Artist Lucas Blalock in his Greenpoint studio, Brooklyn, NY, 2015. Production still from the ART21 New York Close Up film Lucas Blalock’s Digital Toolkit. Graphics by Lucas Blalock & Rafael Salazar. © ART21, Inc. 2015.
Have you ever wanted a Photoshop tutorial from an artist? Filmed in his Greenpoint studio, artist Lucas Blalock creates uncanny pictures using simple tools in Photoshop as seen in a new film from the New York Close Up series. Blalock demonstrates how he tweaks analog photographs—all taken with a large-format camera—by digitally erasing, masking, cloning, and drawing on scans of images. Approaching each picture as a game of enhancing visual relationships, Blalock preserves the clumsy quality of his alterations in a kind of slapstick full of pathos and whimsy. Collaborating with the filmmakers, Blalock’s studio process is staged through a series of reenactments, sleights of hand, and animations that overtake the video itself. Featuring the works Boob bag, A physical feeling, The Smoker, two lettuces, untitled, from WINDOWS MIRRORS TABLETOPS (all 2014); Blue Bottles, The Guitar Player, Kathleen, Picture for Mark I, PLANTS, Shoe, three, three, three (all 2013); Accurate Walking Style I, Both Chairs in CW’s Living Room, caned, chair, arm, hole, Coffee Pot, Gabriela as a Bunny, Picture for Jennifer (record player), Untitled (lozenges), Untitled (all 2012); The Mallard, Straw Picture, Tenting (all 2011); and The Contender (2009).
Lucas Blalock (b. 1978, Asheville, North Carolina, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.
CREDITS | ART21 New York Close Up Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Producer & Editor: RAVA Films. Cinematography: Rafael Salazar & Ava Wiland. Production Assistant: Jeewon Shantal Kim. Design & Graphics: Open. Animation: Lucas Blalock & Rafael Salazar. Artwork: Lucas Blalock, Buster Keaton, and René Magritte. Music: Bensound, Evgeny Grinko & Ben McElroy. Thanks: Corinne Blalock, Tessa DiPietro, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Griffin Editions, Morel Books, Peradam, Ramiken Crucible, Kathleen Ryan, Gabriela Salazar, Self Publish Be Happy, & Chris Wiley. An ART21 Workshop Production. © ART21, Inc. 2015. All rights reserved.
ART21 New York Close Up is supported, in part, by The Lambent Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and by individual contributors.