BLAST

Both Dries Van Noten and BLAST by Jim Mangan are implicitly connected by a wholly unique poetic motion and a journey to the unimaginable through material and landscape. This work by the artist is part of a collaboration with his long time friend and world renowned rally car driver Ken Block. The two men traveled to the desert of southern Utah in a desolate yet breathtaking 75-mile stretch of land between Capital Reef and the Goblin Valley. Mangan shot these dusty, earthy, yet other worldly photographs entirely on 35 mm film. 

Mangan looks at the transforming relationships between humans and the earth, a paradox of friction and harmony. His lifelong history with the American west landscape grounds his work and his belief in the beauty and essential nature of our interaction. Mangan’s goal was to “put the landscape in motion” as imagined architecture created by car and driver. He focuses on the rugged yet whimsical relationship between the rally car and the simple yet beautiful chaos created in dirt and dust.

JIM MANGAN

Jim Mangan is an American photographer and filmmaker primarily known for his unique landscapes of the American West. Mangan takes an ecological and sociological approach to his work, observing his subjects and their interactions with their environment. His work seeks to forge a sense of connectivity with the earth and of disparate communities. For nearly a quarter century he lived in Colorado and Utah to study water rights and drought habitats, to his current career in photography and filmmaking. Mangan is a 2023 Light Work Artist-in-Resident.