photography

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

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

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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: July 10, 2018: Social Photography VI / Carriage Trade, NYC

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Social Photography VI is now open!

I have contributed a photograph to Carriage Trade's sixth benefit exhibition which meditates on the ubiquitous use of cell phone photography and its connection to the art community. Come view this immersive exhibition in situ, a precise grid of images installed on two facing walls in the gallery.

"While Instagram tends to emphasize the medium's social utility, carriage trade's Social Photography exhibitions have tracked an alternate course, inviting participants and viewers to encounter these images in a format free of peer-generated tallies, while offering the option of a sustained look afforded by a gallery setting."

All photographs can be viewed and purchased online:
https://socialphotography.carriagetrade.org/

carriage trade, 277 Grand St, 2nd Fl. , New York, NY 10002

Lisa Blas, Table(au), detail, 2018

Time eclipsed, Charlottesville: August 18, 2017

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Flashback Friday, or, into the future.

After the recent events in Charlottesville, I am posting a partial image from Meet Me at the Mason Dixon: A project in painting, photography and installation that I realized during the years 2003-2009, while living and teaching in Washington, D.C.

The project in its entirety was exhibited at Schmucker Art Gallery at Gettysburg College in 2011, with a catalog and accompanying texts by Shannon Egan and Miguel de Baca. In brief, this project examines the contested legacy of race and identity from the American Civil War onward, and the sign systems that point to those fraught subjectivities and histories. It is uncanny that my initial intuition about the repressed issue of race relations before and after 9/11 was confirmed by the growing civil unrest in American cities throughout these past years. 9/11 turned the collective consciousness elsewhere, namely to a foreign invader, becoming the country’s addressee in a long, protracted war while the social fabric of American society was itself coming undone. The ongoing dispute over heritage and removal of Confederate monuments from public space highlights that the familial and cultural attachments to history are ephemeral, and subject to change with each new generation. This is the space that Meet Me at the Mason Dixon occupies. As Erika Doss wrote in a special issue of Public Art Dialogue, The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence, 2016, “Public art is processual, dependent on various cultural and social relationships and subject to the volatile intangibles of multiple publics and their fluctuating interests and feelings”…“Public art is not, in other words, forever.”

Lisa Blas
Meet Me at the Mason Dixon
Installation view, Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA, 2011

Lisa Blas
Meet Me at the Mason Dixon
Installation view, Mixed-media, 9.5 x 15 feet approximately
Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College
Gettysburg, PA, 2011

Lisa Blas
(Day for night) Battle Scene, v. 11
Gettysburg Cyclorama, Gettysburg National Military Park, Pennsylvania
Archival pigment print, 2011

Opening July 11, 2017: Social Photography V / Carriage Trade, NYC

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Join us tonight for the opening of "Social Photography V" at Carriage Trade, a non-profit art organization in the Lower East Side. The exhibition will be on view July 11 - August 12, 2017.

I have contributed a photograph along with many others in the art community to support future programming at the gallery. My work, and all other works in the exhibition can be viewed and purchased online:

Hope to see you there!
Carriage Trade
Opening: 6 - 9 pm
277 Grand St, 2nd FL
New York, NY 10002
718-483-0815

https://socialphotography.carriagetrade.org/