We’re pleased to announce that Hey, Hot Shot! 2010 has been extended to Tuesday, August 31st, and the Grand Prize has been increased to $10,000.

The HHS! Blog has more information on the extension:

As part of this community, you are well aware of how hard we work at creating opportunities for artists and spreading the word about the competition. The good news is—it’s working! After we announced that we were teaming up with Blurb to offer each Hot Shot the chance to produce their own book a few weeks ago, a buzz of excitement percolated ‘round the web, and created quite a stir.

We’re happy to hear that you’re excited—all the energy is bringing new photographers into our community at this eleventh hour. We want to share the love, welcome this new community around us, and give them—and you—a little more time to get your entries in, which is why we’re doubling the Grand Prize to $10,000 and extending the deadline to August 31st.

So, think you’re a Hot Shot?

Think your work is a good fit for Jen Bekman Gallery? If you’re a photographer, we accept submissions through our competition, Hey, Hot Shot!—in fact, it’s the only way to send your photos our way both for consideration here at the gallery and to have your work released on 20×200. A little history: 15 of our 25 represented artists have come to join the JBG roster after they were first discovered through the competition.

There will be only one season of competition this year, so don’t miss it, submissions close this Sunday August 22, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. (EDT). The Grand Prize winner gets a $5,000 honorarium, a solo-show and two years of representation from the gallery.

Panelists
A diverse panel of photography professionals—including founder Jen Bekman, Aperture Foundation publisher Lesley A. Martin, Chronicle Books chairman and CEO Nion McEvoy, a founding editor of Radius Books Darius Himes and photographer Todd Hido—reviews every entry.

5 Hot Shots: $500 + Group Exhibition
+ A $500 honorarium.
+ Participation in the 2010 Hot Shot Exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery.
+ The opportunity to release an edition on 20×200.
+ A $1,000 credit at Blurb to create your own photography book.

1 Grand Prize: $5000 + Gallery Representation
Jen Bekman will select one of the five 2010 Hot Shots for the Grand Prize and announce the recipient on March 15, 2011. In addition to the honors as a Hot Shot, the grand prize recipient will be awarded:

+ A $5,000 honorarium to support a personal project.
+ A solo exhibition at Jen Bekman Gallery.
+ Representation from Jen Bekman Gallery for two years, commencing with his/her selection.

Countless Opportunities for Every Contender
All entrants are reviewed for participation in 20×200; entering the competition is the only way for photographers to have their work considered for an edition. Every contender receives ample opportunity for online exposure through our blog and on Facebook, Flickr and Twitter.

Curator’s Choice Awards
Apply by TONIGHT, August 20th, and we will put your work in front of the eyes of esteemed photographer, and Hey, Hot Shot! Guest Curator, Alec Soth. Alec will select one entrant to receive a “Little Brown Mushroom Love Pack” which includes three amazing books and a screen-printed LBM t-shirt.

Questions?
Check our Hey, Hot Shot! FAQ. If your question hasn’t been answered, send us a Direct Message on Twitter to heyhotshot</a> or an email to heyheyhotshot.com and we’ll get back to you as soon as we can.

Isobel Schofield and Jacob Rhodes of Try Benefit Art Show blog are using our gallery space for a silent auction later this month to raise money for Team in Training (TNT), which is part of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.  In addition to auctioning their artwork, Isobel and Jacob are also training for a triathlon with TNT. The organization raises money to help combat and find a cures for Leukemia, Lymphoma, Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and Myelom. At the silent auction for TNT, works by over a dozen artists will donated with all proceeds going directly towards finding a cure for cancer.

The Details:
Saturday, Aug 28th
7:00 p.m. – 10:00 p.m.
Auction Winners being announced at 9:00 p.m.
Where: Jen Bekman Gallery, 6 Spring Street, NY NY
Check out artists and work in the auction here.

Come out to show these artists your support and help find a cure for cancer!

When Land Use Survey comes to an end this Saturday the 14th, we will be closing our doors for a little housekeeping and maybe sneak in a vacation…or two. We’ll still be posting to the blog and be open by appointment, so fear not, it won’t be completely silent over here. This just means if you want to see us in person, you need to hurry on in to catch Land Use Survey, a show Time Out New York calls:

a panoramic sampling of American vistas, beginning with a few token images of untouched wildernesses. But these days, the U.S. of A. has ever fewer places where one can tremble before the natural sublime, so “Land Use Survey” offers a proportionate representation of strip malls, tract housing and swaths of paradise blighted and paved over.

Please join us when we re-open for the fall season with a reception for Derek Henderson’s Mercy Mercer exhibition on September 10, 2010 from 6:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.

In the meantime, head over to 20×200 and Hey, Hot Shot! in the coming weeks to keep in touch with Jen Bekman Projects while the gallery is closed. See you in September!

Derek Henderson, whose solo exhibition, Mercy Mercer will open at Jen Bekman Gallery in September, has a book of the same name, available for purchase. The book is only available in the United States through the gallery and is a publication of the New Zealand-based gallery Michael Lett. If you’re a lover of printed matter, we invite you to come into the gallery and take a look at this stunning 140-page publication, Henderson’s photographic examination of the Waikato River in New Zealand and of the people who live there.

For details and any further inquiries about Mercy Mercer please email info@jenbekman.com. The books are priced at $100.

Anne Wehr of Time Out New York reviews Land Use Survey in the magazine’s latest issue, writing:

These days, the U.S. of A. has ever fewer places where one can tremble before the natural sublime, so “Land Use Survey” offers a proportionate representation of strip malls, tract housing and swaths of paradise blighted and paved over.

She discusses several works from the exhibition, including the Beth Dow photograph above, noting:

Re-inhabited Circle K: Mr. Formal, Phoenix, AZ (2006), a photograph by Paho Mann, and two small canvases by Michelle Muldrow (both 2009) are all severe, frontal views of single-story suburban stores, each grimmer than the last. Other works underscore nature’s diminishment: In Gravel (2006), photographer Beth Dow uses shifting focus and the sensuous subtleties of palladium printing to make falsely romantic mountains out of rubbish-dotted molehills.

Read the complete review at Time Out New York and stop in to see the show before August 15th!

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.

Ever feel like Chelsea more or less shuts down for summer vacation during July and August? Well, as if to specifically prove this assumption wrong, a group of terrific Chelsea galleries have come together and organized the first ever Art Walk Chelsea, this Thursday, July 29, from 5:00 – 8:00 p.m. The official, website description reads as follows:

Please join us on July 29, 2010 from 5- 8 PM for the first annual Chelsea Art Walk, a cooperative event organized by over 25 galleries throughout northern Chelsea. With busy summer schedules, it can be difficult to make the trip to Chelsea during regular business hours. Participating galleries will offer extended hours and special events that showcase the vibrancy of the summer arts scene in Chelsea, while local sponsors will offer food and drink specials throughout the evening.

Just a few of the stellar galleries participating are Cheim & Read, ClampArt, Marlborough Chelsea, P.P.O.W., and Yossi Milo Gallery. One highlight will include a book-signing by Martin Schoeller (responsible for the virtually indescribable image above) at Hasted Hunt Kraeutler, between 6:00 and 8:00 p.m..

A complete list of participants, and specific event details can be found at the Art Walk Chelsea website.

Over at Dwell.com, Aaron Britt had a few things to say about the current show, and featured a quote from me about the curation of Land Use Survey.

A group show that ranges across media that tries to understand how we use land in America, and it’s at once elegiac, angry, and bedeviled by the strange geometry of our present day infrastructure. Ranging from views of a single plant to aerial shots of our squirreling highways, Land Use Survey investigates where we are while still managing to suggest where we’ve been and intimate where we might be heading. ‘I think it is easy to focus on the dire, overdeveloped imagery but in the show I wanted to show as much of the diverse ways that the land is used alongside the diverse ways artists are capturing the land around them,’ says curator Jeffrey Teuton.

Come check out the show before it closes on August 15th!

Last Friday, Peggy Roalf from Dart wrote a review of Land Use Survey. Here are some of the highlights:

About Ian Baguskas’s Indian Beach Surf, Oregon, she writes:

Framed from a high point of view, with massive erratics rising from the sea, the scene includes a small group of people, engulfed in coastal mist and surf, with a dog looking on from the side. While absolutely contemporary in its style and content, this picture also bridges time; it commands the kind of majestic point of view shared by two opposite extremes in photography – for example, Stephen Shore’s 1979 Merced River, Yosemite National Park, as well as certain views of Yosemite by Ansel Adams.

About Alex MacLean’s houses in Housing Development at Different Stages, Las Vegas, NV, March 2005, she writes:

The only thing that differentiates one from another is the color of the roof. It would be interesting to see the way in which future inhabitants will put a personal stamp on these properties.

And about Andrew Scott Ross and Scott Lawrence’s Sighting (Avondale Mall), Roalf writes:

Sighting (Avondale Mall) by Andrew Scott Ross / Scott Lawrence, offers the kind of dreamlike scene that anyone who hates searching for a good parking spot at the Agway would love to encounter to relieve the boredom of small town living: a herd of bison galloping across the blacktop, horns down and heels flying.

To read the full review, check out Dart.

You can find Jen Bekman Gallery on Artlog — a site for art & culture in real time. The site provides comprehensive event listings, reviews and conversations about the latest and greatest in art. Artlog provides the tools to easily find, follow and engage with the best of art and culture in New York. Also, with a new section on the site called Artlog/ Collect you can now search through our artists and browse their work on the site.

Artlog also organizes “Collect” events which are private, one‐night art open houses devoted to introducing new collectors and art lovers to art communities across NYC.

Jen Bekman Gallery is participating in the Collect Lower East Side Artcrawl happening Thursday, July 22nd, 2010, from 6:30 p.m. to late. Get your tickets now! Collect LES is a 21+ event. Tickets are $20.

Here is the schedule:
7:00 – 9:00 p.m. Complimentary access to the New Museum’s exhibitions
6:30 – 9:30 p.m. Gallery crawl to over 20 galleries
9:00 – 10:00 p.m. Happy Hour & After Party at Panda Bar
9:30 – 10:30 p.m. Happy Hour & After Party at Gallery Bar

The LES is currently New York’s fastest growing gallery neighborhood. The area is also bustling with restaurants and nightlife, attracting many new creatives and collectors.

Last year’s LES Crawl brought together over 1,700 art lovers to tour the area’s galleries. This year’s event consists of receptions for Yale, Columbia and PENN alumni, special events and discounts to local businesses, access to over 20 galleries. In addition, participants will be granted free entry to the New Museum including Rivane Neuenschwander’s A Day Like Any Other, Brion Gysin’s Dream Machine, and Amy Granat’s Light 3 Ways.

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.

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.

Land development, and people’s interaction with nature is a topic that has been much on our minds of late, with the opening just last Wednesday of our new (and if we may say so ourselves, fantastic!) group show, fittingly titled Land Use Survey.

Thus, when we read that the people of Johnson County, Kansas have plans in the works to open a National Museum of Suburban History, the news certainly piqued our interest. While suburbia may seem like a distant, hazy memory to all you New Yorkers out there—somewhere you triumphantly left for a better life here in the city—it would seem that Suburban America is becoming a place of increasing interest, and even a concentration for academic study. For one, Long Island’s Hofstra University is now home to The Center for Suburban Studies, which only leads us to ask: could Suburban Studies become the trendy new Urban Studies? The program writes:

Suburban America has been the butt of jokes and stereotypes for decades. The portrayal persists in Hollywood, which continues to zing the ‘burbs with over-the-top tales of conniving, desperate housewives and wayward soccer moms in bed with Mexican drug lords.

Housing Development at Different Stages, Las Vegas, NV, March 2005 by Alex Maclean

It is here that we’ll implore you to stop wondering longingly when the next season of Weeds is starting, and pause to consider this astonishing statistic: more than 50% of Americans reside in suburban communities, and these communities are rapidly changing, moving quickly away from the stereotypes with which they are so often associated. As Alan Scher Zagier reports in an article on the forthcoming museum:

Change your mind about what the suburbs are…They’re not just bedroom communities for center-city workers. They’re not just rich enclaves. They’re not all economically stable. They’re not all exclusively white.

These are not your father’s suburbs of the 1950s and 1960s.

These are just a few tidbits to consider over the next couple of months when you (hopefully!) swing by to see Land Use Survey at JBG, and as you eagerly anticipate the August 3^rd release of the new Arcade Fire album, very appropriately titled…The Suburbs.

If you weren’t able to make it to the opening of Land Use Survey last night, stop by tomorrow for a look before we close on Saturday, July 3rd and Sunday, July 4th in celebration of Independence Day. We will re-open Wednesday, July 7th with new summer hours: 12 – 6 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday.

Below are a few works from the show to inspire wanderlust and whet your tongue.

Housing Development at Different Stages, Las Vegas, NV, March 2005 by Alex Maclean

Road to Road by William Wegman

Sighting (Avondale Mall) by Andrew Scott Ross / Scott Lawrence

Reflection by Dana Miller

Have a great long weekend; more next week!

Please join us on Wednesday, June 30th from 6 to 8 p.m. at the opening reception for Land Use Survey, featuring photographs, paintings and works on paper by twenty-seven artists.

Land Use Survey functions as a critical appraisal of land use across the country, as a document of the changing landscape vernacular, and as a celebration of the artists who take diverse approaches to capturing this genre. The show opens with a series of landscapes that remain untouched by man. Slowly, signs of human intrusion begin to appear: car tracks, empty bottles, a retaining wall and piles of dirt. As one progresses through the exhibition, both in the gallery space and within the areas described by the works, increasingly more land turns over to commercial and residential development, before finally giving way to the dizzying geometries of the modern metropolis.

The exhibition features work by Ian Baguskas, Chris Ballantyne, Beth Dow, Christoph Gielen, Todd Hido, Liz Kuball,Nick Lamia, Scott Lawrence, Michael Lundgren, Alex MacLean, David Maisel, Paho Mann, Louisa McElwain, Sarah McKenzie, Joel Meyerowitz, Dana Miller, Brad Moore, Matthew Moore, Michelle Muldrow, Justin Newhall, Ross Racine, Tyson Anthony Roberts, Andrew Scott Ross, Aili Schmeltz, Bryan Schutmaat, Alec Soth and William Wegman.

The exhibition will be on view from July 1 through August 14, 2010. (The gallery will be closed on July 3rd, 4th and 5th for the holiday).

Significant Objects by Kate Bingaman-Burt

Untitled #10 by Kent Rogowski

Support by Sarah McKenzie

Flying, Shipping and Selling by Carrie Marill

New York Peony by Gregory Krum

Nethermead by Joseph O. Holmes

Bags by Beth Dow

Velodrome by James Deavin

Praia Piquinia 27/08/09 15h17 by Christian Chaize

*With a minimum purchase of $50.

Trojan Horse by Beth Dow

JBG artist Beth Dow is featured in the new issue of Photography Quarterly, published by The Center for Photography at Woodstock. PQ #99, guest edited by curator Debra Klomp Ching of KLOMPCHING Gallery, brings forth a fascinating dialogue on the current state of Photography’s Ontology as seen through the works of emerging image-makers from around the globe whose artwork mine the edifice and artifice of the photograph.

In the issue, Beth Dow says of her series Ruins:

“I’m drawn to subjects that puzzle me, especially incongruous elements in unlikely places. Ruins looks at the ways we appropriate and approximate the romance of ruins into modern American environments, and what this says about our longing for historic precedents. While genuine ruins remind us of our own mortality, they also suggest the opposite by showing it’s possible to endure, even if only in a reduced and degraded form. These photographs are an attempt to evoke nostalgia for inaccurate history, to wrestle with ideas of authenticity, and to question the value we place on classical ideals. It is natural to challenge the relevance of nostalgic longing, and I exploit this dynamic in my contemporary landscapes. Life goes on among the ruins.”

Palace Parking by Beth Dow

Also in the issue, is Larissa Leclair’s interview with 20×200 artist Curtis Mann. A Virginia-based writer and curator, Leclair discusses the process and motivations surrounding Mann’s haunting imagery which begins with mining the troves of imagery found on the website Flickr.

Tree Tops, from the series Somewhere in Israel by Curtis Mann

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!