Lucas Blalock

Lucas Blalock’s photographic process shares much with drawing: creating and erasing layers of visual information to build playful and intriguing compositions. Responding to the disembodied and anonymous feeling of much digital image traffic circulating online, Blalock produced emotionally engaging compositions that are full of life and possess ‘just-off’ awkwardness. His approach encompasses abstract and figurative imagery, and digital and analogue techniques. A large format film camera is used in the studio and on location, with Photoshop computer tools then employed to erase elements or fold the visual material of the original back in on itself. With a nod to genres such as Cubist collage and still life painting, and to Brecht’s ideas in theatre of bringing off-stage action into view, Blalock’s work enjoys a dialogue with many strands of visual culture, from high art to advertising. Common and overlooked objects, such as hotdogs, trees and sneakers, often star as the subjects depicted, occasionally alongside friends and acquaintances. Sometimes subtle and sometimes slapstick, the pictures destabilise the notion of a fixed view of the shared world around us.