Brooklyn-based photographer Lucas Blalock (b. 1978) uses both traditional and digital techniques to create uncanny and surreal images of ordinary things. An Enormous Oar, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition, presents over twenty works produced in the last five years focused on still-lifes, domestic scenes, and portraits.
Lucas Blalock was born in 1978 in Ashville, NC, and lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. His most recent solo exhibition Making Memeries took place at Espace Images in Vevey, Switzerland (2017). Recent group exhibitions include Optical Illusions: Contemporary Still Life, C/O Berlin, Berlin (2017); Good Dreams, Bad Dreams: American Mythologies, Aïshti Foundation, Beirut, Lebanon (2016); Ordinary Pictures, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2016); Image Support, Bergen Kunsthall, Bergen, Norway (2016); Ocean of Images: New Photography 2015, The Museum of Modern Art, New York (2015); Perfect Likeness: Photography and Composition, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles (2015); Reconstructions: Recent Photographs and Video from the Met Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (2015); and Rites of Spring, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston, Houston (2014). He has made a number of artist books including his latest, A Grocer’s Orgy (Primary Information, 2018); Towards a Warm Math (Hassla, 2011); Windows Mirrors Tabletops (Morel, 2013); Inside the White Cub (Peradam, 2014), among others. Blalock is also active as a writer and has published in a number of artist’s books and periodicals including Aperture, Foam, Mousse, and Objectiv. He received an MFA from UCLA, a BA from Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY, and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, Skowhegan, ME.
Virtual ICA LA: Lucas Blalock
360° exhibition documentation of Lucas Blalock: An Enormous Oar
Lucas Blalock in conversation with Jamillah James, Curator, ICA LA
February 17, 2019
Lucas Blalock’s Digital Toolkit,“ 2015. From Art21’s New York Close Up digital film series, courtesy Art21, art21.org
Lucas Blalock Gets A Little Help From His Friends,” 2012. From Art21’s New York Close Up digital film series, courtesy Art21, art21.org

Lucas Blalock’s 99¢ Store Still Lifes,“ 2011. From Art21’s New York Close Up digital film series, courtesy Art21, art21.org

Installation view of Lucas Blalock: An Enormous Oar Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, February 10–July 21, 2019 Photo: Elon Schoenholz/ICA LA