User:Catherineccushman/Stephen Blaise

Stephen Blaise

Stephen Blaise is a New York based artist who works with new media and video installations to explore human’s most basic desires. Blaise’s work examines with a post-structuralist perspective, the idea that boundaries are permeable and that reality has a formal structure that cannot be definitively known.

The artist’s palette consists of social constructs, interpersonal relationships, inflection points, man-made objects and symbols. Another theme the artist consistently returns to is the concept of ‘Mono no aware’, the Japanese term used to describe impermanence and the pervasive sense of empathy for the ephemeral nature of things and their passing.

In 2001, Stephen Blaise lectured for MoMA on transcending representation in his series ‘Non-Objective Others’. In 2003, Blaise was invited to exhibit his ‘Non-Objective Others’ at the TED Conference in Monterey, California.

Stephen Blaise is widely recognized for being the co-Founder and Editor of FLY DVD, which launched in December 2005. This project became the world’s first ‘Motion Media’ Magazine, filling a missing presence in the world of media and culture. In 2008 this platform evolved to become the online gallery FLY16x9, a digital space created as a means for an authentic exchange of ideas and collaborations between artists. As a pioneer of the fashion narrative in cinema, Blaise used the open frame of the fashion editorial to explore an expanse of atypical ideas, such as causality, identity, limitation, sublimation, perception, dissolution and loss.

In 2008, the artist was given a solo exhibition at the FOAM Museum Amsterdam, which consisted of a video installation with corresponding stills. In 2008, he also collaborated with the artist Liam Gillick, a chosen finalist for the Vincent Van Gogh Award]. Their video ‘Everything Good Goes’, exhibited at the [[Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. In 2009, Blaise’s large-scale video projections filled the atrium walls of the Museum of Modern Art, New York. That same year, he collaborated with the artist Mathieu Briand, creating a film and performance piece as part of Performa 2009. In January of 2010, three of the artist’s films were included as part of a group show titled ‘Utopia’ at the Deutsche Guggenheim Berlin. In 2010, Blaise’s work was screened at the newly renovated SVA Theater in New York, as well as at the Centre Pompidou, Paris. Other credits include Festival d’Hyeres Villa Noailles, France, the Noovo Festival in Santiago de Compostela Spain, an exhibition hosted by the city of Milan and the 9th Biennial in Lyon, France.

Inherent wonder, insatiable curiosity and an absurdist perspective drive Blaise’s singular vision. What ultimately manifests in the artist’s work is an austere contradiction of forms, where subtleties, underlying emotions and fleeting micro-expressions are highly significant and determine meaning.