LisaBlas

On view: April 12, 2024 - May 11, 2024 | "In Quiet Motion" | Helm Contemporary, NYC

HELM CONTEMPORARY is pleased to announce IN QUIET MOTION, a group exhibition featuring artists Kerri Ammirata, Lisa Blas, and Elise Thompson.

In Quiet Motion: April 12 - May 11, 2024

Collectively, these artworks vividly express the perpetual flow and motion of nature, capturing its transformative essence through the interplay of ambient light, reflections, and color. Infused with feminine energy, each composition celebrates the ethereal beauty found in atmospheric environments, drawing inspiration from elements such as earth, water, and space. The fluid gestures, intricate layers, and physicality of their surfaces create an immersive experience akin to a swell that recedes, gradually revealing the layers beneath—a stirring of curiosity that encourages viewers to explore both the visible and concealed moments within ephemeral atmospheres.

Lisa Blas | Routes to Oceania: banyan bark | Acrylic and interference paint on panel, 12 x 12 inches, 2021, Private Collection

Lisa Blas | Amber waves of grain, Shadow writer(s), v. 8 | Watercolor, gouache, metallic ink, dye-based ink, acrylic ink, acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 2023

Opening: April 23, 2023 | Lisa Blas "Pause (Play), Horizon" | 76,4 * Brussels

76,4 is pleased to announce

PAUSE (PLAY), HORIZON

2020-2023

by 

LISA BLAS

from 23/04 - 28/05/2023

OPENING 

Sunday 23 April, 16:00-19:00 

Lisa Blas, Bruxelles, April 2023

2020___suspended time___2023

Rue de Bosnie appears on Google maps at an angle. Walking north from 76,4 in Brussels, the street intersects with Rue André Hennebicq at the roundabout. Here, one finds the New Hollywood café. Point your imaginary compass due west, and Hollywood, California, will eventually appear in the mind’s eye – where the sun, horizontality of the landscape and light’s reflectivity are in constant oscillation. 

PAUSE (PLAY), HORIZON is the quadrant of two horizons, geographical and biographical — and two periods of time, April 2020 and April 2023. As if folding the page of a book you were halfway through, and finding it again three years later, the narrative is re-remembered. Meanwhile, the interstices of daily life played out. 

At 76,4, I exhibit a painting spanning 2 x 4 meters. The viewer encounters a tilted curvilinear form with an oculus at the center. Similar to the aperture of a camera, the oculus is the space linking interior and exterior, the spectator and the object in view. In March 2020, the oculus shape emerged for me while painting at dawn — the view through my apartment windows, weather conditions, the western sky meets the Hudson River, forming a horizon line with the New Jersey shoreline. Horizontal divisions of space eventually gave way to curvilinear forms with a lacuna radiating at the center. These daily viewpoints accrue in time and space, and in memory — color appears and disappears through an infinity zone. I define them as “afterchromes”.

***

76,4

24, rue de Bosnie

1060 Saint-Gilles, Brussels 

Permanently visible from the street.

Hosted by Michel François, Ekaterina Kaplunova, Juan Pablo Plazas and Richard Venlet.

***

Opening tonight: February 1, 2023 | "In the Studio : New York Academy of Art Faculty Exhibition", 6-8 pm

I am pleased to show recent work along with my colleagues at The New York Academy of Art! Please join us for the opening tonight, all welcome.

Opening Reception: February 1, 2023 | 6-8pm

On view: February 1 – March 5, 2023
Open Daily, 10am–6pm
Closed February 20, 2023

New York Academy of Art
111 Franklin Street
New York, NY 10013

212-966-0300

 For inquiries please contact:
exhibitions@nyaa.edu

Lisa Blas, Routes to Oceania, after Marthe W., Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 57 x 45.5 inches, 2020-21

Extended: December 8, 2022 - February 12, 2023 | Social Photography X _ Carriage Trade, NYC

Social Photography X, the tenth annual group exhibition of cell phone photography curated by Peter Scott and the team at Carriage Trade. All sales benefit exhibition programming at one of New York’s non-profit galleries in the Lower East Side. I have loved participating in this exhibition for the last several years, and meet many of my peers in the art world while visiting the show. Please visit!

Social Photography X
Extended: December 8 - February 12, 2023

Prints available for purchase:
* carriage trade
1 print: $75.00
2 prints: $120.00 (use promo code: 2/$120 at checkout)
3 prints: $150.00 (use promo code: 3/$150 at checkout)

Lisa Blas, Crepusculum hum, 2022

carriage trade

277 Grand St, 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10002
646-863-3874
Thursday-Sunday, 1-6pm

Presented against the backdrop of the twin meltdowns of a social media platform and a cryptocurrency, this 10th anniversary show of Social Photography comes at a time when the progressive reputation enjoyed by the tech industry might warrant some skepticism. While a neo-robber baron browbeats his newly acquired workforce into submission or exile, ostensibly for the good of a “digital town square”, in the same week a financial guru, after evaporating billions in investor funds almost overnight, shrugs off the staggering losses with a sheepish, "I’m sorry".

Propped up by fawning news stories that celebrate novelty and personality over reason or logic, the insidious effect of the world wrought by the anointed power brokers of tech dictates as much of our behavior as we’ll allow. Embracing consumer friendly devices that subject us to behavioral experiments and perpetual tracking, our “digital exhaust”, largely invisible to us, is magically turned to gold by legions of tech workers guided by the speculative bets of tech entrepreneurs.

Begun before most cell phones in use were considered “smart”, the first Social Photography show took place more or less at the inception of visual information as fodder for the experience economy. In late 2010, with cell phone pictures little more than a novelty stored within the limited technological capacity of flip phones, the gargantuan image mill of Instagram had yet to kick into full gear. Searching for an alternative to the benefit raffle exhibition which asks time and materials in the form of donated artworks from artists while offering little in the way of a collective aesthetic, Carriage Trade solicited a couple of hundred cell phone pictures from its community of artists, writers, curators, students, and neighbors, formatting and printing them and presenting the whole in a grid, with proceeds from sales going to support the gallery’s non-commercial mission.

What began as a novelty eventually became a tradition, with evolving participants reflecting the growth of the gallery’s audience, while many of the gallery’s regular visitors returned for each show. As the societal consequences of social media became more clear, the show started to represent a kind of alternative, a "progressive anachronism" where the pictures we take on our phones are shared online and printed out and shown in a physical space, without suffering the pressure to accumulate visible status symbols in the form of hearts, or doled out based on a corporation’s statistical analysis of our preferences.

Arranged chronologically based on when the gallery receives the emailed image, from the start the goal was not to promote cell phone photography, but to take its measure on an annual basis; an informal assessment of how people (both artists and non-artists) are engaging with this relatively new image technology and its inevitable evolution. Now in its tenth year, and over two thousand unique pictures later, the original emphasis of the show, one of sensibility over professionalism or mastery, seems to have prevailed, while the impressive advances of cell phone technology rival point and shoot cameras, offering immediacy and spontaneity with little compromise in image quality.

carriage trade is a NY-based non-profit art space that was founded in 2009. Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade functions not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. The exhibitions combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces with very recent work, often integrating relevant found (archival) material as a means to broaden the scope of an art exhibition by positioning the "evidence" of everyday experience in direct relation to an artist's mediation of social conditions.

Painting Workshop: July 28, 2022 | Lisa Blas | Meet me at the dawn | Bualadh liom ag breacadh an lae

At 5:00 am, July 28, 2022, I conducted a dawn painting workshop for the local community, at the edge of Lough Hyne, Ireland's first Marine Nature Reserve, 5 kilometers southwest of Skibbereen. After two hours of painting in the early morning hours, we returned to Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre for tea, to share readings on the subject of the dawn by writers and archaeologists, a writing exercise on our descriptions of painting at dawn, and discussion of our paintings. I look forward to my next Dawn studio workshop on site!

Thanks to Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre and Skibbereen Arts Festival for their support of my artist residency (June-July 2022) and this workshop.

Artist-in-residence: Lisa Blas | West Cork Arts Centre | Skibbereen, Ireland | June-July 2022

Greetings to all on this day of the summer solstice!

I am currently Artist-in-residence, at Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, June - July 2022. While in the region, I am working on a site-specific body of work that draws upon local color, weather, light, and the history of Irish landscape painting. Parallel to this research, I am thinking about the notion of islands that embody personal and communal origins, formal circularity and interstitial spaces on the periphery.

In July, Dawn studio will be on site, in a special location where the sky meets water. I will host a painting workshop at sunrise, free and accessible to the local community. Stay tuned for further details on my public engagements and Open Studio via Instagram and Uillinn: West Cork Arts Centre.

Lisa Blas
06 | 05 | 21, 6:02 am

Watercolor, metallic ink, dye-based ink and gouache on watercolor paper, 12 x 12 inches, 2021

Lisa Blas, Artist-in-residence, studio, West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, June 2022

Lisa Blas, Detail of palette notes, Watercolor, metallic ink, dye-based ink and gouache on watercolor paper, Skibbereen, Ireland, June 2022

Opening tonight: August 5, 2021 | Social Photography IX | Carriage Trade, NYC

Opening tonight! Social Photography IX, the ninth annual group exhibition of cell phone photography brought to you by Peter Scott and the team at Carriage Trade. Please join us for a celebratory night with peers in support of non-profit galleries in the Lower East Side!

Social Photography IX
August 5 - September 30, 2021
Opening Tonight, 4-8pm

carriage trade

277 Grand St, 2nd Fl.
New York, NY 10002
646-863-3874
Thursday-Sunday, 1-6pm

Online Sales: socialphotography.carriagetrade.org
1 print: $75.00
2 prints: $120.00 (use promo code: 2/$120 at checkout)
3 prints: $150.00 (use promo code: 3/$150 at checkout)

Now in its ninth year, Social Photography brings together cell phone pictures of participants from a wide range of disciplines, generations, and places. In the spirit of broad access to cell phone image making technology, the emphasis of the project leans toward sensibility and the anecdotal over skill and mastery of the medium of photography.

Taking advantage of technologies that allow for images to be sent from anywhere, which are then formatted, printed, and displayed in an in-person exhibition at carriage trade, the range of participants in Social Photography reflect both the gallery’s community in Lower Manhattan as well as those associated with it in other parts of the world. Linking the virtual with the physical through an online display that is then presented in print form, Social Photography IX might be seen as a counterpoint to the increased placelessness of remote exchanges normalized in the pandemic-era.

Spanning nearly a decade, the growing, informal archive of Social Photography cell phone pictures occasionally reflect significant local, national, and international events (Occupy Wall Street, George Floyd protests, U.S. presidential elections, pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong) existing side by side with the everyday, the personal, the urban, and the domestic.

LISA BLAS, Dawn studio (eyelashes), 6:43 a.m., New York

About carriage trade :

carriage trade is a NY-based non-profit art space that was founded in 2009. Through presenting primarily group exhibitions, carriage trade functions not as a means to promote the careers of individual artists, but to provide contexts for their work that reveal its relevance to larger social and political conditions prevalent today. The exhibitions combine well known with lesser known artists, and historical pieces with very recent work, often integrating relevant found (archival) material as a means to broaden the scope of an art exhibition by positioning the "evidence" of everyday experience in direct relation to an artist's mediation of social conditions.

Now Open: May 1 - June 30, 2021 | Fit to Print | The Print Center, Philadelphia

Now Open: May 1 - June 30, 2021 | Fit to Print | The Print Center, Philadelphia

Lisa Blas, First(s), Monday’s image, v. 4, 2021, dye sublimation print on silk, 40” x 30”, unique.

Read More

Now Open: August 6, 2020 | Social Photography VIII | Carriage Trade, NYC

I am excited to participate with many friends and colleagues in Social Photography VIII, the eighth annual group exhibition of cell phone photography brought to you by Peter Scott and the team at Carriage Trade.

The rigorous programming at Carriage Trade continues to deliver thought provoking exhibitions and scholarly inquiries into the role of art and culture today. Please consider supporting this unique non-profit institution of the Lower East Side and the art community that sustains it.

Carriage Trade
277 Grand Street, 2nd floor,
New York, NY 10002
646-863-3874

Please Note: 

We're following the standard health protocols (masks, social distancing, etc.) and will limit attendance to four to five people at a time. Appointments can be made via See Saw

If you're nearby and want to know if there's room in the gallery please feel free to call us
at 646-863-3874.

Social Photography VIII

Gallery Exhibition: Now Open
August 5 - September 20, 2020
Hours: Thursday - Sunday, 1 - 6 pm

Online Sales
socialphotography.carriagetrade.org
See details on purchasing below*

Carriage trade is pleased to present Social Photography VIII, the eighth installment of carriage trade’s cell phone photography show. While Social Photography is not guided by an all-encompassing theme, each year’s collection of pictures becomes an informal archive reflecting a range of recent social experience. Taking place in the midst of significant societal vulnerability and political conflict across the U.S., this year’s show presents an opportunity to recognize the importance of the ordinary or everyday in the face of the extraordinary, while also perhaps indicating a certain amount of resilience among the contributors, given the practical and emotional demands of a very uncertain moment.

Cell phones have become a kind of appendage for many, offering the ability to communicate, track, record, and archive every experience, then routinely feed the results into a social media stream. With its scrolling, "bottomless" format encouraging impulsive interaction, a perplexing mix of the anecdotal, the self-promotional, and the politically urgent coexist without perceptible context. Largely indifferent to codes of ethics or aesthetics, all content is subjected to peer rating systems and shifting algorithms that target the user based on their "stimulus patterns", while the split second experience of the social media image guarantees a short shelf life as it perpetually fuels the insatiable appetite of the attention economy.

As an eight plus year project, Social Photography has evolved with cell phone technology and in parallel with the development of social media. What began as an investigation of a novelty medium which simultaneously offered an alternative to the conventional non-profit benefit exhibition has become a kind of tradition, as it sustains and expands carriage trade’s community through its many participants, while helping support upcoming projects. While cell phone images are generally "unstable" through their constant movement within digital platforms, Social Photography links the cell phone picture’s virtual origins to an in-person gallery experience.

Providing a platform for a medium whose relationship to the history of photography remains unclear, Social Photography also exists as an expression of ambivalence towards the professionalization of the image, as well as the hierarchical codes that might restrict our reception of a photograph. While the exhibition has never been thematic and has instead maintained some detachment with respect to content, given the magnitude of current events, the 2020 iteration of Social Photography may reflect the tenor of the times more than most. Considering the degree of uncertainty and tension now present in many people’s lives, we wish to express our enormous gratitude to all who have contributed to this year’s show.

*Preview begins Monday, July 20 at 12 PM / Online sales begin Tuesday, June 21 at 2 PM

1 print: $75.00
2 prints: $120.00 (use promo code: 2/$120at checkout)
3 prints: $150.00 (use promo code: 3/$150at checkout)

socialphotography.carriagetrade.org

October 2, 2019: Lisa Blas "Spectacular holes in clouds, spotted" | Artist talk | George Washington University, Washington, DC

Please join me tonight for my talk “Spectacular holes in clouds, spotted” at Smith Hall of Art, Fine Arts and Art History Department.

Wednesday, October 2, 2019
6:30 p.m.

George Washington University
Smith Hall of Art
801 22nd St. NW
Room: 114
Washington, DC 20052

Lecture organized by the Visiting Artists and Scholars Committee (VASC)
GWU contact: cahist@gwu.edu

Further information:
Fall Arts Guide:

Opening: July 9, 2019 | Social Photography VII | Carriage Trade, NYC

I’m thrilled to have contributed to Social Photography VII, brought to you by Peter Scott and the team at Carriage Trade!

Meet me tonight to see the work of many artists, friends, and support future programming for this non-profit gallery in the Lower East Side.

Opening: 6 - 8 pm | Tuesday, July 9, 2019
Carriage Trade, 277 Grand Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10002

Prints are available in the gallery and online:
socialphotography.carriagetrade.org


“First presented in 2011, carriage trade's Social Photography exhibitions have become both a tradition and an ongoing survey of cell phone camera use. What began as a novelty medium seven or eight years ago now provides currency for the $100 billion picture mill of Instagram, which funnels 95 million images a day through its social media network via opaque algorithms that determine the order and context of what we see.

Unlike social media formats on our phones which encourage endless scrolling through a "bottomless bowl" of images, Social Photography cell phone pictures exist both online and in the gallery. Faced with a group of photographs in the exhibition space, any of which can draw one's attention or focus, accidental associations present themselves through proximity (their order is based on when images are emailed to the gallery) underscoring the alternative of seeing cell phone images in a physical setting free of social media filters.”

Lisa Blas, detail, Autoportrait, VIVIIMMXVIII, 2018

Opening: March 5, 2019 | Double Negative | ChaShaMa | New York, NY

Please join us tonight for the opening of Double Negative !
  
   DOUBLE NEGATIVE | March 5 - 31, 2019  
   Curated by Darling Green
   Opening: Tuesday, March 5, 2019 | 6:00 - 8:00 pm
   Gallery hours: Thursday - Sunday | 10:00 am - 5:00 pm

   ChaShaMa
   320 West 23rd Street
   New York, NY 10011
   info@darlinggreen.com

   Readings, performances and screenings: Thursdays | 7:00 - 9:00 pm
   March 7, 2019 | March 14, 2019 | March 21, 2019 | March 28, 2019

qUEUkF2c_F68oJzjA9nvUciuSDJxqHJbg5VvD6-jAJpA0b1s3KJcs-LPNA0xG1UjbrTInI92DLSqusWp67psnBIfrqHy0-2vW6RpESGCkIPaWx56r0MhWtJWX7_OgkgEZCmnqby5MevJeCAXhThdkFNtrbCOBJiA2M0=s0-d-e1-ft.gif

Catalog launch: December 9, 2018 | SPINE | Ortega y Gasset Projects

Please join us today in Gowanus for the catalog launch and closing reception of Spine at Ortega y Gasset Projects! A review by the Brooklyn Rail is now online.

Come meet the curators, artists, writers and publisher involved with this expansive and beautiful exhibition. Poetry readings by Mònica de la Torre and Wayne Koestenbaum will illuminate the gallery at 4:30 pm.

My broadsheet, Enter Stage Left (Monday’s image, v. 1), is on view and will be available for purchase at the gallery, and via Space Sisters Press.

Closing reception: Sunday, December 9, 2018
3:00 pm: Walk-through with The Skirt's exhibition artist Adam Liam Rose.
4:30 pm: Poetry reading by Wayne Koestenbaum and Mònica de la Torre

Reception to follow | Catalogs will be for sale at the event.

Ortega y Gasset Projects
363 Third Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11215

SPINE:

curated by Suzanne McClelland and Leeza Meksin
October 20 - December 9, 2018

SPINE is a group exhibition curated by artist Suzanne McClelland and OyG Co-Director and artist Leeza Meksin, featuring works by Cati Bestard, Lisa Blas, Sonia Louise Davis, Shoshana Dentz, Anne Eastman, Jenny Monick and Anne Vieux.
 

SPINE explores the mental and physical structures of a book and questions what is legible, optical, physical, emotional or cerebral. Reading is viewing and occurs any time anyone engages with visual art but it also happens when we’re handling and engaging with books as objects. Printed media lives in the realm of the physical and the private with a spine functioning as an interruption, an intersection, a fulcrum and a central structure, often simultaneously. The works presented in this exhibition question what is shared when the private act of reading becomes public. 

Opening: November 30, 2018 | Flag Me Down, Pick Me Up | Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY

Many thanks to everyone who came out to support the exhibition Flag Me Down, Pick Me Up at Marquee Projects, what a celebratory night with like minds and hearts! At the end of the opening, Bob Morris read his poignant New York Times op-ed from 2016, entitled “From the Mountains, to the Prairies, to the Ocean to Vanuatu”, where the flag enters the frame at the other side of the world.

MARQUEE PROJECTS
presents



  LISA BLAS
 
 TYLER HEALY

 PAUL WEINER



Flag Me Down, Pick Me Up

Opening Reception: Friday, November 30, 2018

6pm - 8pm

On View: November 30 - December 31, 2018

MARQUEE PROJECTS is pleased to present Flag Me Down, Pick Me Up, a group exhibition featuring recent artworks by Lisa Blas, Tyler Healy and Paul Weiner. A reception for the artists will be held on Friday, November 30th from 6pm to 8pm. 

The artists brought together in this show will exhibit work that shares a common interest in the use of the American flag. Flags, in general, have much to do with traditional tribal tendencies and notions of identity: the idea of “us versus them.” But in today’s heated political climate it’s “us versus us,” with divided factions claiming that their allegiance to America is stronger than that of others. This exhibition hopes to bring about greater dialogue on what role the American flag, and what it signifies, now play. Can we pick up the pieces, strive to reduce conflict, and promote a greater sense of unity, peace and equality? 

Contact: Mark Van Wagner and Tonja Pulfer:
 INFO@MARQUEEPROJECTS.ORG
MARQUEE PROJECTS
14 Bellport Lane, Bellport NY 11713
(631) 803-2511

 

Opening: November 28, 2018 | Under Erasure | Pierogi Gallery, NYC

Please join us tonight!

For the opening of Under Erasure, curated by Heather + Raphael Rubinstein at Pierogi Gallery. The curators have designed a beautiful website featuring the curatorial text and work of all artists/writers/collaborators. The exhibition will be on view through January 6, 2019. (Catalog available).

Opening Reception:
Wednesday, 28 November, 2018.
5:00 - 8:00 pm.

Pierogi Gallery | 155 Suffolk Street
New York, NY 10002

28 November, 2018—6 January, 2019

Joe Amrhein | Jenni B. Baker | Jean-Michel Basquiat | Heather Bause Rubinstein | Joshua Beckman | Gene Beery | Jen Bervin | Charles Bernstein | Luca Bertolo | Joseph Beuys | Lisa Blas | Mel Bochner | Ariana Boussard-Reifel | Pierre Buraglio | Doris Cross | The Deletionist.com, Amaranth Borsuk + Jesper Juul + Nick Montfort | David Diao | Peter Gallo | Dana Frankfort | Guerilla Girls | Harmony Hammond | Jane Hammond | Ann Hamilton | Matthea Harvey + Amy Jean Porter | Christian Hawkey + Uljana Wolf | Charline von Heyl | Dennis Hollingsworth | Janet Holmes | Jenny Holzer | Emilio Isgrò | Samuel Jablon | Ray Johnson | Ronald Johnson | Kim Jones | Joseph Kosuth | Cody Ledvina | Tony Lewis | Glenn Ligon | Mark Lombardi | Travis Macdonald | Suzanne McClelland | Arnold Mesches | Dan Miller | Donna Moylan | Kristen Mueller | Loren Munk | Bruce Nauman | Joshua Neustein | Nina Papaconstantinou | Bruce Pearson + Mónica de la Torre | M. NourbeSe Philip | Tom Phillips | Niina Pollari | Richard Prince | Edouard Prulhière + Raphael Rubinstein | Sylvia Ptak | Archie Rand | Stephen Ratcliffe | Robert Rauschenberg | Srikanth Reddy | David Reed | Ridykeulous + AL Steiner + Nicole Eisenman | Mary Ruefle | Jerry Saltz + Anonymous Artist | David Scher | Mira Schor | Teresa Serrano | John Sparagana | Antoni Tàpies | Shane Tolbert | Betty Tompkins | Jim Torok | Xiaofu Wang

CATALOG AVAILABLE: Under Erasure | Pierogi Gallery