The still life is a centuries old genre and yet, it is in a constant state of change, expressing and questioning our relation to the objects around us. And, in self-isolation, our focus on those objects has become more intense than ever. In this session of ICP Talks: Lessons and Insights in Photography, join us for a series of online lectures presented by four innovative still-life imagemakers—Scheltens & Abbenes, Kija Lucas, and Lucas Blaock—as they share their work, approach, and thoughts on capturing the still life.
For the first session, we hear from Dutch duo Scheltens & Abbenes on their hybrid practice between art and commerce. Equally comfortable producing still life images on commission for manufacturers and design companies, Scheltens & Abbenes are making inventive exhibitions and books. In this talk Liesbeth Abbenes and Maurice Scheltens will guide you through their working process.
Join San Francisco–based photographer Kija Lucas for the second session, a lecture on capturing Still Life as Collection. Lucas will share her extensive body of work from chronicling her grandmother’s experience with Alzheimer’s to creating scans from natural materials, discuss cataloging objects, and explore ideas of loss, heritage, home, and inheritance.
In the concluding lecture, photographer Lucas Blalock will present on the Still Life and the Digital Darkroom. Blalock shoots on film but reworks his images digitally, producing unsettling hybrids, somewhere between photography, painting, drawing. and sculpture. In this presentation Blalock presents his work and discusses how the still life as genre is mutating in a post-medium age of image making.
All lectures are scheduled to take place from 1 to 2 PM EST. Tickets are $35 for general audience and $30 for ICP members and give access to all three lectures.
Schedule
The Still Life: Between Art and Commerce with Scheltens & Abbenes
Wednesday, June 24, 1–2 PM EST
Still Life as Collection with Kija Lucas
Thursday, June 25, 1–2 PM EST
The Still Life and the Digital Darkroom with Lucas Blalock
Friday, June 26, 1–2 PM EST
How to Join the Virtual Program
This program will take place on Zoom. Those who register to attend will receive an email with a link to join the lecture through a computer or mobile device prior to the program start time. We recommend you add program@icp.org to your email contacts to ensure delivery of the Zoom link.
If you do not receive the link by 11 AM on the day of each lecture, please email [email protected]. No refunds will be given.
We recommend participants download the Zoom app on their device prior to the program. Learn how to download the latest version of Zoom to your computer or mobile device.
For more questions about the virtual lecture, please contact: [email protected].
About the Series
ICP Talks: Lessons and Insights in Photography is a new online education program series presented by the International Center of Photography. Each three-part session invites leading photographers and educators to present work and ideas that excite and instruct on navigating all facets of the photographic community. Through lectures, conversations, and workshops, ICP Talks allows ICP's worldwide following to learn together, stay connected, and get inspired.
Speakers
Scheltens and Abbenes are the sum total of a still-life photographer and the creative craftsmanship of an artist. Technical perfection added to individual handicraft, strong pictorial clarity in addition to tailor-made settings. They experiment with converting spatial dimensions into flat surfaces and explore intensively photography’s potential for creating illusion. Essential to their work is the laboratory process in the studio where they construct their settings with an attitude of conceptualization and solution-led thinking, regardless of whether they are editing or tackling commissioned or independent artistic work. Instead of presenting objects as plain sellable products, they often manipulate and utilize them as building blocks for new compositions. The autonomous artistic quality of the photograph always has to prevail.
Kija Lucas is an artist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She uses photography to explore ideas of home, heritage, and inheritance. She is interested in how ideas are passed down and seemingly inconsequential moments create changes that last generations.
Lucas has been an artist-in-residence at Montalvo Center for the Arts, Grin City Collective, and the Wassaic Artist Residency. She is a member of 3.9 Art Collective and the Curatorial Council at Southern Exposure. Lucas received her BFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and her MFA from Mills College.
Lucas Blalock uses a certain stratum of our material culture and the nearly universal legibility of photography as means to explore (and suggest) relationships to our world. Between these two readily knowable quantities Blalock plays a lot of different music and has used this open set of potentials as the basis of his work.
Over the last ten years, Blalock has exhibited and published widely. In 2019 he had his first solo museum exhibition in the United States, An Enormous Oar at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and his first in Europe, . . . Or or, at the Museum Kurhaus in Kleve, Germany. Other recent exhibitions include: New Visions: The Henie Onstad Triennial for Photography and New Media, Henie Onstad Art Center, Oslo, Norway (2020) and The 2019 Whitney Biennial, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY (2019). Blalock is originally from Asheville, North Carolina, holds a BA from Bard College, attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, and received his MFA from UCLA.
David Campany is ICP’s Managing Director of Programs, and a writer, editor, and curator.
