Lucas Blalock:
Donkeys Crossing the Desert
Lucas Blalock, Donkeys Crossing the Desert, 2019. Inkjet print on vinyl and app, 17 × 29 ft. (5.2 × 8.8 m). Image courtesy the artist; Galerie Eva Presenhuber, NY and Zurich; and Rodolphe Janssen, Brussels
Lucas Blalock’s billboard project Donkeys Crossing the Desert presents a composite image of three donkeys, each seemingly from a different reality: one is photographically convincing, another appears as a kind of deflated object, the third has been produced using Photoshop’s 3-D tools, yielding what the artist describes as a kind of “zombie” donkey. For Blalock, the three donkeys taken together offer a technological or historical narrative that, while humorous, also serves as an allegory of contemporary life.
The billboard can also be viewed head-on through an app designed by the artist, which introduces a layer of augmented reality (AR) into the work. Conceptually exploring ways that real space and virtual space have become increasingly intertwined, Blalock uses AR to expand and extend photographic space.
Link to App Store (iOS)
Link to Google Play Store (Android)
