MoMA PS1 - New Pictures of Common Objects

Photograph: Lucas Blalock

Just opened at MoMAPS1, at Long Island City, New York, is a show, New Pictures of Common Objects. This is interesting territory for me, where the signification present in the common place and common objects has some weight and substance.

MoMA PS1 say this about the show. Artists today have a very different relationship to mass consumption and images then artists who first engaged with these topics in the 1960s. Recent technology has created a vast archive of images that is easily accessible by computer, smartphone, and other devices. Technology has also amplified the flexible nature of pictures—early pop culture envisioned throngs of passive consumers while individuals today engage with imagery as active participants. Twenty-first century images are not only distributed from central hubs, but are rapidly circulated and exchanged among peers. The decentralized model has flattened hierarchies, fostering a sense of equivalence and ambiguity in which making, consuming, and sharing are all regarded as creative acts. The five emerging artists in the exhibition engage with images as raw material to create sculptures, videos, photographs, and installations. They recognize the elastic and diffuse nature of images, utilizing pictures to challenge expectations of genre, form, and meaning.
The exhibition features artists Trisha Baga, Lucas Blalock, Josh Kline, Margaret Lee, and Helen Marten.

New Pictures of Common Objects - On view October 21—December 31, 2012

One of the artist's with work in this show is LA based photographer Lucas Blalock.  His pictures of common objects are strangely perverse and take the mundane and the ordinary to an all-together other place.  Blalock's photographic work has been exhibited widely at venues including Ramiken Crucible (New York), Foam Photography Museum (Amsterdam), and Art in General (New York). He has published two books, I Believe You, Liar (2009) and Towards a Warm Math (Hassla, 2011), he is also a regular contributor to Lay Flat.  
Here are some of his photographs, they are well worth a look.