Bruno David presents Corruption, an exhibition by San Francisco-based artist Lisa K. Blatt. This is the artist’s seventh solo exhibition with the gallery. Blatt states “Landscapes attract me with their light, beauty, simplicity. I stay for their darkness, complexity, and secrets.”
The Corruption series focuses on a body of works that are dizzyingly beautiful and deceptive as systems secretly (at first) go haywire. What first appears beautiful and functional may not be when one digs beneath the surface; whether it’s a camera system, a language system, a computer system, a food system, an ecosystem, or a democratic system.
These landscape image files are corrupted. Each file initially appears normal, then when one clicks on the image to open it, it appears corrupted. None were manipulated. There is no way to predict which will be corrupted or how they will appear. The works explore how landscape may be defined by what is not visible, what is memory, or what is trace. Referencing historical landscape photographers, light and space artists, and pop culture (even including different colored landscapes in video games), these works consider perceptually how we see and how site and sight are mediated by culture, media, and politics.
Lisa K. Blatt lives and works in San Francisco and often camps and shoots in remote extreme landscapes (Antarctica, Chile, Iceland) as she examines perception (both how and what we see) and social and political issues. Blatt’s work has been exhibited on six continents including at the Shanghai Biennial, China; the Havana Biennial, Cuba; Museo de Tigre, Buenos Aires, Argentina; Reykjavik Museum of Photography, Iceland; Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Contemporary Art Platform and Freud Museum, London; Kunstverein Haus, Germany; Mills College Art Museum, Oakland; and Asian Art Museum, San Francisco, CA; and Phillips Collection.
Blatt has been awarded many grants and residencies including from: the National Science Foundation (Antarctica), NASA and Carnegie Mellon, the Kitteredge Foundation, the San Francisco Foundation, The Center for Land Use Interpretation, The Center for Cultural Innovation Creative Capacity Fund Grant, and the Djerassi Foundation.
