Daneil Gordon
Daniel Gordon is an artist and photographer who constructs worlds through the apportion of imagery. In these vivid bizarre forms Gordon has taken images from the web that would normally have little or no artistic purpose and revitalised them into his work. There is often a central theme to do with the figure although this becomes incredibility deconstructed in the process. Gordon aims to reinterpret a world of images that have become lost online by providing them a three dimensional body in real life. Although there is digital manipulation in terms of the images the he his printing out, but what we see in his final image is a world that have been constructed entirely with paper. This has then been shot on a large format camera and acts as a document preserving every single detail of the fantastical, colour filled construction.
In Gordon’s work ‘one extreme meets another extreme, (we are) not quite sure what your looking at’. There is a feeling of uncertainty around the nature of the imagery, the eye becomes tricked by the flattening of the images through its documentation, and we are able to explore the dense striking patterns and marvel at the placement of colour in the frame.
I find this work very indicative of my own series Google Images Still Life. There are elements of still life broadly emerging from Gordon’s practice, yet the objects that he is taking photos of are not really there. Although there is depth to the image, there is no depth to the individual objects that he is shooting. They are a lie, these fragile pieces of paper depict an existence of vase or of a flower, but are merely a construct that is there to fool the eye. I love the fact that Gordon has had no contact with the physicality of these objects, instead interacts with them on an online setting rescuing them from their trapped monotonous representation and repurposing them into manifestations that seek out the visceral and sublime.
Lucas Blalock
Lucas Blalock's photographs express the uncanny and the surreal through a combination of digital and analogue effects. His images are first shot on large format before being transformed through photoshop. His crude appropriation of the tools that photoshop provides allows him to interrupt the truth of his images. Cutting becomes a major part of the work, Blalock erases parts of images in order to revel images below that almost fit what we see on the surface. The breakdown of the photographic truth becomes incredibly important. We a greeted with an image that becomes very fragile, its elements feel on the edge of falling apart in the careful deconstruction that Blalock undertakes. The starting point of these images is often the still life photograph, created through a physical negative, an object so closely associated with truthfulness. Blalock is creating interference into an analogue technology that should feel very clean. This interference comes to life in various ways and through the misuse of photoshop’s tools.
Blalock is creating a image that strives to break apart the anxieties that photography faces in a digital age. Blalock understand that there are ‘too many images’ in existence but his work seeks to disrupt any pre-engaged expectations we might have about the representation of an image. The ambiguity of image allows these images to thrive. Adding or subtracting visual information in an outwardly crude manner is is a process of disruption. The aesthetic of photograph that Blalock creates are being pushed and pulled to become benign, surreal and in its essence humorous.