Art

Now Open: May 1 - May 30, 2021 | Lisa Blas : Windows on Latimer | The Print Center, Philadelphia

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Now Open: May 1 - May 30, 2021 | Lisa Blas : Windows on Latimer | The Print Center, Philadelphia

Lisa Blas, Dawn Studio (palettes on the run), 2021. Installation street view. Windows on Latimer, The Print Center, Philadelphia.

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

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

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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

Opening: October 1, 2018 / The Drawing Center, New York / 2018 Benefit Auction

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Dear friends,

I have contributed a work to The Drawing Center for their 2018 Benefit Auction. Please join us Monday night, October 1, 2018, in support of one of New York’s most groundbreaking museums and their future programming! View the list of participating artists and works here: CATALOG

YOU ARE INVITED
The Drawing Center's
2018 BENEFIT AUCTION
Date: Monday, October 1, 2018
Time: 6:30-8:00PM
Location: The Drawing Center | 35 Wooster Street

The Drawing Center, a museum in Manhattan's SoHo district, explores the medium of drawing as primary, dynamic, and relevant to contemporary culture, the future of art, and creative thought. Its activities, which are both multidisciplinary and broadly historical, include exhibitions; Open Sessions, a curated artist program encouraging community and collaboration; the Drawing Papers publication series; and education and public programs. It was founded in 1977 by curator Martha Beck (1938–2014).

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

April 7, 2018: Monumental Troubles: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today

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Greetings from Indianapolis!

I am giving a paper at the Midwest Art History Society annual conference this week on the two-day panel, "Monumental Troubles: Rethinking What Monuments Mean Today", chaired by art historian, Erika Doss.

Please join us at the Indianapolis Museum of Art and Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art on Friday, April 6, 8:30 - 10:30 a.m., and Saturday, April 7, 9:00 a.m. - 12:30 p.m., for two days of presentations, concluding with a discussion by all panelists. Conference schedule.

Lisa Blas
Engagements, monumental or otherwise, Detail.
Plinths and horseshoes cast from shredded documents (military, financial, personal), Celluclay, plaster, clove oil, glue, RIT dye, ceramic powder, acrylic paint and gold dust. 2006 - 2008

 

Lisa Blas, Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, Indiana, April 7, 2018.

Opening March 24, 2018: Valediction / Ejecta Projects, Carlisle, Pennsylvania

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I am pleased to be participating in the inaugural group exhibition "Valediction" at Ejecta Projects, curated by artist Anthony Cervino and art historian Shannon Egan, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. The gallery was founded after a book project the couple produced entitled "Ejecta", addressing their collaboration as artists, professors, writers, parents, and participants in the academic workplace and community life of Carlisle and Gettysburg, Pennsylvania.

In a beautifully written letter last January, Shannon and Anthony asked to include my work in an exhibition that would coincide with the opening of the gallery. Their venture seemed quite timely and a necessary antidote to these times of polarization and widespread discontent. Communities are in great need of new venues that arise from the spirit of collaboration and dialogue, where artists and exhibitions can be introduced to the public in a welcoming space for visitors, neighbors, colleagues and friends.

Please join us in support of this celebratory occasion of "Valediction" at Ejecta Projects from March 24 - May 5, 2018.

See you in Carlisle!

Ejecta Projects
136 West High Street
Carlisle, PA 17013
443.904.3649

 

LISA BLAS, Horizons, v. 2, Acrylic and interference color on watercolor paper on Opalux vellum, 19.5 x 25.5 inches, 2018
(Note: There are two sheets of Opalux, A over B, presented as one version of display)
Framed: 22 x 28 x 1.75 inches

November 10, 2017: Artist talk & tutorials | University of Bergen, Norway

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This week I am in Bergen, Norway to give individual and group tutorials with students in Fine Art at the University of Bergen.

I will give a public talk on Friday, November 10, 2017, at 10:00 am in the auditorium, Knut Knaus, Department of Fine Art. Please join us for a discussion on my work, "Monday's image" and the genesis of both.

KMD Møllendalsveien 61, 5009 Bergen, Norway. Department of Fine Art.
Tel: 47-55-58-73-00 | Email: post@kmd.uib.no

September 24, 2017: Handwriting The Constitution @ New York Public Library

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On Sunday, September 24th, I will be conducting a handwriting session from 12 - 4 pm in the Rose Room of the New York Public Library. Please join friends, neighbors and colleagues in this collective activity of reading and handwriting the Constitution of the United States. To learn more about this initiative begun by artist Morgan O'Hara, please visit the website.

New York Public Library: Bryant Park
476 Fifth Avenue (42nd St. and Fifth Ave.), New York, NY, 10018

Related Press: NY Times

Time eclipsed, Charlottesville: August 18, 2017

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Meet me at the Mason Dixon/On artistic practice, complex geographies of disunion and reconciliation.
Thierry de Duve, Lisa Blas in conversation / Slought Foundation / Philadelphia 2011
Download

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/

Opening June 10, 2017: "Drawing Practice" Whatcom Museum, Bellingham

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Opening today! A national survey on contemporary drawing practices.

Drawing Practice/Bellingham National 2017
June 11 - September 10, 2017 / Whatcom Museum, Bellingham, WA

Juried by Catharina Manchanda (Jon and Mary Shirley Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seattle Art Museum)

Juror tour of the exhibition: Sunday, June 11, 2017, 1:00 pm
Whatcom Museum, Lightcatcher Building, 250 Flora Street, Bellingham, WA: 360.778.8930

Please join us!

Lisa Blas, Four Corners, Acrylic, watercolor pencil, interference color, gesso and watercolor paper on Arches paper, 102 x 102 inches, 2017

Opening March 23, 2017: Lisa Blas "Monday's image" / Emily Harvey Foundation, New York

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Lisa Blas / "Monday's image" at Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, on March 23, 2017. Many thanks to all who attended this one night special event!

Lisa Blas
Monday's Image
March 23, 2017
1:00 - 9:00pm
Opening March 23 - 7:00pm

Monday's image is a weekly web-based project begun in 2015 by Lisa Blas in the News section of her website, presented as a video work for a special one night-event at the EHF.

LISA BLAS, "So what? We must act", Digital C-print, 2017

LISA BLAS, Monday's image, installation view, Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, 2017