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EXHIBITION
CHAPTER ONE: LUCAS BLALOCK
September 21 – November 5 , 2020
Commons Gallery, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), Art Building
Programs: In-person events are cancelled for Fall 2020 due to COVID-19.
October 14, 12:00-1:15 pm: Talk between Lucas Blalock and Maika Pollack, curator of Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography (Zoom link; Meeting ID: 958 3105 9426; Passcode: 626551)
The Commons Gallery, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (UHM), is pleased to present a new work by Lucas Blalock as the first solo exhibition of the yearlong exhibition series Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography.
Lucas Blalock works with visual editing tools to create compelling images that interrogate the status of contemporary photography. Beginning with a 4×5” camera, Blalock edits his scanned film using basic Photoshop procedures like clone stamping, erasing, and dragging. At the center of his work is a fundamental interest in photographic errors and humor. He writes, “I came to the work I have been making by thinking through artists like Buster Keaton whose slapstick antics—having a set collapse around him or falling through an edit—simultaneously produced an entertainment and a behind-the-scenes look at the world of making films.” In this new work made for the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Le Déjeuner / Mollusks on the Grass (2020), Blalock’s investigation of two sunbathing bodies riffs on Édouard Manet’s Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1862) while creating a portrait of leisure for our times.
Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography is a year-long series of solo exhibitions in the Art Building Commons Gallery by artists who work primarily as photographers but whose practices extend well beyond traditional definitions of the medium. The artists, including Lucas Blalock, Hadi Fallahpisheh, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, and Stephanie Syjuco, have been asked to consider what in their work is explicitly un-photographic for this series. The artists will be in residence at the Department of Art & Art History, UHM, to produce their artworks, present public gallery walk-throughs and talks, and to interact with students and visitors. At the culmination of the series of exhibitions, a publication will be produced. The Out of the Camera series is made possible by a generous grant from the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund.
Artist Bio
Lucas Blalock was born in 1978 in Asheville, NC USA, and lives and works in New York, NY. He recently held his first solo museum exhibition in the US, “An Enormous Oar” at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and his first in Europe, “. . . Or or,” at the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve, Germany. Institutional group shows include: “The 2019 Whitney Biennial,” Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019); “All the Marvelous Surfaces: Photography Since Karl Blossfeldt,” deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA (2019); “Optical Illusions, Contemporary Still Life,“ C/O Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2017); “Good Dreams, Bad Dreams – American Mythologies,“ Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon (2016); “You Are Looking at Something That Never Occurred,” Zabludowicz Collection, London, UK (2017); “Ordinary Pictures,“ Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN (2016); “Image Support,“ Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2016); “Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015,“ Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY (2015); “Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition,“ Hammer Museum, Los Angeles, CA (2015); and “Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection,“ Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY (2015).
Out of the Camera: Beyond Photography is curated by Maika Pollack for Hawai‘i. Maika Pollack is director and chief curator, John Young Museum of Art and University Galleries and assistant professor of curatorial studies and art history, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Sponsors
University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa’s Department of Art + Art History and College of Arts + Humanities; Hawai‘i State Foundation on Culture and the Arts, through appropriations from the Legislature of the State of Hawai‘i and by the National Endowment for the Arts; supported by the Laila Twigg-Smith Art Fund; Halekulani Hotel– Hospitality Sponsor for the Arts at UH Mānoa; and anonymous donors.
Gallery hours & admission:
Mon. – Thurs. 12:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m., Sun. 12:00 p.m. – 4:00 p.m.
Closed Fridays and Saturdays.
Free admission.
Parking fees may apply during weekdays. Parking is free on Sundays
For more information please contact Sharon Tasaka at 808.956.8364 and gallery@hawaii.edu