Biography | Reflections | Curriculum Vitae
Lisa Blas | “Pause (Play) Horizon” | Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 2 x 4 meters | Rue de Bosnie, Bruxelles | 2023
New CHamoru Literature: University of Hawaii Press
Cover: Lisa Blas, Fighte fuaighte > inafa’maolek, Acrylic, metallic ink, dye-based ink, and watercolor on canvas,
4 x 2 meters, 2022, Skibbereen, Ireland
In progress: Sketchbook of paintings, in front of Calligraphic Sky, Acrylic and interference paint on canvas, 1 x 1 meter, 2024, Brussels, Belgium.
Biography
Lisa Blas is a CHamoru / Italian-American painter working between New York, NY and Brussels, Belgium. Utilizing sources in art history, newspapers and the environment, she produces abstract paintings that she calls, “afterchromes”, that speak to the chroma and fragility of the natural world.
Dawn Studio, an ongoing series of paintings commenced while working in the early morning hours of 2020, was published in Effects Journal, March 2021. Recent publications of her work have appeared in The Brooklyn Rail and The Drift. In 2022, Blas was an artist-in-residence at West Cork Arts Centre, Skibbereen, Ireland, where she exhibited her work as part of Re:Group — a collective of eleven international artists who formed over Zoom during the pandemic.
In January 2024, Lisa Blas was an artist-in-residence at Frans Masereel Centrum, in Kasterlee, Belgium. Blas has exhibited nationally and internationally, most recently at Helm Contemporary (NYC), Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts (NYC), 76,4 (Brussels, Belgium), The New York Academy of Art, (NYC), O’Driscoll Building (Skibbereen, Ireland) The Print Center (Philadelphia), Pierogi Gallery (NYC), Marquee Projects (Bellport, NY), and Ortega y Gasset Projects (Brooklyn, NY). In 2016, she produced an artist project, The Instability of Nature Morte, (Reconsidering Monument[ality] under the Throwaway Evidence of Work), for a special issue of Public Art Dialogue, The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence. In 2018, she published "Negative Space(s)", an article in the volume Monumental Troubles: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today, University of Notre Dame, Indiana. Blas has taught across disciplines in Fine Art in Brussels, Belgium, Lille, France, Bergen, Norway, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, New York and New Jersey. She currently teaches at The New York Academy of Art.
Monday’s image:
In 2015, Blas created a weekly RSS feed "Monday's image" (2015-present) —digital pairings of the front pages of newspapers with artworks from museum collections. Located in the News section of her website, readers can subscribe via email to receive weekly posts, and the entire archive can also be viewed on Instagram: Monday’s image.
LISA BLAS, Porcupine Chronicles, March - July 2020, working at home during the Covid-19 shutdown and quarantine, New York City.
92x58, Manifesto, Written at the onset of the shutdown and quarantine of NYC, March 2020
Palette notes, Watercolor sketchbook, 2013-present
Palette notes: Working in painting, I push the optical and reflective properties of color and light to activate negative space. It is a stage where still lives and fragments of text co-exist on equal terms. To begin, I apply three to four vertical, adjacent lines of transparent and opaque paint in a watercolor sketchbook to determine the palette of a future work. These color keys are informed by my current research and act as a guide for abstract paintings and collages, on canvas, vellum and Arches paper. Each work is made with a high key palette, where thin layers of acrylic and interference paint are applied to the surface of my support. This technique creates an optical shift of color and reflection when viewed from different angles, in the formation of still lives and landscapes. In some of the paintings, I use negative space within the composition to highlight and activate a void or gap. In others, the brushwork and painterly marks attempt to immerse the viewer within the pictorial space.
When Bram met Pieter, Color Key, Metallic ink, acrylic and interference paint on Japanese card stock, 5 x 5 inches, 2020
“Colour is both a fall into nature, which may in turn be a fall from grace or a fall into grace, and against nature, which may result in a corruption of nature or freedom from its corrupting forces. Colour is lapse into decadence and a recovery of innocence, a false addition to a surface and the truth beneath that surface. Colour is disorder and liberty; it is a drug, but a drug that can intoxicate poison or cure. Colour is all of these things, and more besides, but rarely is colour just neutral.”
“The artist inhabits a country in time that is by no means necessarily the history of his own time. He may, as I have said, be thoroughly contemporary with his age and may even, because of this fact, adapt himself to the artistic activities going on around him. With equal consistency he may select examples and models from the past, and create from them a new and complete environment. He may, again, outline a future that simultaneously strikes into the present and the past. ”
“And yet, they are not two different worlds; the fold found in a newspaper, dust or mist, inanity, is a circumstantial fold which must have its own, novel mode of correspondence with the book, the fold of the Event, the unity which gives being, an inclusive multiplicity, a collectivity that has taken on consistency. ”
“Far from letting itself be confined inside the limits of a determined variety, our object rather seems to tend towards maximal openness, overflowing any attempt at classification, reduction or closure. Its boundaries are not only blurred but also kept in perpetual motion.”
“Identifying points of origin is “an intentional act” that “authorizes” the construction of a synthetic account of a temporal sequence of events. To relate two moments means not only recognizing established connections, but also forging such relations between the periods, thereby recuperating aspects of the past visible only in light of the present and revealing aspects of the present visible only in relation to the past.”
“Nature is a petrified magic city.”
“The constellation is an arrangement, and at the same time a play-area of fixed dimensions.”
Reflections
For the last several years I have focused on the fragility of the natural world, caused by human intervention, climate change, and meteorological events. I find sources for my work in art history, newspaper feeds and photographing my environment, whether home or abroad. Such process makes you aware of the repetition of images across time. Constellations of this sort allude to Walter Benjamin’s dialectical image or Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas. This approach is also demonstrated in my weekly blog, "Monday's image" , where I pair a work of art with the front page of the local newspaper. Monday’s image structures the beginning of the week in the studio, a visual meditation on image and language. Within these temporal spaces of juxtaposition, patterns of repetition and incidents of déjà-vu may occur.
Notes on collage: Upon first working in Brussels in early 2010, I began collecting postcard stock from art institutions and paint swatches from hardware stores, as a means to build a palette with found material. I searched for sections of flat color, to cut and re-use. I defined this material as "color refuse". Later, I began to incorporate large sheets of watercolor paper to expand the range of color and size of my material. These sheets are painted in varying tonalities and subtle gradations of pigment via thin washes. The process of cutting the material into fragments and its subsequent (re)composition into images is emblematic of my research endeavors. The leftover cuttings are then re-purposed into still lives that I photograph in my studio and produce as digital C-prints. My supports are canvas, linen, A4 music paper, Opalux vellum and Arches paper. The music paper, in particular, provides a structural system (via the score lines) that I work with and against to construct images or notations in sequence. Out of this process, abstractions and typographical fields emerge that carry the residue of their referent.
Lisa Blas | Brussels studio, 2010 | Ixelles, Belgium
cadence, 1
Acrylic and interference paint on watercolor paper on A4 music paper
297 x 210 millimeters, 2019
Agrarian Pavements, v. 5
Postcard stock and color chips on Canson paper
22 x 30 inches
2012
Agrarian Pavements, v. 9
Postcard stock and color chips on Opalux vellum
22 x 30 inches
2012
The Instability of Nature Morte, v. 52 (reconsidering monument[ality] under the throwaway evidence of work)
Digital C-print, 20 x 14 inches, 2015 - present
Lisa Blas : Studio portrait
Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, New York, NY
2020
Photography: Brad Farwell
Abbreviated CV
2024 | Lisa Blas is a CHamoru / Italian-American painter working between New York, NY and Brussels, Belgium. Recent publications (2020-present) of and about her work can be found in Effects Journal, The Brooklyn Rail and The Drift. Blas produced an artist project for the Spring issue of Public Art Dialogue, published in May 2016, and in 2018, she published an article, “Negative Space(s)”, in the volume, Monumental Troubles: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today | The Snite Museum of Art, University of Notre Dame, Indiana. She is the creator of the weekly RSS, Monday’s image, that pairs the front pages of newspapers with works of art from museum collections, 2015 - present.
Current:
2024 In Quiet Motion | Helm Contemporary, New York, NY.
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE:
2024 Artist Residency / Frans Masereel Centrum
Kasterlee, Belgium / January - February 2024
2022 Artist in residence / West Cork Arts Centre
Skibbereen, Ireland / June - July 2022
RECENT GROUP EXHIBITIONS:
2024
Seeing Is Realizing There Is Always More to See | The Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, 3rd Floor, New York.
Curator: Sharon Kendrick
2023
In the Studio: New York Academy of Art Faculty Exhibition | New York Academy of Art, New York.
Curator: Heidi Elber
2022
Social Photography X |Carriage Trade, New York.
Curator: Peter Scott
2021
Fit to Print | The Print Center, Philadelphia, PA.
An international group exhibition online examining the ways artists use the newspaper in their work.
Curator: Ksenia Nouril / Advisor: Lisa Blas
2020
Social Photography VIII |Carriage Trade, New York.
Curator: Peter Scott
2019
Double Negative | Group exhibition
ChaShaMa, New York, NY.
Curators: Darling Green Curatorial Collective
2018
Under: Erasure | Group exhibition
Pierogi Gallery, New York, NY.
Curators: Raphael + Heather Rubenstein
Flag Me Down, Pick Me Up | Group exhibition
Marquee Projects, Bellport, NY.
Curator: Mark Van Wagner
Spine | Group exhibition
Ortega y Gasset Projects, Brooklyn, NY.
Curators: Elizaveta Meksin, Suzanne McClelland
The Drawing Center | Fall 2018 Benefit Auction Exhibition, New York, NY.
Curators: Claire Gilman, Alison Hyland
Make The Wave | Artist Print Sale to benefit Swing Left
Organizers: Betsy Seder, Kim Schoen
The November 2018 midterms are almost here and a blue wave is not going to happen on its own.
That’s why a group of amazingly talented artists have banded together to offer work for the Make the Wave print sale. We’re supporting Swing Left because they are an organization dedicated to taking back the House— by connecting Americans to their nearest Swing District and providing them with ways to make a difference in the 2018 midterms. Limited Edition prints available online: June 15 - July 15, 2018
Social Photography VI | Carriage Trade, New York, NY.
Opening: July 10, 2018
July 10 - August 26, 2018
Curator: Peter Scott
VALEDICTION / Ejecta Projects, Carlisle, Pennsylvania
Curators: Shannon Egan, Anthony Cervino
2017
Social Photography V / Carriage Trade, New York, NY.
July 11 - August 12, 2017
Curator: Peter Scott
Bellingham National 2017 / Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, Washington.
Curator: Catharina Manchanda.
Americanah
2017 SPRING BREAK / ART FAIR, New York, NY.
Curator: Natasha Becker.
Press release / Press
Emergency Eyewash
Curators: Barry Schwabsky and Carol Szymanski
Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York, NY.
January 12 - February 18, 2017
2016
Foundation Barbin Presents: Redeux (sort of)
Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York, NY.
January 5 - February 5, 2016
Curator: Lucky DeBellevue.
2015
Sensations That Announce The Future
Evergreen Gallery at Evergreen State College, Olympia, Washington
Group exhibition organized in response to Thinking In An Emergency by Elaine Scarry
September 19 - December 2, 2015
Curator: Shaw Osha.
2014
A Particular Kind of Solitude: An exhibition inspired by the writings of Robert Walser. The Elizabeth Street Garden, New York.
A site-specific exhibition engaging over 50 artists, writers, readers, musicians, dancers and filmmakers responding to the observations and writings of Robert Walser.
Curator: Serra Sabuncuoglu.
Audio/Video
2013
Typhoon Haiyan Benefit, The Lodge Gallery, New York.
Group exhibition and artwork donation to benefit NAFCON and support those affected by Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines.
Curators: Rachel Fick, Aaron Johnson, Ryan Schneider, Keith Schweitzer, Jason Patrick Voegele.
Press Release
2013
Are We What We Eat? Sustainability and Art, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milan. Group exhibition of Corcoran College of Art & Design faculty and students (catalogue).
Curators: Franco Marrocco, Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera & Lynn Sures, Corcoran College of Art & Design.
Catalogue
2012
post-/hyper-/anti-/alter @ College Art Association – Annual Conference 2012.
Presented by the Services to Artists Committee.
Commission of video work, Expedition in gold, silver, copper and all other reflections. Group exhibition / projection, Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles, CA.
Curators: Cindy Smith and Ken Gonzales-Day.
Press Release
2011
Summer Soul Sis
Emerging women artists from California: Jaus Gallery, Los Angeles, CA.
Curator: Ichiro Irie, Director, Jaus Gallery.
2011
Culturescape
Group exhibition at Addison Ripley Fine Art, Washington, DC.
Curators: Isabel Manolo, Christopher Addison.
Press
2009
Sondheim Prize 2009/Semi-finalist exhibition | Maryland Institute College of Art, Meyerhoff Gallery, Baltimore, MD.
Curators: Ellen Harvey, Artist, Valerie Cassel Oliver/Curator: Contemporary Arts Museum Houston,
Elisabeth Sussman/Curator of Photography: Whitney Museum of American Art.
2009
Washington Project for the Arts, Art Auction Gala 2009, American University, Katzen Center, Washington, DC.
Curators: Georgia Deal, Margaret Boozer, Mark Alice Durant, Kimberly Gladfelter Graham, Daniel Kunitz, Luis Silva, Matthew Witkovsky.
2008
Picturing Politics 2008: Artists Speak To Power. Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA, 2008.
Curator: Rex Weil (Catalogue).
Catalog
2008
Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2008. University of Mary Washington Galleries, Fredericksburg, VA.
Curator: John Ravenal, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art/VMFA, Richmond, VA, (Catalogue). Painting Award.
Press
RECENT SOLO EXHIBITIONS:
2023
LISA BLAS / Pause (Play), Horizon, 76,4, Brussels, Belgium.
Curators: Michel François, Ekaterina Kaplunova, and Richard Venlet
2017
LISA BLAS / Monday's image, at Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, NY.
Curators: Christian Xatrec, Agustin Schang
2016
LISA BLAS / After lost space(s), at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York, NY.
"Don't Make A Scene" programming: February 7 - March 13, 2016.
2012-13
LISA BLAS / Still Lifes, Sometimes Repeated, at Galerie Rossicontemporary, Brussels, Belgium.
2011
LISA BLAS / Meet Me At the Mason Dixon, Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania: Curator: Shannon Egan (Catalogue).
2011
LISA BLAS / As if pruning a tree, after Matisse, Musée Matisse, Cateau-Cambrésis, France. Exhibition organizer: Amanda Crabtree/Art Connexion, Lille, France.
2011
LISA BLAS / Tourner La Page. Four exhibitions at Gallery Commune, Tourcoing, France.
Curators: Undergraduate/Graduate students of “Pôle/Exposition” - Département Arts Plastiques (Catalogues).
2009
LISA BLAS / Regarding Territories and Bodies, Salve Regina Gallery, Catholic University of America, Washington, DC. Curator: Dr. Lisa Lipinski, Faculty in Art History, Catholic University.
2008
LISA BLAS / Meet Me At The Mason Dixon, Meat Market Gallery, Washington, DC.
Organizer: Fabian Bernal.
RECENT TALKS, INTERVIEWS AND CONFERENCES:
2019
Lisa Blas “Spectacular holes in clouds, spotted”
George Washington University
Smith Hall of Art
801 22nd St. NW / Room: 114
Washington, DC 20052
https://calendar.gwu.edu/%E2%80%9Cspectacular-holes-clouds-spotted%E2%80%9D-visiting-artist-and-scholars-committee-lecture-lisa-blas
2018
Monumental Troubles 2: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today
Midwest Art History Society conference / Indianapolis, IN / Eijeljorg Museum
April 7, 2018 / Panelist
Chair: Erika Doss, University of Notre Dame
2017
Lisa Blas / Watching modern avalanches, while blossoms drift across night.
Visiting Artist talk at KMD, University of Bergen, Norway.
Moderator: Thomas Pihl
2017
Interview with Brainard Carey / September 7, 2017
Yale Radio
2016
Artist talk at Trestle Art Gallery
Brooklyn Art Space, Brooklyn
Moderator: Lauren Bierly
2015
Artist talk at Evergreen College, Olympia Washington, as part of Artist Lecture Series and in conjunction with the group exhibition, Sensations That Announce The Future.
Moderator: Shaw Osha
2015
Skype interview with undergraduate seminar at Lake Forest College, Chicago, Illinois
Moderator: Professor Miguel de Baca
2015
Skype interview with "Art Now" undergraduate class at George Washington University/Corcoran School of Art & Design, Washington, DC
Moderator: Professor Lisa Lipinski.
2013
Artist talk at University of Virginia, Charlottesville, McIntire Department of Art.
Organizers: Sarah Betzer, Howard Singerman.
2013
Artist talk at Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil.
Moderator: Gaudencio Fidelis, Director, Museu de Arte do Rio Grande do Sul.
Press
2013
Artist talk at University of São Paulo, Department of Visual Arts, São Paulo, Brazil.
Moderator: Sonia Salzstein.
2012:
AAANZ conference, Together <> Apart, University of Sydney, Australia. Panelist in Toxic Blooms.
Organizers: Gary Sangster, Merilyn Fairskye, Anne Ferran.
2012
Cultural Studies Association conference, University of California, San Diego, stand-in chair and
panelist in Propaganda, Trauma, and Identity: Artists Respond to War.
Organizer: Karen Shelby, Baruch College, New York.
2012
Artist talk at Otis College of Art & Design, Painting department, Los Angeles.
Organizer: Holly Tempo.
2012
College Art Association conference, production of a video work for the group exhibition
POST-HYPER-ANTI-ALTER at the Bonaventure Hotel, Los Angeles.
2011
Gallery discussion with Miguel de Baca, Assistant Professor Art History, Lake Forest College.
Moderator: Shannon Egan, Director, Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College, Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania.
2011
Slought Foundation, Philadelphia, artist conversation with Thierry de Duve, moderated by Jean-Michel Rabaté, on the occasion of the exhibition Meet Me at the Mason Dixon, Schmucker Art Gallery, Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania.
Audio
2011
L’atelier en question conference (based on the book The Fall of the Studio: Artists at Work,
edited by Wouter Davidts and Kim Paice), l'ESA, Tourcoing, France.
Co-panelists: Wouter Davidts (Professor of Modern and Contemporary Art, Vrije Universiteit
Amsterdam), Devrim Bayar (Curator, Wiels, Brussels), Valérie Boudier (Art Historian, Université
de Lille 3), Stéphane Sauzedde (Director, l'Ecole Supérieure d'Art d'Annecy, France), Thierry de Duve
(Art Historian/Université de Lille 3).
Panel organizers: Nathalie Stefanov and Gilles Froger, Ecole Supérieure d'Art due Nord-Pas de
Calais-Dunkerque-Tourcoing.
2009
PUBLIC/PRIVATE, Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA, 2009.
Curator: Jeffry Cudlin, Former Director, Arlington Arts Center.
Audio discussion with Jeffry Cudlin.
RECENT TEACHING:
Spring 2019
Adjunct Professor / Theory and Practice, The College of New Jersey, Ewing Township, New Jersey.
Fall 2018
Adjunct Professor / Senior Studio: Professional Practice seminar, The College of New Jersey, Ewing Township, New Jersey.
Fall 2017
Visiting Artist / Individual tutorials and group seminar, KMD, University of Norway, Bergen
Group seminar: You are here, after Paul Thek.
Spring 2014
Visiting Artist Studio Critiques, MFA majors, Department of Visual Art, The School of Visual Art, New York.
Fall 2012-Spring 2013
Fine Art Seminar for Junior year BFA majors, Painting: Materials and Methods for Sophomore year BFA majors, Fine Art Core Curriculum for Sophomore year BFA major, Corcoran College of Art & Design, Washington, DC.
Fall 2011-January 2012
Atelier Général, 1 & 2, (equivalent to Foundation and Sophomore year studies in Drawing, Painting and Sculpture), Université de Lille 3, Tourcoing, France.
Spring 2011
Pôle Exposition (Tourner la page), graduate curatorial seminar in Photography, Université de Lille 3, Tourcoing, France.
Spring 2010
Final Critique panelist, Year 3 and 4, Atelier Dessin, La Cambre, Ecole Nationale Supérieure Des Arts Visuels,
Brussels, Belgium.
Organizers: Catherine Warmoes, Céline Gillain.
Spring 2010
Nomadism, Site-specificity and other modes of transit, graduate seminar with l’École Supérieure d’Art Tourcoing & Université de Lille 3.
Organizer: Vèronique Goudinoux.
2004-2009
Senior Core Thesis faculty for Senior year BFA majors, Corcoran College of Art & Design.
2007-2009
Fine Art Core Curriculum for Junior year BFA majors, Corcoran College of Art & Design.
2004-2007
Drawing/Painting faculty, George Washington University, Washington, DC.
EDUCATION:
2001 Claremont Graduate University / M.F.A., Painting, Claremont, CA.
1996 University of Southern California / B.A., Political Science, Los Angeles, CA.