NYAB Event - Julie Blackmon "Line-Up"

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At Robert Mann Gallery
Media: Photography

The oldest of nine children and now a mother of three, Blackmon binds her past to her present with a portrait of domesticity depicting a compound of anxiety, ambivalence, and amusement.

Blackmon underscores the chaos inherent in motherhood with a style that acts as both documentation and caricature. These semi-autobiographical anecdotes detail the difficult balance between fantasy and reality, portraying the humorous nature of the latter. Utilizing her own children, siblings, nieces, and nephews, the artist's subjects, rich in character and animation, dominate their settings with playful behavior infused with impending disaster.

Translucent in their referral to Dutch Renaissance master Jan Steen's paintings, Blackmon's photographs modernize the raucous, familial scenes of the proverbial "Jan Steen household," not only conceptually, but also with an adept technical handle. A mix of the fortuitous and the unabashedly orchestrated, the artist carefully engineers her compositions which are often obstructed by the natural inclinations of her unruly subjects. Each photograph is the product of a series of shots filled with edits and retakes, later digitally compiled into one single photograph, presenting the viewer with a dynamic glimpse into an almost impossibly bold and comical domestic landscape loaded with minute details and subplots.

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