Lisa Blas

Reception: Thursday, March 23rd at 7pm

Monday’s Image is a weekly web-based project that I began in 2015 in the News section of my website, presented as a video work for a special one-night event.

Every Monday, I take a screen shot of the front page of the local newspaper and pair it with an artwork from a museum collection. The choice of the newspaper depends on my location (i.e., www.nytimes.com, www.lemonde.fr, www.latimes.com.) The layout of images and headlines on the front page guides my selection of the artwork and prompts me to look for either similarities or differences. Drawing upon national and international art collections, I cast a wide net in my search, often focusing on lesser-known works. Once the matching of newspaper image and artwork is finalized, I publish the entry in News with the artwork’s details, links to museum institutions, and various hashtags, including the day’s weather, that identify the artwork and the graphic layout of the front page. Viewers are invited to further share the links or post a comment.

A live research project, Monday’s image functions as a running feed that can be viewed either directly on my site, via the social media channels I subscribe to (Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, etc.), or the RSS feed link. The artworks and the news events function in and out of their time in this adjacent space, where viewers can draw their own comparisons.

Monday’s image intersects with my interest in repetition and déjà-vu. Its precursors are agitprop, the Daily Worker, John Heartfield’s photomontages for the AIZ, Corita Kent’s activism through the use of language, color, and abstraction, and Warhol’s interventions with tabloid newspapers, as seen in the Warhol: Headlines exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., in 2011-12.

Monday’s image runs parallel with my other activities. Working in painting, photography, and collage, I produce images and typographical fields that address the relationship between the fragility of nature and civil unrest.

Lisa Blas, 2017

Lisa Blas is a visual artist based in New York, working in painting, collage, photography, and installation. Her most recent work in collage (2013 – present) addresses the fragility of the environment, civil unrest, and its reoccurrence across time. She has exhibited nationally and internationally, while living and working in Los Angeles, Washington DC, and Brussels, during the years of 2001 - 2012. Blas recently produced an artist project for the 2016 issue of Public Art Dialogue: The Dilemma of Public Art’s Permanence, edited by Erika Doss. Recent solo exhibitions are Lisa Blas / After lost space(s), 2016, at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York; Lisa Blas / Still Lifes, Sometimes Repeated, 2012-13, at Rossicontemporary, Brussels; Lisa Blas / As if pruning a tree, after Matisse, 2011, at Musée Matisse, Cateau-Cambrésis, France; Lisa Blas / Meet Me at the Mason Dixon, 2011, at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania. Recent group exhibitions are Americanah, 2017, Spring Break Art Fair, New York; Emergency Eyewash, 2017, Tanja Grunert Gallery, New York; Foundation Barbin Presents: Redeux (Sort of), 2016, at Kai Matsumiya Gallery, New York; Sensations That Announce The Future, 2015, at Evergreen College Gallery, Olympia, Washington; and A Particular Kind of Solitude: An exhibition inspired by the writings of Robert Walser, 2014, at the Elizabeth Street Garden, New York. Blas holds a B.A. (1996) in Political Science from the University of Southern California and an M.F.A. (2001) in Painting, from Claremont Graduate University.