People’s Park #38 by Kurt Tong

We are pleased to announce that Kurt Tong, one of the two 2009 Hey, Hot Shot! Ultras has been added to the Jen Bekman Gallery site.

We have included a selection of images from Kurt’s22 Steps to the Sea, Farewell in Labrador, and People’s Parkseries. Kurt has a large body of work and we encourage you to explore both the gallery site and Kurt’s personal site to see full bodies of work and other series.

A Bit More About Kurt:
Tong has worked and traveled extensively across Europe, the Americas and Asia. In 1999, Kurt co-founded Prema Vasam, a charitable home for disabled and disadvantaged children in Chennai, South India before becoming a full-time photographer in 2003.

He received a Masters in documentary photography from London College of Communications in 2006. He has since been chosen as a winner in the first Lens Culture – Rhubarb Photo Book Award, the Blurb Photography Book Now competition and the prestigious Jerwood Photography Award.

Kurt’s photographs have been widely exhibited around the world at venues including: Jen Bekman Gallery in New York, Impressions Gallery in Bradford, The Royal Academy in London, La Casa Encendida in Madrid, Abbaye de Neumunster in Luxembourg and the CPA Exhibition in Chengdu, China. This summer and fall, several of Kurt’s projects will be on view in the UK and France.

Farewell in Labrador #19 by Kurt Tong

22 Steps to the Sea #26 by Kurt Tong

To see more work from Kurt Tong check out his site. and make sure to get on the gallery mailing list to make sure you hear more about Kurt and his solo exhibition coming to the gallery in the next year.

Speaking of Hey, Hot Shot! the 2010 deadline for submissions is this Sunday, August 22nd at 8 p.m. (EDT). Note that the deadline for Alec Soth’s Curator’s Choice Award is slightly earlier, Friday, August 20th at Midnight (EDT).

The prizes this round, other than getting your work seen by our amazing panel: $5K, gallery representation, a solo exhibition at JBG, a $1K Blurb credit to each Hot Shot, and a chance for editions on 20×200.

For more info head over to heyhotshot.com or just click here to apply now!

Untitled, Inlet by Chris Ballantyne

In Land Use Survey we highlight artists who are inspired by the landscapes around them; as a little departure, it’s quite interesting to see how the same group of photographers and painters depicts bodies of water. As these artists switch their gazes from fields and mountains to pools and ponds, it’s a small ‘Water Use Survey’ if you will. Hopefully these images provide a bit of a visual escape from the summer heat!

The Lake Project 12 by David Maisel

Untitled from the Haenyo series by Ian Baguskas

Untitled from California Vernacular series by Liz Kuball

Bathers in Wave Pool, Orlando, FL by Alex MacLean

These wet works are by a just a handful of the twenty-eight artists on view at the gallery, up until August 15th. Come in and see how they fare on land.

Parturient, by Holly Lynton

Just a short (LIRR accessible!) jaunt from Manhattan, in East Islip, NY is the Islip Art Museum. An ambitious and enormous new group show, curated by Jason Paradis and titled All in the Family opened there on June 23rd, and features amazing work by JBG artist Holly Lynton, among many others.

Taken from the All in the Family press release:

What exactly is a family? Simply stated it is a group of related members. However, as most of us will attest to, there is nothing simple with family. We have all seen and experienced it from various vantage points. Who are those members? What is their relation? What is this group? The answers seemed too expansive to be determined by one point of view. So, the Islip Art Museum decided to look in the form of an Open Call and turning the point of view to artists, we waited to see what was submitted.

Seventy-six artists were selected from an overwhelming response to this overwhelming question. From the group, similar concepts emerged from distinct sources, and the show was hung accordingly.

If you’re free on Sunday July 25th, try to make it out for the show’s (belated) reception. If you have a prior engagement, no worries! The show runs until September 5th.

All in the Family
The Islip Art Museum
On view: June 23 to September 5, 2010
Reception: July 25
50 Irish Lane, East Islip, NY 11730
Museum Hours: Wednesday through Saturday: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday: Noon to 4:00 p.m.

John Seed, a Huffington Post art journalist, recently interviewed one of our artists, Sarah McKenzie, whose painting Aerial 62 is currently on view in our Land Use Survey exhibition.

Below are some highlights of Sarah’s work discussed in the article:

Aerial 62, 2002, oil on canvas, 48” x 48” by Sarah McKenzie, currently on view in Land Use Survey at Jen Bekman Gallery, New York

Her strongest images flirted with abstractness. In Aerial 62 newly paved roads and darkly shaded McMansions are crisp design elements that give the canvas graphic punch. White fabrics fences held tense by the wind provide strong, interesting linear effects. Consistently working from photographic sources – some of them gently tweaked in Photoshop – McKenzie demonstrated formalist inclinations and a knack for alternating between visual clarity and painterliness.

Interior 5 (Wall), 2009, oil on canvas, 30” x 30” by Sarah McKenzie

Seam, 2008, oil and acrylic on canvas, 72” x 72” by Sarah McKenzie

Seam, for example, is quite literally looking at the seam of a building, where interior and exterior meet. The canvas offers a sort of inventory of the various materials, surfaces, and textures that comprise that structure.

Interior 6 (Coil), 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30” by Sarah McKenzie

Interior 6 (Coil) is a highly formal, even minimal, piece. There is a metaphor at work: I am thinking of the bundle of wiring as an abstract expressionist “gesture” against the blank white canvas/drywall. Of course, even if the viewer gets that reference, and that’s a real “if,” it’s still a formal concept. Other paintings deal with weightier issues.

Exterior 1 (Plastic Trees), 2009, oil and acrylic on canvas, 30” x 30” by Sarah McKenzie

Site, 2007, oil on canvas, 48” x 72” by Sarah McKenzie

Read the full Huffington Post article and interview, “Sarah McKenzie: A Nation of Builders, and of Artists,” here.

Argent 1 by Christian Chaize

Argent 7 by Christian Chaize

Union 3 by Christian Chaize

Christian Chaize has been hard at work (albeit on the beach) since his solo show, Praia Piquinia exhibited at JBG from May 21-July 11, 2009. Stay tuned to his artist page for additional images from this series, coming soon!

Here are some pics of the set up for Kate’s draw-a-thon going on all day TODAY at the gallery. Kate brought a massive amount of cool things to share with those who stop by like zines, buttons, shopping bags, and even a table runner. I will be posting pics all day but you should make it in to the gallery to draw with us from 12 – 6:30 and then stick around for Kate’s artist talk at 6:30.

Reid’s Farm by Derek Henderson

We’ve quickly reached the one month mark of Hey, Hot Shot!, and I decided to delve back into the archives of gallery shows past with a special look at 2008 First Edition Hot Shot Derek Henderson. A 40” x 50” print of Reid’s Farm by Henderson used to hang in the office and I was mesmerized by it. I relished the times when I could be alone in the office and take as long as I wanted to gaze at the image in silence.

There is a certain type of work I gravitate towards, and I tend to shy away from anything involving people (just a personal thing). However, there is something magical about this photo to me. At first, the subject matter seems straightforward—and Derek’s entire Mercy Mercer project is indeed a documentation of the Waikato River in New Zealand and its people. But where so often documentary work easily hands you the story, Derek has crafted a project that both tells of a community while simultaneously creating images that allow for the viewer to create their own narrative. While recently flipping through the pages of Derek’s gorgeous book of this series, on each page, I created a new story of my own making.

Even with my aforementioned aversion to people-focused work, I find the portraits magnetic. In Reid’s Farm, contemporary folk are surrounded by contemporary objects like nylon fold out chairs, yet the work takes me more to the Hudson River Valley painters than to anything contemporary.

On this note, I am pleased to share that Derek has forthcoming solo show at the gallery. You can visit his site or find his book here for a sneak preview at what you may see on our walls.

Also, don’t forget: Hey, Hot Shot! is open RIGHT NOW! Since its inception in 2005, Hey, Hot Shot!, the premier international photography competition, has provided one hundred and twenty-nine photographers from all over the world with unrivaled exposure, support and recognition. This year marks the 5th anniversary of the competition and the 7th anniversary of Jen Bekman Gallery.

In addition to the hallmark awards of past competitions, this year we are offering a $5,000 honorarium and five Curator’s Choice Awards. The deadline for submissions is August 22, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT) and there will be only one season of competition in 2010, so apply now!

Kate Bingaman-Burt is probably feeling a strong breeze on her face these days—and it’s likely from the whirlwind of deserved attention spinning ‘round the release of her forthcoming book from Princeton Architectural Press, Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today?. Full of witty annotated illustrations documenting years of daily purchases, Kate comes forward not-so-guiltily revealing that yes, she too splurges on an occasional new dress. Through her drawings, and her long-running blog of the same name, Kate—without reprimand—asks us to think about how much we really consume and how many dollars we spend. While most of us would probably avoid long afternoons staring at our credit card debt, Kate takes on the challenge of first looking, then drawing, forcing herself to confront any buyers’ remorse she might feel head-on.

Unsurprisingly, a few little publications have picked up on Kate’s collection of consumables, and offered their own thoughts and inquiries on this delightful new book:

Untitled by Kate Bingaman-Burt

If you’re a weekly reader of the New York Times and happened to pick up the annual T-style magazine on design this weekend, you would have seen the fuschia glow of an illustrated faux Eames Lounger illustrated by Kate. Andy Port writes, “Read from beginning to end, ‘‘Obsessive Consumption’’ reveals a happy (if somewhat guilty) grasshopper who likes a good bargain as much as she likes a good burrito. Bingaman-Burt engages in the same name-brand culture as the rest of us, but in her life, at least, it’s art.”

Fast Company features a slideshow of illustrations from the book, starting off with a marigold drawing of her MBNA credit card statement. In the accompanying words by Alissa Walker, Kate is quoted as saying, “This credit card was opened while I was in graduate school,”... “I just recently paid off a computer that had been out of commission for about two years.” Ouch. That is a statement not to be forgotten.

Over on the Herman Miller blog, Cerentha Harris ventures into Kate’s workspace to learn more about how she decorates her office, the desk accessory she can’t do without, and her creative inspirations.

CH: What or who inspires you?

KBB: Big permission-givers to me have been: David Byrne, Tibor Kalman, M. Sasek, Saul Steinburg, Ray and Charles Eames, Joseph Beuys, Walls of Sound (Galaxie 500, Deerhunter – music that fills up and overwhelms and how to translate that into artwork), Fluxus and Zine Culture to name a few. Also: yard sales, thrift stores, objects that look like a designer didn’t design them and teaching my rad students.

Read the full interview over on the HM Blog.

You can buy your own copy of Kate’s book directly from her website, which comes signed and with a random daily drawing for a limited period of time. Stay tuned for more news to consume as the book hits the shelves, and make sure you’re signed up for the 20×200 mailing list: there’s more from Kate headed your way.

What I love in the artworld:

• Artists that make profound, engaging and hard work that has the capacity to connect us to the time and place in which we live as well as to one another.


• Those that are able to make an art in and of itself about how they live to make their work; i.e. making it really and truly accessible, favoring real solutions to artistic problems (such as vehicle by which to most honestly display and show work) versus gimmickry.


• Creators that are truly contagiously enthusiastic (grateful, even!) about what it is they do and the forum they get to do it in.


• Art makers that possess an innate fluency in talking about their work and the trajectory of art as a whole in addition to managing to fashion new and innovative ways to connect their art to new audiences and to create a venue for people to have the experience of art in surprising and unaffected ways.

Untitled by Zoe Strauss

Artist-We-Love Zoe Strauss is and continues to do and be all of the above, and raging force of awesomeness that she is, we can’t say enough good things about her. What we can do, however, is give you the skinny on what she’s doing right now so that you can see some of this genius goodness for yourself. Check it:

In anticipation of Strauss’s 10th Annual I-95 Show (more on that in a second), she is preparing a couple of fundraising events that any enterprising collector of contemporary American photography should seriously consider supporting.  The first is a Polaroid event tomorrow, Saturday March 27th, in Philadelphia. For $25 dollars, you can get your portrait taken by Zoe in front of one of these four hopelessly amazing backdrops. The one of the lights at Philly Stadium is my favorite:

There are only 50 portrait appointments available, so if you’re interested act fast.  Here are the details as per Ms. Strauss:

Come get a polaroid taken by me.
25 dollars per polaroid

50 polaroids are available and you must rsvp to insure getting a photo.

Reserve a photo by emailing me at info (at) zoestrauss (dot) com…

put Polaroid in the subject line

and

tell me your name
and the time slot you’ll be coming
1pm-2pm
2pm-3pm
3pm-4pm

that’s it! Then just get over to the studio!

25 dollars per polaroid
cash only

March 27th
1 to 4 PM

At PAP headquarters

838 Cantrell St.
Philadelphia, PA
19148

The second fundraiser you can do sitting from your chair where you’re reading now. Strauss is offering limited-edition photographs of the 1-95 project from each year running for $250 a piece.
Untitled Countdown Dated Edition Photo page.

Finally, if you don’t yet know about Zoe’s epic I-95 project, you are in for that rare example of applied ingenuity and raw talent that is hoped for in any artistic endeavor.  In short, Strauss has been making images of denizens and place in her hometown of Philadelphia, in worthy succession to a street photography lineage echoing Robert Frank, Garry Winogrand  and even William Eggleston, for more than 10 years, and annually holding a public art installation of these images on the concrete supporting slabs in the same underpass of I-95 every first Sunday in May.  Of the project, she has said:

I’m very proud to be an American, while simultaneously I’m really very devastated by our history and our actions.  How to reconcile these two things is very interesting to me.

The story is less about Philadelphia, a specific place, and more about a kind of all-encompassing epic that’s about everyplace.

The show is a 10-year long project; it won’t be so much speaking about the current moment as it will be about talking about the entire decade…At 4pm the show is done, and that means if people want to take the photographs they can.  It’s not a commodity in terms of “I’m putting these up, and then I’m going to take them down”—as if there is some worth for that.  The worth is the moment in which they’re up.  That 3 hour time period in which it’s all up and together.

Searching for a bit more context?  Need a reason to journey to an interstate underpass in Philadelphia in the spring?  Watch this mini-documentary about the project:

This will be the very last year that this public installation will be put up by Zoe Strauss, so mark your calendars now for this last chance at a truly unique American art event:

I-95.10

Sunday, May 2th, 2010
On view: 1:00 – 4:00 p.m.
Under I-95 at Front St. and Mifflin St.

Untitled, 2006 by Nina Berman

TIME Magazine has named Jen Bekman Gallery artist Nina Berman, alongside Lesley Vance and Kate Gilmore, as one of three artists to watch at this year’s 2010 Whitney Biennial. Twenty of Nina’s photographs from her series Marine Wedding are on display at the Biennial.

About the work, Richard Lacayo writes:

It’s the real world you see in Nina Berman’s tender but unflinching photographs of Ty Ziegel, a former Marine sergeant so badly disfigured by a suicide-bomb attack in Iraq that back home small children stare at him, even after 50 reconstructive surgeries. It would be obscene to aestheticize his situation, and Berman doesn’t aim to. What she does is present it forthrightly, with compassion but without pathos — bravely, which is how he presents himself. We have to read a lot into Ziegel because his face sometimes seems to have a limited range of expression. Gently but firmly, Berman directs you to see the man behind the mask. Do these pictures belong in an art museum? Of course they do, because as long as one of the things art does is use images to teach, this is art.

The 2010 Whitney Biennial runs through May 30th in New York and, as TIME Magazine says, Berman’s work is “not to be missed.”

Smoke Signals, 2007 by Clare Grill

Oh, the weather outside is frightful—slush!—but in here it’s so delightful. Thanks in part to our trusty heater, but mostly because of the gorgeous paintings of Clare Grill, whose solo-exhibition What You’re Told closes this Saturday. If the painting above doesn’t warm you up, I guarantee that Clare’s artist statement will.

Clare writes:

I didn’t dare eat candy during Lent because the saints were watching. Our old house was haunted – our dad said so. We imagined a wolf roamed our neighborhood because it was fun to be scared. I thought our family was ideal. I believed in Santa until I was 13. I clung tightly to the things I was taught, my heavy cloaks of security. Like most, I’ve unraveled them slowly and steadily, being careful not to rip out all the seams through the years.

These paintings, however, aren’t just run-of-the-mill nostalgia. “Ms. Grill’s expressionistic portraits can remind you at times of the work of Elizabeth Peyton, who made it big painting acquaintances at art-world parties. But Ms. Grill is actually a better painter, suggesting she will make a success of whatever subject she chooses,” writes Benjamin Genocchio for The New York Times. Especially when seen up close and in person, Clare’s intuitive technique, “makes you notice the paint as much as the pictures.”

While the snow shows no signs of stopping, we really hope that you’ll slog over the the gallery and check out these wonderful paintings before the show closes on Saturday!

The Overachievers, 2009 by Clare Grill (also available as a limited-edition print on 20×200)

Close Our Eyes and Go to Bed, 2008 by Clare Grill

If you’re not in New York at all, make sure to have a look at the show’s installation shots on Flickr and peek inside her studio, courtesy of MoMA/P.S.1.

A photograph by Jen Bekman Gallery artist Nina Berman is featured in the Wall Street Journal today as part of an article titled “The Whitney Biennial Lightens Up”. Kelly Crow writes, “The country’s pre-eminent survey of new American art has a reputation for focusing on angry or anxious young things. But the latest edition, opening Feb. 25 at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, aims to be something else: fun.”

About Nina’s work Kelly writes:

The biennial doesn’t abandon politics altogether, but Mr. Bonami says he went looking for art that reflects the American psyche about war without being “bombastic.” New York photographer Nina Berman is showing a series about the postwar daily life of former Marine Sgt. Ty Ziegel, who was severely disfigured in a car bomb in Iraq but returned home and married his fiancée, Renee Kline.”

You can read the full article, which features a slideshow as well as profiles of Charles Ray and Aurel Schmidt, online or in today’s print edition. More information about The Whitney Biennial: 2010 is available at the Whitney’s website.

Jason Polan, one our most endearing and prolific artists, is collaborating with Robin Cameron and the entire city of New York, in The Assembled Picture Library of New York City at the Esopus Foundation, tonight, February 16, 2010 through March 18, 2010.

From the press release:

The Esopus Foundation will host a collaborative exhibition.
Visitors will be invited to come in during gallery hours
Monday, Tuesday & Thursday from 12-6pm

The Assembled Picture Library of New York City will provide free and open access to a set of images. The collection will be initiated by the personal archive of Robin Cameron and Jason Polan. Visitors are encouraged to submit images to build upon the collection. A copy machine and workspace will be open for use to make new artwork from the available materials. Within this collection is unorganized manuscripts, vintage advertisements of strange products, rare prints, photographs of points of interest, modest drawings and more. With this project, the artists hope to create a collaborative and creative relationship with the general public, and also to enable a sense of community around artists’ processes.

The Esopus Foundation, LTD
64 WEST THIRD STREET, #210
NEW YORK, NEW YORK 10012
PHONE: (212) 473-0919

The exhibition will provide access to and use of hundreds of drawings and materials and ephemera from the collections of Polan and Cameron. Anyone is free to participate, and the gallery is open to view, use and peruse Monday, Tuesday and Thursday from 12-5 throughout the duration of the show. You are also invited to submit your own images and ephemera to the source collection, and these collaborative artworks made by the public will be on display on the Esopus Gallery walls through March 18, 2010. Jason Polan and Robin Cameron will be on hand throughout the duration of the show to work with the visiting public-artists and to engage in dialogue with them about the project.

From the NYAB:

With this project, the artists hope to create a collaborative and creative relationship with the general public—an important component of both Cameron and Polan’s previous work, as well as an essential aspect of the Esopus Foundation’s mission. The artists are also interested in engendering a sense of community around the production of self-published books, zines, and editions. Along those lines, Polan and Cameron will create a book featuring visitors’ artworks, The Assembled Picture Library of New York Book, that will be available at the closing reception on March 18.

If you’re one for installation, collage, public and community art works, or just merely curious what all this stuff looks like, drop by during gallery hours and consider making a piece of art with other artist’s materials! It starts today, and Jason will be there to assist in your art-making.

More information can be found at http://aplny.tumblr.com/.

Ty With Gun by Nina Berman from Marine Wedding

Jen Bekman Gallery artist Nina Berman spoke with Mike Melia of PBS’ Art Beat to discuss her work, particularly the series Marine Wedding, which will be exhibited at the upcoming 2010 Whitney Biennial. In the article, Associate Curator of the Biennial Gary Carrion-Murayari says of Berman’s work:

You come away with a real emotional connection to the individual she is depicting. Anybody could take a picture of someone who is disfigured and make a shocking image. These go beyond that and get to the emotional experience of soldiers.

PBS’ site also features an audio interview with Nina. Click HERE to read the full text and to hear Mike and Nina’s conversation about her exceptional bodies of work, Purple Hearts, Homeland and Marine Wedding.

The clock is ticking, but you’ve still got two and a half hours to get your hands on one of these amazing editions at 20×200 by painter Clare Grill, whose solo exhibition, What You’re Told is currently hanging in the gallery. We’ve been sitting amidst Clare’s work for the last two weeks, and the colors, textures and narratives that comprise this work are truly captivating. These prints do an incredible job of translating the motion and richness of her pieces in a way we can make available to every single one of you.

To pick up one of Clare’s prints for 20% off, click on any of the works below, then enter the code RIDONK at Google checkout. This offer ends at 2 p.m. (EST) today, so do not delay!

Assignment by Clare Grill

Cake by Clare Grill

The Overachievers* by Clare Grill

*The original painting, The Overachievers, hanging in the exhibition, has been sold. But, that makes the 30”x40” edition of this print, only $2,000 $1,600, an even more incredible steal.

Untitled work image by Holly Lynton

Since last summer, I have been having a back and forth with JBG artist Holly Lynton as she works on developing her newest body of work. One of the great aspects of my job is getting to be a part of the process: watching projects develop and getting sneak peaks into all of the images that photographers go though before choosing what will make the final cut.

Holly’s new images, photographs of the relationships between man and animal, have such a quiet intensity. It is as if she captures these moments of connection that transcend the implied chaos and noise that is surrounding the subjects. Think of a beautiful and peaceful picture of a man whose face is covered in bees. In the above work, it is this almost “divine” moment between the girl and these turkeys amidst squawking I can only imagine and the commotion of flying feathers – an often used cinematic gesture for any type of chaos or crash in a rural scene. She becomes, as Holly and I have been referring to her in our back and forth, “The Turkey Madonna.”

Holly normally likes to keep her projects under wraps until completion but thankfully I could convince her to let me show one image from her current work in development. Here is what Holly had to say via email about her recent work:

I left New York for Massachusetts farm country in part to live the locavore life, defined mainly as eating locally, sustainably, and organically. What I hadn’t anticipated is how it is more often than not an extension of people’s spiritual lives. In my photography, I was initially drawn to photographing individuals who confront dangers in nature, allowing themselves to be vulnerable. Examples of these are bee keepers who wear no protective clothing and catfish noodlers who fish for seventy pound catfish with their bare hands. While photographing them, I watched them enter a transformative and meditate state that I see also exists in certain farm activities. I observed a reverence for nature rather than the absence of fear. Much of the current literature and film presents the negative sides of industrial farming without enough celebration of the positive aspects of small scale, sustainable, local, organic farms. I am interested in photographing people who work with animals on these farms and in the wild to expose the spiritual conviction they have for this way of life, as a gesture to my commitment and belief in its importance as well.

Danziger Projects (James Desk) from Workspaces by Joseph O. Holmes

JBG artist and 20×200 edition-maker Joseph O. Holmes has been included in the upcoming show The Year in Pictures at Danziger Projects, opening this Thursday. The show, which has been put on annually since 2007, is curated from work that has been featured in the last year on the popular Year in Pictures blog of gallery owner James Danziger.

Danziger writes,

The 15 contemporary photographers featured in the show represent 9 different countries – Saudi Arabia, Korea, Denmark, Britain, Mexico, Japan, France, Canada, and the U.S.. Over half have work I had originally only seen via the internet, evidencing the well-known power of the web as a connector, and what is sometimes taken for granted – the web’s unrivalled capacity as a transmitter of photographic images.

Earlier this year, Joe and Danziger crossed paths when Joe was working on his Workspace series, candidly documenting the unique spaces in which people do their work.

About the series, Joe writes,

Because I document a space exactly as I find it, never arranged for the camera, the Workspace project is necessarily a spontaneous process. I can’t, for example, call ahead and explain what I’m after without inviting the destruction of what I hope to capture. Lately I’ve been finding workspaces by walking in off the street with camera and tripod and simply asking (though “simply asking” doesn’t quite convey the complex dance of explanation, skepticism, persuasion, and fascination that goes back and forth). What I end up capturing, then, turns out to be the work that was interrupted to answer the door.

Danziger responded, “As I like both my workspace and Joe’s work, I was happy to co-operate and now his picture (above) is about to be all that remains as a visual record of where I’ve sat for the last five years, often writing this blog!”

Congratulations to Joe and to Danziger Projects on the show, which we cannot wait to see!

You can view the full Workspace series on Joe’s website and grab limited-edition prints on 20×200. Keep your eyes peeled because we’ll be opening a solo-show of Joe’s work later this year at Jen Bekman Gallery.

The Year in Pictures
Danziger Projects
Opening reception: January 21, 6-8 p.m.
534 West 24th Street
New York, New York 10011 USA

Featuring: Jowhara AlSaud, Chan-Hyo Bae, Thomas Bangsted, Mandy Corrado, Stephen Gill, Joseph Holmes, Alejandra Laviada, Greg Miller, David Schoerner, Patrick Smith, Tommy Ton, Scout Tufankjian, Oliver Warden, Katherine Wolkoff and Tsukasa Yokozawa.

West Nineteenth Street (Yellow Dress) by Joseph O. Holmes

The Overachievers by Clare Grill

We are anxiously counting down the days to Clare Grill’s opening exhibition here at the JBG (details below), so were thrilled to release a new edition by Clare on 20×200 yesterday to give our collectors a taste of what’s to come. While the textures and richness of The Overachievers can only be fully realized in the original, which will be one of the six paintings in What You’re Told, the print is utterly gorgeous and we suggest you pick one up!

Jen wrote in yesterday’s newsletter:

Looking at her works, I was transported back to those mysterious years of childhood and recalled the vague terror that arises when you’re a kid and you’ve done something wrong. Without undermining the foreboding feeling of getting caught at being bad, the paintings are also comfortingly familiar — when you’re young, that terror is (hopefully) the only terror you know. There’s something cozy and sentimental about remembering that, especially when comparing it to the much more complex, unbounded realities of adulthood. These realities lie in the murky and misty areas in Clare’s works and bring forth the lessons learned that weren’t always as black and white as they were presented.

The Overachievers is available on 20×200 in four sizes for $20, $50, $200 and $2000, and—lucky you—the 35”x28” original is also available, which you can see for yourself at the opening on Friday night.

What You’re Told
Six paintings on canvas and eleven works on paper by Clare Grill
Opening Reception: Friday, January 15th, 2010 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.
On View: January 16th – February 27th, 2010
Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring Street
New York, NY

See you there!

Walter by Joseph Holmes

Jen Bekman Gallery’s own Joseph O. Holmes has been awarded first place in an international juried portrait exhibition opening this January in Minneapolis. Joe’s portrait, Walter (above), was selected from a pool of over 200 entries by David Little. Little is currently the curator of photographs at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts but no stranger to the New York art world, having held positions at both The Whitney and the MoMA.

The co-op studio at Mpls Photo Center

The exhibition, which includes 84 portraits, will open January 8th, 2010 at the gorgeous Mpls Photo Center, a “member-based, public-friendly center for all things photography that includes classrooms, darkrooms, a digital lab, and exhibition space.”

Congratulations to Mr. Holmes on this exciting start to 2010! We can’t wait to show Joe’s work here in New York when his solo show opens later this year at Jen Bekman Gallery.

In the meantime, head over to 20×200 to collect some beautiful prints by Joe, and don’t forget to subscribe to Joe’s NYC to get your daily dose of Holmes.

Portraits at Mpls Photo Center
January 2, 2010 – January 31, 2010
Reception: January 8, 2010, 6:00 – 9:00 pm
Mpls Photo Center
2400 North Second Street, Minneapolis, MN 55411

Left to right: Mark Burnette, Jessica M. Kaufman, Mickey Kerr, Jeff Otto O’Brien

Tema Stauffer, who had her NYC solo-show debut at JBG back in October of 2004, was recently invited to curate the front page of contemporary art site culturehall for its Winter Issue. Her selections, shown as thumbnails above, perfectly reflect what Tema refers to as “the psychology of the season.” This virtual show will run through December 29th so make sure to check it out at culturehall.

Tema also has two editions of her own for sale on 20×200 but from the looks of it, they won’t be available for much longer!