A Grocer’s Orgy is an artist book that presents an alternate history of Lucas Blalock’s photography using new photographs and previously unseen versions of existing images from throughout his entire body of work. With a title drawn from Baudelaire’s writings on dandyism, the book is designed by Blalock to create new formal and thematic associations through the collaging of already densely layered photographs.

Linking together his earliest studio portraits with recent work utilizing overt digital alterations, Blalock builds on his recent approach of embedding additional photographs into the back of a single frame. The artist’s manipulations of images through erasures, cloning, and drawing emphasize what is absent or obliterated in his compositions, often with a poignancy and emotion that is lacking in most digital imagery. The book’s layout further complicates these photographs, with spreads that obscure the ability to determine where an image ends or begins.

Lucas Blalock lives and works in New York. His photographs have been exhibited internationally, including recent solo shows at Galerie Eva Presenhuber (Zurich) and Espace Images (Vevey). Blalock has been included in group exhibitions at institutions such as C/O Berlin (Berlin); Walker Art Center (Minneapolis); Bergen Kunsthall (Bergen); Museum of Modern Art (New York); Hammer Museum (Los Angeles); Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York); and Contemporary Arts Museum Houston (Houston). In 2019, Blalock will be the subject of a solo show at Los Angeles’ Institute of Contemporary Art.

156 pages
7.25 x 9.75 inches
Paperback
161 color images
September 2018
ISBN: 9781732098602

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Managing Editor: Miriam Katzeff