printing in which the image is only fully brought to life through its exposure to flash lighting...
This series of small drawings is executed with varying materials—pen, ink, colored pencil, charcoal, and masking tape—on architect’s tracing paper...
The Tower of Babel is an installation of large-format photographs that forces the audience to occupy a central position through its monumental scale...
Thomas’ lenticular text-based works require viewers to shift positions as they view them in order to fully absorb their content...