Have you ever wanted a Photoshop tutorial from an artist? Filmed in his Greenpoint studio, artist Lucas Blalock creates uncanny pictures using simple tools in Photoshop. Blalock demonstrates how he tweaks analog photographs—all taken with a large format camera—by digitally erasing, masking, cloning, and drawing on scans of images. Approaching each picture as a game of enhancing visual relationships, Blalock preserves the clumsy quality of his alterations in a kind of slapstick full of pathos and whimsy. Collaborating with the filmmakers, Blalock’s studio process is staged through a series of reenactments, sleights of hand, and animations that overtake the video itself. Featuring the works "Boob bag," "A physical feeling," "The Smoker," "two lettuces," "untitled," from "WINDOWS MIRRORS TABLETOPS" (all 2014); "Blue Bottles," "The Guitar Player," "Kathleen," "Picture for Mark I," "PLANTS," "Shoe," "three, three, three" (all 2013); "Accurate Walking Style I," "Both Chairs in CW's Living Room," "caned, chair, arm, hole," "Coffee Pot," "Gabriela as a Bunny," "Picture for Jennifer (record player)," "Untitled (lozenges)," "Untitled" (all 2012); "The Mallard," "Straw Picture," "Tenting" (all 2011); and "The Contender" (2009).

Lucas Blalock (b. 1978, Asheville, North Carolina, USA) lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. Learn more about the artist at:
http://www.art21.org/newyorkcloseup/artists/lucas-blalock/

CREDITS | ART21 "New York Close Up" Created & Produced by: Wesley Miller & Nick Ravich. Producer & Editor: RAVA Films. Cinematography: Rafael Salazar & Ava Wiland. Production Assistant: Jeewon Shantal Kim. Design & Graphics: Open. Animation: Lucas Blalock & Rafael Salazar. Artwork: Lucas Blalock, Buster Keaton, and René Magritte. Music: Bensound, Evgeny Grinko & Ben McElroy. Thanks: Corinne Blalock, Tessa DiPietro, Galerie Rodolphe Janssen, Griffin Editions, Morel Books, Peradam, Ramiken Crucible, Kathleen Ryan, Gabriela Salazar, Self Publish Be Happy, & Chris Wiley. An ART21 Workshop Production. © ART21, Inc. 2015. All rights reserved.

ART21 "New York Close Up" is supported, in part, by The Lambent Foundation; the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts; and by individual contributors.