In establishing a deliberate distance between viewer and subject, Lassry raises questions about representation itself and how all portraits are, in effect, fully constructed objects that only gain meaning once we ascribe them with our own personal associations and emotions. An example of this is Floor, Legs (2013), a gelatin silver print in which a large black rectangle obscures the upper half of a candid photograph with two figures that are ultimately only identifiable by their legs and feet, which are even then indiscernibly crossed and posed beyond easy recognition. Even though its unclear if Lassry’s source image is a found photograph or an original composition, the underlying themes – of the photograph’s function as an object, and the impossibility of discerning “the real” through its representation – continue to resonate.
Elad Lassry explores how visual languages are constructed across multiple disciplines and media. His larger body of work responds to the relationship between artistic mediums and their forms, and his prints question familiar modes of viewership and our continuous desire to find and identify clear narratives in photographs. Lassry utilizes both found photographs and original compositions in his work, a juxtaposition that challenges notions of authorship and attribution. By emphasizing how photographic images are deliberately staged and constructed, Lassry destabilizes notions that photographs depict and document “the real.” In foregrounding the image as object, he also suggest that the photograph only provides a referent for a presence that “has-been” but that no longer exists in the current moment. Born in Israel, Lassry earned his BFA in film from the California Institute of Arts in 2003 and his MFA from the University of Southern California in 2007.
A Portrait: Covering and Cleaning is an installation of six black-and-white video projections...
8 Questions with Alan Oei | Arts Equator Thinking and Talking about Arts and Culture in Southeast Asia Articles Alfonse Chiu November 21, 2018 By Alfonse Chiu (1600 words, five-minute read) As part of ArtsEquator’s interview series profiling artistic directors across the region, we spoke with Alan Oei, AD of The Substation and co-founder and executive director of OH! Open House , on his hopes, his challenges, and how he balances different needs and roles between the two companies...
The Royal House of Allure is a name of a safe house on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding, due to various circumstances, live together...
Michigan Central Station is part of a larger photographic series, Detroit Photos , which includes images of houses, theaters, stadiums, offices, and other municipal structures...
The Royal House of Allure is a name of a safe house on mainland Lagos where members of the queer community in need of boarding, due to various circumstances, live together...
At the halfway point along South Africa’s Highway N1, running from Cape Town to Johannesburg, sits the small town of Beaufort West...
Royal Winnipeg Ballet asks patrons to avoid 3rd-party sites after record level of online ticket fraud | CBC News Royal Winnipeg Ballet asks patrons to avoid 3rd-party sites after record level of online ticket fraud | CBC News Loaded Manitoba Royal Winnipeg Ballet asks patrons to avoid 3rd-party sites after record level of online ticket fraud The Royal Winnipeg Ballet is urging patrons to buy tickets directly from its website or box office after it lost $10,000 to online ticket scammers during its recent production of The Nutcracker...
All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace takes its title from a 1967 poem by American writer Richard Brautigan, which describes a utopian future where computers are in harmony with and protective of mankind and nature, performing all the necessary work while we retreat back towards nature...
Every work in Hoeber’s 2011 series Execution Changes is titled in alphanumeric code...
Sarcastically titled to call attention to the problematic notions underlying colonialism, this photograph shows hundreds of Native Malaysians seated quietly behind one of their colonial oppressors...