The L.A. Times blog Culture Monster has just given 20×200 artist William Crump a dazzling review for his exhibition “Lonesome Ghosts” at the LittleBird Gallery in Los Angeles. Art critic Leah Ollman notes that Crump’s work “manages [...] fantastic incongruity[...], mixing pale graphite renderings with bold veins of opaque gouache. The push-pull that results is not just formal (the pencil lines faint and receding, the vibrant colors coming forward) but temporal, as if a collision of past and present visual idioms.” She also indicates a kind of ‘vague anachronism,’ “like the so-called antiquarian avant-garde photographers who favor obsolete techniques but whose images often contain contemporary references.” Mainly, however, Crump’s Los Angeles debut “reads as a thoughtful meditation on the discrepancies between external and internal journeys, the real and the ideal.”

The piece shown above, “The Mountain of Tomorrow’s Sunrise,” was featured in the gallery’s show X Marks the Art back in December and there are still prints available for purchase on 20×200. If you’re in or around L.A., stop by the LittleBird Gallery to see Crump’s show on view until April 8, 2009.

(LittleBird Gallery, 3195 Glendale Blvd., L.A., (323) 662-1092. Closed Sundays and Mondays.)

The New York Photo Festival is fast approaching, beginning May 13th through May 17th, and the schedule of events was just released. Some exciting news is that there will be very special appearances from two of us here at Jen Bekman Projects. Throughout the Festival you will have an opportunity to attend a portfolio review with a whole slew of talented individuals but most importantly, with Sara Distin, Associate Director of Jen Bekman Projects| 20×200 and Hey, Hot Shot! as well as with me, Associate Director here at the Gallery.

The event will be hosted at powerHouse Arena in D.U.M.B.O and requires registration. In doing so, you will have your choice of five 20-minute review sessions. Choose your reviewers (the other three besides us of course) from the list that has just been posted on the website.

Sara will be reviewing on Saturday, May 16th and Sunday, May 17th from 2 thru 5 PM. You can find me on Friday, May 15th and Sunday, May 17th from 10.30 AM thru 1.30 PM.

Once again, you need to register for this event and registration is now open for the festival, so head the website and sign up!

So many upcoming events! Let’s dive right in!

San Francisco 20×200 Collectors Confab

Monday, April 6th | 6:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Chronicle Books — 680 Second Street (between Brannan + Townsend)
San Francisco, CA

If you live in San Francisco, watch out! Our fearless leader, Ms. Jen Bekman, and the team 20×200 will be heading out west for a 20×200 Collectors Confab. Come meet and mingling with 20×200 collectors and artists and our friends at Chronicle Books. We hope to hear about any recent additions to your collection—always great fodder for cocktail party conversation, no?

Space is limited, so please RSVP! Let us know you’ll be there via Facebook or Upcoming or just send a good old-fashioned email to rsvp@20×200.com.

But Wait, There Is More!

Ignite SF

If you can’t make it to that but still want to see Jen, she’s giving a talk at IgniteSF on Wednesday, April 1. Here’s what she has to say about that:

If you had five minutes on stage what would you say? What if you only got 20 slides and they rotated automatically after 15 seconds? Around the world, geeks have been putting together Ignite nights to show their answers. Join us for another Ignite San Francisco, the official kick-off event for Web 2.0 Expo.

My talk will be a reprise of my IgniteNYC performance. If you missed it there, now’s your chance to see it here!

IgniteSF is free and open to the public

Mezzanine of the Moscone Center, downtown SF, 747 Howard Street.
Doors open at 7:30 with priority access given to Web 2.0 Expo Conference Pass and Expo Plus Pass attendees.
At 8:15, pending venue capacity, access will be made available to Expo Only Pass Attendees & the general public.

Corralling the Crowdsourced Community

If you’re attending this year’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, Jen will be doing a panel on Friday, April 3 called Corralling the Crowdsourced Community. Along with Matt Stinchcomb of Etsy, Inc. and Jeffrey Kalmikoff of Threadless, Jen will be discussing crowdsourcing, curation, creativity, and constraints. For more information, visit the panel’s page on the Web 2.0 website.

See you in April!

P.S. Here’s Judy Garland singing “San Francisco”...!

Interior 3 by Sarah McKenzie | 24” x 24” | Acrylic on Canvas

If you will be in Connecticut Thursday evening, or are up for a fun trip on the Metro North to New Haven, Eeva-Liisa Pelkonen will be giving a lecture on, “Architecture, Modernity, and Geopolitics.” Immediately following the talk will be a reception for the exhibition, Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes. Included in the show is the painting Site by gallery slash 20×200 superstar Sarah McKenzie. Sarah’s solo show is up at Jen Bekman Gallery through April, 4 2009.

About Ms. Pelkonen:

Ms. Pelkonen’s scholarly work focuses on the language of modern architecture viewed from various national and historical perspectives. Ms. Pelkonen is the author of Achtung Architektur! Image and Phantasm in Contemporary Austrian Architecture (MIT Press, 1996) and co-editor of Saarinen: Shaping the Future (Yale University Press, 2006) and Architecture + Art : New Visions, New Strategies (Aalto Academy, 2007). Her next book, Alvar Aalto: The Geopolitics of Architecture, will be published by Yale University Press in 2008. Ms. Pelkonen’s scholarly work has been supported by the Getty Foundation, the Graham Foundation, the Finnish Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Austrian Ministry of Science and Research. Prior to coming to Yale, Ms. Pelkonen worked in a number of European firms, most notably with Reima and Raili Pietilä, Architects, in Helsinki, Finland, and Volker Giencke, Architects, in Graz, Austria. She is also a design associate with Turner Brooks Architects, where she has collaborated on such projects as the Gilder Boathouse for Yale and the Pelkonen/Brooks residence.

Lecture and Reception
Thursday, March 26, 2009. 6:30 p.m.
Hastings Hall
Yale School of Architecture
180 York Street
New Haven, CT

Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes is on view through May 10, 2009.

It is true that navigating the burgeoning Lower East Side art scene can be a challenging event. Sometimes you need a little help from your friends, and so I wanted to remind you that Jen Bekman Projects kindly created a Google map to assist you eager explorers in finding what you want. Click here to plan your attack.

Untitled (from the Inheritence Series) by Christine Callahan

Jen Bekman Gallery artist Christine Callahan will be open her MFA thesis exhibition, 58 Empress Pines Drive (or how I escaped) this Saturday, March 21, 2009 from 6 to 9 p.m.

Location: 
ICP-Bard MFA studios  24-20 Jackson Ave. 3rd floor.  
Long Island City
Take the E or V train to 23rd/Ely Ave
or #7 train to 45th Road/Courthouse Square

Need a Map?
Click Here

Sarah McKenzie, Building Code talk with Eva Hagberg from jenbekman on Vimeo.

A couple of Saturday’s back Eva Hagberg of Edificial led an artist talk with Sarah McKenzie here at the gallery in conversation with the work that is currently up for her show Building Code. In case you were unable to make it down for this sparkling event, we thought to provide you with a little video of the morning. We all had so much fun and afterwards headed over to a jam-packed day at PULSE. Thanks so much to everyone who was in attendance and helped us start the morning off right, hope to see you soon!

On the heels of her solo show at Pulse New York, Jen Bekman Gallery artist Beth Dow is featured in the April, 2009 Black & White Magazine out on news stands now.  

 The eight page spread has images from three of Beth’s series; In The Garden, Fieldwork, and her work from her upcoming solo exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery, Ruins.

Beth Dow’s solo exhibition of new work, Ruins, opens at Jen Bekman Gallery on April 9th, 2009.  

Portrait of Jen Bekman by Stefan Ruiz

The one and only Ms. Jen Bekman will be speaking tomorrow night, Wednesday, March 11, as part of the Dot Dot Dot Lecture Series sponsored by SVA. Jen will join Nicholas Felton, Rebekah Hodgson, and Jason Kottke for a talk entitled, The Curators. Befitting.

Regrettably, I’m told the lecture is sold out, but you never know…

The Curators | 6.30pm | White Rabbit |145 E. Houston

In other Ms. Jen related news—Are you heading to SXSW? If you’re lucky enough, don’t miss Curating the Crowd-Sourced World, Jen’s panel discussion with Paddy Johnson, Nion McEvoy, Dustin Hostetler, and Gina Trapani. The distinguished panelists will wrangle with the topic of “good filters” and “who’s best-suited to determine what’s best, curators or the crowd?”.

SXSW
Austin Convention Center | Saturday March 14 |11:30am – 12:30pm

Site by Sarah McKenzie | 48” x 72” | Oil on Canvas

Sarah McKenzie is part of the traveling exhibition Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes that opened last week at Yale’s A+A Gallery.  This is the third stop for the exhibition that originated from The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis.  Site, McKenzie’s painting included in the show is the work that  first brought Jen to Sarah’s work a little over a year ago, and was featured on 20×200 back in May.

Jen said about the work in the  edition newsletter:

Site got to be in the museum for a reason – Sarah wields a paint paintbrush deftly, giving us a fresh view of the banality of suburbia. I shift through different impressions each time I look at it. At first glance it seemed photorealistic, in part because it reminds me of the ground well-trod by many of my favorite fine art photographers. But look closely and it’s clearly not quite real -there is a flatness in both her paint and perspective that has the primitive feeling of folk art. Take that flatness in and allow yourself to focus on the lines, angles and grids of her work; suddenly you’re fully immersed in geometric abstraction, a la the 20th century Modernists. The familiarity of the subject matter allows me to travel through these genres with ease, unencumbered by that uptight “Do I really get it?” feeling. Of course I get it! I’ve been driving past it my entire life, as have many of you, I’d imagine.

Worlds Away is on view at the Yale A+A Gallery through May 10, 2009.

Sarah’s solo show at Jen Bekman Gallery, Building Code is on view through April 4, 2009.

Building Blocks, by Sarah McKenzie

Yes, you read that correctly! Please join us for mimosas, pastries and sparkling conversation @ Jen Bekman Gallery this Saturday, March 7, 2009, from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. — before the fairs!

Painter Sarah McKenzie and Eva Hagberg, editor of the architecture and design blog Edificial, will discuss McKenzie’s practice, influences, and current exhibition, Building Code, on view through April 4, 2009.

Read Eva’s recent interview with Sarah here.

After the talk, we’ll send you off with a complimentary PULSE day pass. Head over to Booth I-12 at PULSE — opening at noon on Saturday — to see Beth Dow’s platinum palladium prints from her series, Fieldwork.

Artist Talk with Sarah McKenzie + Eva Hagberg, Saturday, March 7, 2009, 10 a.m. to 12 p.m at:

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York, NY 10012
Between Elizabeth + Bowery

Space and complimentary PULSE day passes are limited, please RSVP to: info@jenbekman.com

Untitled, by Kelly Shimoda (Spring ‘07 Hot Shot)

Jen Bekman Projects, Inc. is now accepting entries for Hey, Hot Shot! 2009.

What is Hey, Hot Shot!?
Hey, Hot Shot! offers unrivaled opportunities for emerging photographers to have their work promoted online, reviewed by top-notch panelists and exhibited in our New York gallery. Now entering its fifth year, the international competition has been lauded by curators, critics, educators and journalists.

We are also pleased to announce that photographer and former Creative Director of Colors magazine, Stefan Ruiz, has joined ranks with our seasoned panelists, Jen Bekman, Christine Collins, Dana Faconti, Caterina Fake, Stephen Frailey, Raul Gutierrez, Darius Himes, Jenni Holder, Julia Leach, Nion McEvoy, Lesley A. Martin and Kent Rogowski.

Stefan is just one of many exceptional additions + surprises we have in store. As Hey, Hot Shot! is becoming, increasingly, well, competitive, we’re working hard to ensure that it continues to bring photographers — at all stages of their careers — the exposure, recognition, and support they deserve. Stay tuned for more details!

five hot shots x NYC exhibition + (20×200) = incomparable exposure
Our panel will select five Hot Shots to exhibit their work in a two-week show @ Jen Bekman Gallery. In conjunction with the exhibition, 20×200 editions of each photographer’s work are released online.

cold hard cash
Each winning photographer will be awarded a $500 honorarium.

ultras go solo
One photographer of the five Hot Shots will be selected selected as an Ultra. Each Ultra is represented by Jen Bekman Gallery and slated for a solo exhibition.

in it to win it
As always, we’ll select contenders to feature daily on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog throughout the entry period. Contenders and honorable mentions will also be considered for 20×200, Jen Bekman Projects’ online endeavor which offers limited edition prints at affordable prices.

So what are you waiting for? Get your work out there: Apply Now!

Not quite ready to apply? Join our mailing list to keep up to date.

We only accept submissions online, via this website.

The deadline for entries is Friday, May 1st, 2009 @ 8pm (EDT).

Hot Shots will be announced on Thursday, May 28th, 2009.

There is a $60 handling fee for your entry.
Submissions are open to everyone, from anywhere in the world!
The competition is open.

Questions?

Check out our informative and frequently updated FAQ, follow us on Twitter, or find us on Facebook.

Apply Now!

New York Flowers, by Gregory Krum

Jen Bekman Gallery will be exhibiting work from Beth Dow, Ian Baguskas, Mara Bodis Wollner, Christian Chaize, Gregory Krum,  Holly Lynton, Carrie Marill,  Brad Moore,  Hosang Park,  Jason Polan,  Kent Rogowski, and Carlo Van de Roer at the PULSE Contemporary Art Fair this Thursday, March 5 – Sunday, March 8, 2009.

Look for us @ Booth I-12

PULSE New York
Pier 40
353 West Street @ West Houston

Danziger Projects (James Desk), 2009, by Joseph O. Holmes

Jen Bekman Gallery artist, Joseph O. Holmes, was warmly featured on James Danziger’s blog, The Year in Pictures.  Joseph photographed Danziger’s desk for his series, Workspace, an “ongoing attempt to examine the quasi-private spaces people carve out of their public work lives”.  The photo Joe made of James’ desk is particularly poignant as he will be leaving that workspace tomorrow for a new location.  So, while the above photograph is laden with memories of the past five years, it is a pointer towards a hopeful (workspace) future.

View more images from the Workspace series, then check out Joseph’s 20×200 edition prints:

Prospect Park

amnh#30

amnh#10

amnh#62

Want more? Visit Joseph’s gallery images ,  site, and his daily photos blog.