Sam Falls and Lucas Blalock are debuting a new collaborative “dialog” through the Humble Arts’ online solo series. Clone tools and hazy surfaces decorate most images, with the cognitive effect being akin to looking into a perpetual mirror tilted sideways as you scroll through the images. There’s no doubt a push towards the ground glass into Photoshop to create similarly stylized works these days. However, as I find most artists working like this to be creating work that is unremarkable and vapid, these guys are making smart pieces, maintaining a “mentally rushed” sensibility while clearly being well-considered and surprisingly inventive. Very interesting work, take a look.
Lucas Blalock | Rough Study for a Double Portrait
Sam Falls | Chopped and Broken
Comments 2
Hi,
I don’t necessarily disagree that Falls’ and Blalock’s work is not “unremarkable and vapid” but now that you mention it I’m not really sure why it isn’t. I enjoy looking at it but if you were forced to say why it is remarkable and stimulating what would you say?
Thanks for your response.
Posted 12 Mar 2010 at 4:29 am ¶Hi Zach, Thanks for commenting, and sorry for the delay in response. I touched on what I liked specifically about the work in the post – “Clone tools and hazy surfaces decorate most images, with the cognitive effect being akin to looking into a perpetual mirror tilted sideways as you scroll through the images.”
I tend to like work that is about perception, both figurative and literal. Each image generally has a subject, and the post-production effects are subtle or overly played out, which completely changes the narrative that would otherwise be there. This opens up a world of interpretation. I’m not going to go through each image and talk about what is interesting about it specifically, but these are the reasons I find this work interesting. I think a lot of work like this is generally vapid because it’s one-linery and made for the internet, a medium defined by its impermanence.
Hope that helps clarify!
Posted 20 Mar 2010 at 6:13 pm ¶Post a Comment