Five More Years @ Jen Bekman

Belated Happy New Year greetings! 2008 is off to a great start for Jen Bekman Gallery.

I’m most happy to announce that we’ve renewed our lease at 6 Spring St! We are looking forward to 5 more years in the ‘hood, which has become quite the art destination, thanks to the recent opening of The New Museum and the arrival of scads of excellent new galleries.

Read on for updates on Friday’s Ne Plus Ultra opening, a Sunday reception at Joe, media mentions and other upcoming events.

Ne Plus Ultra, the Hey, Hot Shot! Annual Opens Fri. 2.8 | 6pm-8pm

Image Credit: Untitled from the series Sub Rosa (2006) by Birthe Piontek

Ne Plus Ultra, the Hey, Hot Shot! Annual, opens @ Jen Bekman Gallery on Friday February 8th, 2008. The reception is from 6pm-8pm, and as always frosty beer beverages will be provided by Crumpler.

Please join me and all of this year’s Ultras at the reception:

Nina Berman
Karolina Karlic
Brad Moore
Birthe Piontek

The exhibition will remain on view through Saturday March 15th, 2008. (The gallery’s official 5 year anniversary!)

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring St
(between Elizabeth + Bowery)
NYC NY 10012
ph: +1.212.219.0166

Joe’s NYC: jen@joe Presents Photographs by Joseph O. Holmes

Image Credit: Broadway (2007) by Joseph O. Holmes

Please join photographer Joe Holmes, Joe proprietor Jonathan Rubinstein and me on Sunday, February 10th, 2008 from 3-5 pm at a reception for Joe’s NYC, the latest installment of our ongoing series jen@joe:

Joe
9 E 13th St.
(between University Place and 5th Avenue)

The exhibition, Joe’s NYC, is comprised of 29 NY-centric prints and will remain on view through April 25th, 2008.

The prints are available in three very affordably priced sizes and will be available exclusively online at jenatjoe.com.

We’ll be hosting other jen@joe events throughout the exhibition. Sign up for the jen@joe newsletter to stay up to date on announcements.

Points of Interest: Online + Elsewhere

Image Credit: White Ice by Tema Stauffer. Read about it on the 20×200 blog.A portion of the proceeds from this edition will benefit The Art Shanty Projects.

As if two openings in one week weren’t enough, there are plenty of other things keeping me busy over the next few months.

20×200 continues apace with two new editions each and every week. Be sure to sign up for our mailing list to get advance notice on new editions.

I’m packing my long johns and heading off to Minneapolis for a few art-filled days (and nights.) I’ll be doing portfolio reviews (afternoon) and a presentation (evening) at the Minnesota Center for Photography on Monday, February 18th.

I’m also looking forward to attending The Art Shanty Projects and the opening of World’s Away at The Walker Art Center. Another show I won’t be missing is Ultra Karolina Karlic’s exhibition at Franklin Art Works.

In quick succession after that: Santa Fe, where I’m honored to be jurying Center’s Singular Image Prize for color photography, Austin, where I’m speaking on a panel at South By Southwest and Houston, where I’ll be reviewing portfolios at Fotofest.

Points of Interest: Online + In Print

Image Credit: Foam Magazine #13 / searching

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday | Noon – 6pm

As regular blog readers know, Nina Berman’s recent exhibition Purple Hearts, got an amazing review in The New York Times, which was followed by two additional listings in subsequent weeks and an overwhelmingly fantastic array of international press.

20×200 has been getting some attention as well. You can check out our media mentions to date on the 20×200 blog. Also look for us in the current issue of Dwell and the upcoming issue of Ready Made.

In her free time, Jen’s been pursuing her own journalistic endeavors. Look for her interview with photographer Alec Soth in the Fall issue of photo-eye Booklist.

To stay up to date on all the various Jen Bekman Projects, bookmark our blogs, or subscribe to their RSS feeds:

Jen Bekman News Blog

The Hey, Hot Shot! Blog

The 20×200 Blog

Personism (Jen’s personal blog.)

Enough with the virtual, let’s get real – the best way to have the Jen Bekman experience is live and in person. Come visit us at the gallery:

Jen Bekman Gallery
6 Spring St (between Elizabeth + Bowery)
NYC 10012
+1.212.219.1066

Gallery Hours:
Wednesday – Saturday | Noon – 6pm

Nina Berman is featured once more in today’s (Friday, Aug 31st) New York Times, this time in the Art Listings:

NINA BERMAN: ‘PURPLE HEARTS’ One of the more shocking photographs to come out of the current war in Iraq was taken last year in a rural town in the American Midwest. It’s a studio portrait by Nina Berman of a young Illinois couple on their wedding day. The bride is dressed in a traditional white gown; the groom, a former Marine sergeant, is in full dress. Her expression is unsmiling, maybe grave. His face is all but featureless, with no nose and no chin, as blank as a pullover mask, the results of disfiguring wounds sustained in combat. The show also includes 10 portraits of wounded veterans from Ms. Berman’s series “Purple Hearts.” Whatever your politics, the show, installed in a small storefront gallery, adds up to a desolating antiwar statement. Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, between the Bowery and Elizabeth Street, Lower East Side; (212) 219-0166, jenbekman.com, through Sept. 8. (Cotter)

Images from the Dark Side of War by Marc Pitzke for Der Spiegel
A moving photo exhibition in New York shows what the media doesn’t—shocking photos of seriously wounded Iraq veterans. The images and the soldiers’ quotes which accompany them say more about the war than you might want to know.

“Purple Hearts”, miroir brisé de la guerre by Thomas Giovanetti for Liberation
La guerre n’est pas que gloire. Enrôlés la fleur au fusil comme on entame une partie de Playstation, ces jeunes gens mis “Game Over” sont aujourd’hui des oubliés. La photographe les a donc saisis dans leur anonymat, au cœur de l’Amérique profonde, bien loin du mythe guerrier et de l’héroïsme des G.I’s.

Closer to home:
Bringing Home the Faces of War by Mary-Ellen Schoonmaker for The Record
[Berman’s] exhibit at the Jen Bekman Gallery in lower Manhattan couldn’t be more timely, given the debate that is raging in Congress over whether to bring the troops home from Iraq and when. The war is continuing in Iraq, and the suffering of so many soldiers who have left Iraq is continuing as well. For many of them, it will go on for the rest of their lives.

Here’s a round-up of additional press for Nina Berman’s Purple Hearts, which has been extended through Saturday September 8th:

First off, the show is once more recommended in the NY Daily News, this time in the Sports section, where columnist Bill Gallo writes:

It’s so very true that a picture can tell a thousand words and more. If you look at Nina Berman’s photographs of Iraq veterans coming home with their Purple Hearts, you’ll hear a cascade of words roaring, “No more War!” “No more War, Ever!” You will never view a stronger anti-war statement.

Go see “Nina Berman: Purple Hearts”

There’s also been a good deal of online coverage, here’s a sampling:

Time Magazine Arts Blog, written by Richard Lacayo:
...these are some of the most affecting pictures I’ve seen of the costs inscribed on the human body by the war in Iraq. No matter what you think of that war, it would be fair to say that over the past few years Berman has paid more compassionate attention to American veterans than their own government has.

Daily Kos:
Looking at today’s NY Times, my heart was broken open. There is a new and devastating exhibition of photographs called ``Purple Hearts’’ opening in NYC by the photographer Nina Berman. To see these photos is to deepen the disgust with today’s talk from our elders…We must have the Senate and House see these pictures and show them to the world.

Flavorpill
Images of the Iraq war were surprisingly scarce this summer in New York’s galleries. Whatever the reason, Jen Bekman — who goes where many gallerists won’t — remedies this in a show of Nina Berman’s series Purple Hearts.

Ion Arts Blog
Showing now at Bekman is Purple Hearts, photographer Nina Berman’s images and interviews with soldiers severely wounded in Iraq, including her award-winning Marine Wedding, shown here. The images are amazing, sensitive, and apolitical: they are a direct testament to the consequences of war.

And if anyone happens to speak Korean, perhaps they can give us a decent translation of this item, which sent a lot of traffic to our web site and brought many visitors to the gallery as well.

Currently the lead story over at The New York Times online:
Words Unspoken on War’s Faces by Holland Cotter:

Ms. Berman adds no direct editorial comment to the presentation. She has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so. In what may be the most intensively photographed war in history, the visual documentation has been selective. The fate of the injured veterans was not a public issue until news reports about substandard treatment at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.

This background provides the context for Ms. Berman’s photographs, which are themselves tip-of-the-iceberg images. No matter what the viewer’s political position, the images add up to a complex and desolating anti-war statement…

Spc. Luis Calderon by Nina Berman

Joanna Molloy, the Molloy in New York Daily News gossip column duoRush & Molloy, attending Nina’s opening on August 8th. She chatted with Nina for a while about the exhibition, and a small knot of eavesdroppers gathered around them loosely while they talked – Joanna was so engaged and asked such good questions, and Nina is just incredibly articulate about the work. (You can find out yourself at the artist talk next week.) Joanna’s interest in the show led to the somewhat unlikely bold-faced appearance of Nina and the subject of one of her portraits, Luis Calderon (pictured above) in yesterday’s Rush & Molloy column:

Luis Calderon was paralyzed in Iraq — but can’t get a Purple Heart. The 22-year-old was injured when a mural of Saddam Hussein he was ordered to pull down with his tank crashed onto him, and you must be injured in combat with an enemy to receive the medal. Photos of him and other disabled Iraqi vets are now up at the Jen Bekman Gallery, where photographer Nina Berman, who includes the pics in her book, “Purple Hearts,” will speak Aug 29.

James Wagner and Barry Hoggard stopped in to see the exhibition on Saturday. You can read about James’s response to the exhibition over on his blog.

“From my neckline down, I can not feel anything…. I got an Army Commendation Medal. I didn’t get a Purple Heart. I feel like I deserve one. It would make me more confident that I really did something.”

Photo of the JB by Joe Holmes

The New York Times ran a feature on Sunday called Summer’s Seven Day Week, covering the myriad galleries which actually have August hours. Here’s the snippet about the gallery:

A brief zig and zag down the Bowery onto Spring lands you at Jen Bekman Gallery, which is scheduled to take down its cool group exhibition “A New American Portrait” on Thursday [Ed. note: It’s actually open through Friday], and reopen on Aug. 8 with “Purple Hearts.” This solo show, by the photographer Nina Berman, looks at wounded soldiers back from Iraq. Ms. Berman won a World Press Photo Award for her wedding portrait of Ty Ziegel, a disfigured Marine sergeant, and his wife, Renée.

Kate Bingaman-Burt Featured in Print Magazine

In the July/August issue of Print Magazine there is a feature called The Obsessives which highlights the work of four artists dealing with the topic of consumption.

A week’s worth of time, money, and resources—gone in a flash! Or is it? We asked four artists known for their clever online record-keeping to show us exactly how they spent those precious 604,800 seconds.

John Freyer, Nick Feltron, Ellie Harrison and our very own Kate Bingaman-Burt documented a weeks work of consumption in their own artistic styles.

View Kate’s week of drawings up close here (PDF).

And if you’re interested, Print has posted Q&As with each of the The Obsessives online.

I might also mention that Kate’s Obsessive Consumption got a write-up in today’s Yahoo! Picks.

Congrats X2, Kate!

painting by Amy Ross (detail)

The press for Boston-based painter Amy Ross just keeps rolling in. Small Magazine, a new mag out to support independent “creators, designers, photographers, and illustrators” just featured a few of Amy’s paintings in their Summer ‘07 issue.

Amy’s solo show anima mundi was shown April 27 – June 7 at jen bekman, her first solo show in New York City. Amy has since recieved quite a bit of attention for her paintings, very well deserved I might add. Many of her pieces have sold after the opening—people are really taking a liking to these images of “genetic engineering and mutation gone awry.” That said, if you’re interested in purchasing what’s left, there are still pieces worth inquiring about: info @ jenbekman.com.

Big congrats to Amy!

Pushing Mesh by Peter Haakon Thompson, from the exhibition A New American Portrait

Over on the Saatchi Your Gallery blog , Lupe Nunez-Fernandez has some thoughtful words about A New American Portrait. Here’s a particularly juicy bit:

...the show offers a variety of issues to think about, but point of view might be one of the most fascinating here. All of the works share an ambiguous, theatrical sense of detachment, a way in which the exhibition suggestively opens up a conversation on the inherently contradictory elements in contemporary portraiture.

Have a look at the entire write-up here.

We are nearly finished hanging the show, and it’s looking good. Hope to see lots of you tomorrow!

Benno Schmidt, Portland Harbor by Spring Hot Shot Mark Marchesi

It’s been a big week at the jb. The Hey, Hot Shot! Spring Edition opening last night was a blast. You still have time to check out the exhibition: it’s on view this Friday, Saturday and Sunday from Noon-6pm.

Next up: we’ll spend the week getting ready for our big opening event on Friday June 22, for our Summer group exhibition A New American Portrait.

Here’s a round up of all the gallery related online mentions as of late:

Hey, Hot Shot! featured on the blog for Popular Photography magazine

Rob Walker interviews Jen about 20×200

Unbeige on 20×200

Josh Spear’s Heather Snodgrass on 20×200

Gallery Hopper on 20×200

Photographer Julian Thomas reconsiders 20×200

Photo-Muse on 20×200, but wait there’s more

JPG Magazine Blog on A New American Portrait

Jason Kottke on A New American Portrait

Photographer Greg Wasserstrom is really excited about A New American Portrait

The January edition of PDN has a two page spread on James Deavin’s recent exhibition, Photographs from the New World. Unfortunately I can’t link you to the article, since it’s available to subscribers only online, but a) it sure looks purty (lots of photos from the exhibition) and b) the writer, Scott Tillitt, did a great job and was a pleasure to work with.

The issue is on newsstands now, but here’s a snippet to tide you over:

In another real-life parallel, most non-professionals use the camera like a point-and-shoot and simply save small JPEGs to their hard drives—pictures of friends and family and such “to act as memory in the future,” Deavin says. And that’s how he thinks his own images can best be understood: “as a piece of Second Life history, markers of a time when people were still viewing the new world through the eyes of the old.” As gallery owner Jen Bekman sees it, Deavin is “an explorer in this new territory, largely uncharted and almost entirely a mystery to the general public.”

Being named an Innovator of the Year by American Photo makes me feel like a freakin’ rock star.

Photo by John Von Pamer

It’s not the surprising congratulations I’ve received from unlikely quarters, it’s not that it made my momma proud (in fact I don’t think she’s even picked up the issue yet), it’s not that they managed to come up with a photo of me that I actually like (after I totally dropped the ball on getting one to them, thanks guys!) But really mostly it’s the very fine company I am in. Other Innovators on the list:

Caterina and Stewart (for Flickr, but of course)

Lesley Martin, Executive Editor of Aperture Books

Joerg Colberg, founder of Conscientious

All these Innovators have something in common: They are past, present or future panelists for Hey, Hot Shot!, a cornerstone of the gallery’s program, and one of the main reasons I was selected as an Innovator. As an added bonus, Fall 2006 Hot Shot Shen Wei get an Honorable Mention in the Images of the Year section. It’s great to be in such fine company, and I know for a fact that each and every one of us has some more innovation on tap for 2007.

Also, American Photo deserves an Innovator shoutout itself. Their State of the Art blog is starting to make waves. Web editor Jay DeFoore conceived the blog as a supplement to the print version and has managed to create a nice blend of old school and next wave. It’s great to see the EIC David Schonauer making regular contributions. Miki Johnson is the chief contributor, and she’s prolific in the way that bloggers ought to be. Her recent Blog It, Share It post was widely linked to, not just because she linked widely, but because it was a great synopsis of the whole blogging photographers thang. (Go, Miki, GO!)
Originally posted on Personism, I apologize for the cross-posting/repetition.

jbSL in TONY (trans: This week’s issue of TimeOut NY has an article about the virtual version of jen bekman that we constructed in Second Life in conjunction with James Deavin’s Photographs from the New World exhibition.)

The article is called Life Imitates Art and it’s written by Howard Halle. It’s on page 7 of the actual printed magazine if you happen to get it.

Which brings me to another thing: the exhibition (the real one, in the gallery on Spring Street!) closes this Saturday, December 9. If you haven’t made it by yet, do drop in!

To visit jbSL, follow this SLurl.

From this weeks edition of Flavorpill NYC:

James Deavin’s exhibition Photographs from the New World documents the DIY world of Second Life, where users create avatars and detailed online environments in order to live out their dreams. The camera function inside Second Life captures high-resolution images that allow Deavin to produce large digital c-prints. Untitled (lift), a serene shot of a digitally rendered ski lift in clouds, has a remarkable relationship to Untitled (cricket), an aerial photograph by Deavin of an actual cricket pitch in the UK, shot using the same compositional techniques. Testaments to the rich culture of Second Life and Deavin’s talents, these prints embody the quiet contemplation the virtual world provides its residents.

Holly Lynton | Solid Ground : Installation Views 3, originally uploaded by msjenbee.

Holly’s critically acclaimed exhibition Solid Ground has lots of images associated with it. Here’s a round up:

– images, statement, release, bio (on jenbekman.com)

The excellent Vince Aletti writes about Holly Lynton’s exhibition Solid Ground in this week’s edition of The New Yorker.

HOLLY LYNTON
Exploring the possibilities for fantasy in her own back yard, Lynton turns it into a wild kingdom for a series of color photographs that assume the point of view of a playful and inquisitive child. Lynton’s nearly naked little girl and a bare-chested friend take on a fairy-tale presence in a landscape rendered mysterious by worm’s-eye-view closeups. He’s a giant seen through a scrim of leaves; she’s a sprite, crouching to catch a sprinkler’s spray in her mouth. But some of the most intriguing images are unpopulated: a tunnel in the snow; a bird caught behind the netting on a raspberry bush; leaves, petals, dead bees, and dry ice floating in a plastic pool. Through Oct. 28. (Bekman, 6 Spring St. 212-219-0166.)

Space is very limited, so please RSVP: rsvp AT jenbekman DOT com.

The show remains on view through Saturday October 28, and the gallery is open Wednesday – Sunday from noon – 6pm or by appointment.

Installation View of the Summer Edition of HHS, originally uploaded by msjenbee.

Over on Personism, I’ve been pretty fired up lately about the under-representation of women in tech, in art and um, rather broadly speaking creativity. Rather than pointlessly bluster, I started (you have to start somewhere) with a List of Women Speakers for Your Conference.

In other news: we’ve got a whole new crop of excellent interns here at the jb. Be on the look out for their blogging debuts. (Alice Wells made her debut on the Hey, Hot Shot! blog just the other day.)

Speaking of HHS, as previously announced: we’re accepting entries for the Fall Edition of Hey, Hot Shot! The deadline is Tuesday November 7th @ 6pm, but why wait? Apply now.

Special guest panelists this season include Amit Gupta of Photojojo fame and Joerg Colberg who writes the must-read fine-art photography blog Conscientious.

The last edition got some terrific press:

Kate Bingaman was featured on Cool Hunting.

Rob Walker of my most favoriteist NYT Sunday Magazine column, Consumed gave Ernie Button a shout-out on his blog Murketing. (Did you know he has a blog? He does and it’s good.)

Paddy Johson, of Art Fag City fame, stopped by and liked what she saw.

This is the last season of HHS for the year – we’ll be announcing the Ultras in December and their group show will open in January.

Regarding our current exhibition, Solid Ground:

On Thursday October 26 I’ll be hosting an artist talk with Holly Lynton. She’ll talk about her current exhibition, Solid Ground and we’ll ply you with booze. Not to be missed! Reception from 6pm – 8pm, artist talk at 7.

You can stay up to date on gallery related events by subscribing to our email list.

Video Still from Sunday in the Country with Larry Rivers by John Glassie

It’s not that I’m curious. On the contrary, I am bored but it’s my duty to be attentive, I am needed by things as the sky must be above the earth. And lately, so great has their anxiety become, I can spare myself little sleep.
— Frank O’Hara, Meditations in an Emergency

NEW YORK, NY — jen bekman is pleased to present Meditations in an Emergency, a group exhibition of work in various mediums inspired by and interpreting Frank O’Hara’s poem of the same name. The exhibition will be on view from June 20 – August 4, 2006, at jen bekman, located at 6 Spring Street, between Elizabeth and Bowery, New York, 10012.

Jen Bekman will host an opening reception for the artists, all represented by the gallery, on Tuesday, June 20, from 6:00 – 8:00pm at the gallery.

From salad days at the Museum of Modern Art’s front desk to curating exhibitions and writing criticism later in life, Frank O’Hara (1926 – 1966) was a controversial figure in his time as today for both the content of his work and his refusal to draw formal distinctions between mediums. O’Hara was a pivotal figure during the particularly vibrant and creative era of the late ‘50s and early ‘60s; he was a prominent poet of the New York School and collaborated with many of the leading New York School painters as well. O’Hara’s synergetic spirit carried across media and genre and impacted a number of artistic realms.

Gallery director Jen Bekman originally planned on curating an exhibition of art interpreting Lunch Poems, probably O’Hara’s best-known collection, but ultimately decided that Meditations in an Emergency was most meaningful given the current political climate. Says Bekman, “The tenor of our culture now is that we’re in a constant state of panic and alarm and I like the idea of art and creativity providing calm in chaos or helping us to maintain composure in an unsteady moment. During the curatorial process I’ve really enjoyed the dialogue with each artist; seeing which part of the poem each artist responds to is fascinating. And of course there’s my obsession with O’Hara and the fact that he’s been a source of inspiration to me since my poetry-writing college days.”

Participating artists include Agnes Barley, Mara Bodis-Wollner, Christine Callahan, Christine Collins, Benjamin Donaldson, John Glassie, Anne Hall, Addie Juell, Holly Lynton, Dana Miller, Katie Murray, Leon Reid, Eliot Shepard, Tema Stauffer and Jeffrey Teuton.

Meditations in an Emergency at jen bekman, 6 Spring Street.
Hours: Wednesday, Friday & Saturday, noon – 6pm and Thursday noon – 8pm, or by private appointment.