Robert Mann Gallery is pleased to present Up Around the Bend, Julie Blackmon’s sixth solo exhibition with the gallery. Blackmon’s photographs delicately toe the line between wit and wry. Her examination of the suburban landscape includes the discovery of new technology, childhood exploration and imaginative play through the four seasons in a world largely devoid of adults — all culminating in satiric tableaus. Although often innocent at first glance, her photographs include a menacing element just barely beneath the surface. A shark in the water, an abandoned knife near a toddler, or a child’s dead-man’s float. Blackmon explains that “The kids and crazy scenes are often just metaphors for a certain psychological state” (The Guardian).

Several recent works by Blackmon have drawn inspiration from 19th century oil paintings by George Caleb Bingham. Blackmon’s Flatboat is a reinvention of Bingham’s painting, The Jolly Flatboatmen, which “depicts a group of men who, after accomplishing the hard work of rowing their flatboat upstream and loading it with cargo, are now relaxing and enjoying music and dancing” (The Metropolitan Museum of Art). In this contemporary reimagination, Blackmon recontextualizes the work, bringing the composition to life in current times through her well thought out details and beautifully placed characters. The work exudes mischievousness as the idle children who sit unwatched replace the men who have rowed upstream. Paddleboard, inspired by Bingham’s Fur Traders Descending the Missouri, depicts calm on the brink of chaos. Both works created in the artist's home state of Missouri, in Blackmon’s tableau, she replaces the male rower with a pregnant mother, a lounging woman with the pile of luggage, and a black cat with the small boy. However, the most notable difference is the replacement of driftwood with a shark fin, circling the travelers and adding a sense of foreboding and danger to an already curious narrative.

This exhibition opens in conjunction with the release of Blackmon’s third monograph, Midwest Materials (Radius Books 2022). In this monograph, “Julie Blackmon has created a new body of work that sparkles with the wit, dark humor, and irony for which the artist has gained such renown" (Radius Books).

Julie Blackmon lives and works in Springfield, Missouri. The artistʼs work is found in numerous museums and public collections including the George Eastman House; Nelson Atkins Museum of Art; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Portland Museum of Art; Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City; the Portland Art Museum; and the Musée Français de la Photographie in Bièvres, France. She was named American Photo's "Emerging Photographer of 2008" and one of PDN's "30 New and Emerging Photographers" in 2007, and has been the recipient of various awards including first prize from The Santa Fe Center for Photography in the Project Competition in 2006. Blackmon has previously published two monographs, both of which sold out, Domestic Vacations (Radius Books, 2008) and Homegrown (Radius Books co-published with Robert Mann Gallery, 2014).

Please contact the gallery to arrange a viewing, or view the exhibition online, from September 14, 2022 - November 4, 2022. For additional information and press materials, please contact the gallery by email (mail@robertmann.com). 

COLLECTOR DAILY

Julie Blackmon: Up Around the Bend @Robert Mann

By Loring Knoblauch

JTF (just the facts): A total of 8 color photographs, framed in white and matted, and hung against white walls in the single room gallery space. All of the works are archival pigment prints, made in 2021 or 2022. The prints are available in three sizes – roughly 26×32, 36×47, and 45×60 inches – and come in editions of 7 or 10. (Installation shots below.)

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THE NEW YORK TIMES

Springfield, Missouri, Is Their Muse

By Steven Kurutz

Julie Blackmon grew up in Springfield, Mo., a city of 165,000 people in the southern part of the state, and went to college there. She got married in Springfield and raised three children there. For much of that time, her home city struck her as “this generic town with a generic name, in the middle of the country, in the middle of nowhere,” she said. And then, about 20 years ago, she picked up a camera.

“All of a sudden I’m driving by Starbucks, and the guy that served me coffee every day is outside smoking a cigarette,” said Ms. Blackmon, whose third book of photographs, “Midwest Materials,” was published this month. “I remember thinking, ‘He’s got the most beautiful cheekbones when he inhales.’ He looked right out of a Balthus painting.”

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THE EYE OF PHOTOGRAPHY

Robert Mann Gallery : Julie Blackmon : Midwest Materials

For her third monograph, Midwest Materials, Julie Blackmon has created a new body of work that sparkles with the wit, dark humor, and irony for which the artist has gained such renown. Finding insight and inspiration in the seeming monotony of her “generic American hometown,” Blackmon constructs a captivating, fictitious world that is both playful and menacing. “I think of myself as a visual artist working in the medium of photography,” Blackmon notes, “and my assignment is to chart the fever dreams of American life.” Midwest Materials follows on the sold out titles Domestic Vacations (Radius Books, 2008) and Homegrown (Radius Books, 2014).

Click here to read more.