Blaise Larmee

JOHN KNIGHT at Portikus
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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JOHN KNIGHT at Portikus
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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RUDOLF STINGERL at Palazzo Grassi
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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RUDOLF STINGERL at Palazzo Grassi
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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RUDOLF STINGERL at Palazzo Grassi
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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JOSH SMITH at STANDARD (OSLO)
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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OLIVER LARIC at Tanya Leighton
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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OLIVER LARIC at Tanya Leighton
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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LIAM GILLICK at Casey Kaplan
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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DENA YAGO, BEN SCHUMACHER, DARREN BADER, ASHER PENN, DEBO EILERS, VALERIE KEANE, DOMINIC NURRE, ALISA BAREMBOYM, JARED MADERE, JASON LEE, TOREY THORNTON, ANDREI KOSCHMIEDER, PETER DEMOS, RYAN FOERSTER, SEBASTIAN BLACK JEFFREY JOYAL, & BRADLEY KRONZ at Ten Ten/ JASON ALEXANDER
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

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GARDAR EIDE EINARSSON and OSCAR TUAZON at STANDARD (OSLO)
illustration by BLAISE LARMEE

all images courtesy the artist

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American cartoonist, critic, and publisher, BLAISE LARMEE creates works which are visually diverse, but conceptually similar, in that they almost always examine the interplay of reality, fiction, history, and memory.

By combining documentation photographs of art exhibitions with drawings of cute girls who are actually trolling these images, BLAISE LARMEE creates another version of the ‘image in circulation’, throwing into question the dissolution of traditional boundaries between object, action and documentations.

The image of the internet as “fun,” “young,” “cool,” “sarcastic,” “irreverent,” etc, is a character written by old media and performed by the youth. Old media demands fetishization of the internet, which young artists are willing to manufacture. Ironically reified images of the Internet are imbued with an ironic currency which mimics old media currency. This virtual currency is acknowledged and promoted by old media because it a) refers to the real currency old media possesses, b) instantly appears in old media’s virtual coffers, c) translates into real currency, d) to the unsophisticated observer it appears to be real currency, e) attributes normativity to old media and de-emphasizes its own virtual nature. Examples: a Tumblr image with 103 notes, with the words “Facebook,” “WikiLeaks,” “Generation Y,” and “Justin Bieber” in Comic Sans in pink and blue with drop shadow and lens flare; a Dr. Phil show devoted to “the dangers of the internet;” a news article referring to Anonymous as a “group;” the presentation of Google Image Search, Yahoo! Answers, and 4chan as “readymades” or “found art.” – BLAISE LARMEE for The Comics Journal, March 2011

In 2009 BLAISE LARMEE (b.1985) received a Xeric grant to publish Young Lions and was subsequently nominated for an Ignatz Award for Promising New Talent. In 2010 he founded the publishing company Gaze Books. A year after, LARMEE began serializing the webcomic 2001 on his personal website. Addtionally his criticism has appeared in The Comics Journal and Co-mix, a comics criticism blog he started in 2009 with JASON OVERBY.

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