Personism

Talk Tonight at The Apple Store in Soho

A quick reminder that I'll be doing a presentation tonight at The Apple Store in Soho (view map), as part of the last ever New York City Photobloggers event, hosted by Jake Dobkin, graffiti documentarian and Gothamist publisher.

There's a fine photographer line-up for the evening:
Eliot Shepard Eliot Shepard

Jay Parkinson Dark Shapes Prowl

Joe Holmes Joe's NYC

Matt Weber Urban Photos

Red deLeon 990000

I'll be talking about the gallery, Hey, Hot Shot! and 20x200. I will have some nifty 20x200 stickers to hand out as well. (They really are swell... I cannot stop singing the praises of Little Jacket for the awesome logo and branding.)

So, yea... See you later? Hope so.
(There's drinks after too, around the corner at Merc Bar.)

Links: NYCPB, James Deavin, KBB

• New York City Photobloggers 10: Last, Best & Final | September 26, 2007
  I'm speaking at this event on Wednesday evening at the Apple store in Soho, along with some fine photographers like Eliot Shepard and Joe Holmes.
  (tags: nyc events photography 20x200 heyhotshot jenbekman)
• James Deavin | Tate
  Jen Bekman Gallery artist James Deavin has gone back across the pond. He's been shooting some great stuff at The Tate, both in the galleries and behind the scenes.
  (tags: jamesdeavin photography museums london tate jenbekman)
• KBB at the JB - a photoset on Flickr
  Photos from Kate Bingaman-Burt's show at Jen Bekman, from installation to opening reception. We all miss Kate at the JB and are hoping to lure her back for an artist's talk before the show is through.
  (tags: katebingaman katebingamanburt obsessiveconsumption exhibitions jenbekman gallery nyc)

Insomnia ' s a Heartbreaker

I keep coming across new articles to bookmark during my insomniac wanderings:

People who do not get enough sleep are more than twice as likely to die of heart disease, according to a large British study released on Monday...
Read more:
Lack of Sleep May Be Deadly

(I can't, I won't, I shan't believe it.)

20x200 Tuesday Edition: Mike Monteiro

Untitled by Mike Monteiro

This week's 20x200 work on paper, a reproduction of an untitled painting by my pal Mike Monteiro, is a personal favorite of mine. The simple message, You're Impossible, stands out in white in sea of thick black gouache brush strokes.

We've made 2 editions of the piece, both archival pigment prints on cotton rag paper. They'll be on sale on our site at 2pm (EDT) today:

200 of the smaller prints (8.5"x11") are available for $20 each.
20 of medium prints (13"x19") are available for $200 each.

As always, the original painting (gouache on paper, 19"x24") is available for purchase too. To inquire about purchasing the original, send an email to collector at 20x200 dot com.

Detail of Untitled by Mike Monteiro

It's tough to see the handmade-ness of it looking at a .jpg online, but the prints themselves are velvety and gorgeous - you can see the texture of the brushstrokes, and the irregularity of the borders of the letters. All that aside, it's just funny and true. All the people I like best are impossible at least some of the time - being able to tell them so with art delivers the message with love . I blogged it a while back for exactly that reason.

Mike has a documented a whole whole series of word paintings with his cell phone camera right here. Some paintings are considerably more offensive than others, but even the offensive ones are funny. They make me a little uncomfortable - I laugh, then there's some politically-correct induced discomfort and then I'm frustrated with myself for being so predictably PC. This sort of reaction is something Mr. Monteiro enjoys skewering, in life and in art. Being a grouchy East Coast fella living in sunny San Francisco gives him ample opportunity to do so.

There's more art coming to your Inbox tomorrow - we have a great photo queued up. I can't wait to tell you all about it! You can fill your hours of anticipation between now and then by browsing the current inventory.

Links: Dr. 2.0 + Little Jacket Love

• Jay Parkinson
  "I am a new kind of physician. I strictly make house calls either at your home or work... I specialize in young adults ages 18-40 w/o traditional health insurance." And the site design is groovy! And he takes photos too!
  (tags: health doctor web nyc)
• Little Jacket Visual Communication
  Little Jacket did the branding for 20x200. They are super extra awesome. Wait till you see the stickers.
  (tags: 20x200 design branding logos)

We ' re Animals

A photo by Richard Barnes from the series Animal Logic

Part of the cause of my insomnia is my over-active brain. Sometimes I lie there at night and I feel like my head is going to explode because I can't stop thinking and I'm sort of in love with my ability to do it. We're so lucky, with our brains and our reasoning and our thoughts and ideas and memories. Don't get me wrong, plenty of my insomnia caused by concerns of the humdrum variety: bills and paperwork and endless lists of things to do. But lately, a lot of it is a general level of amped-ness about ideas - projects I want to do, concepts I'm trying untangle, things I'm trying to articulate. There are a lot of things to think about, it's pretty cool, but since I've been consistently over-extended for months on end now, the only time I get to think is when I'm trying to sleep. Ergo: the insomnia.

This is an over-long preamble to something I've been thinking about a lot, namely the photos of Richard Barnes, posted by Mr. Alec Soth earlier this week. As I said over there in comments, I just can't stop thinking about that damn bear photo (above) and the entire Animal Logic series in general.

A photo by Richard Barnes from the series Animal Logic

Photos of museums, taxidermy, dioramas - persistent memes, almost always tiresome.* The Barnes stuff is different - it's like he's showing me really what it is, and utterly dispensing with the what it's pretending to be. Most work addressing this subject matter tends towards facile plays on manufactured/idealized realities. I don't need a photographer to show me those aspects of these environments - I can get there on my own.

In this work, there's no ironic distance, no clever posturing and it goes a lot further. He's peeling back the layers of what makes these tableaux so enduringly appealing and showing that our drive to construct them is actually the most interesting and fucked up part. He is capturing the in between moments - the stops along the way. The idea of removing a thing from it's natural environment transforming it into something entirely artificial and then re-inserting into another entirely fabricated "natural environment" and how that practice is so uniquely human and far afield from the animal instincts of the creatures being portrayed.

And that is something I think about a lot - how we are so lucky to have these brains of ours, with their logic and their emotions and it's so easy to hide there and forget (or at least try to) that when it comes down to it, we're animals too.

An exhibition of Barnes' work opens at Hosfelt Gallery tomorrow, Saturday, September 15th and runs through October 27th. I was all excited to attend the opening until I noticed that the reception is from 4pm - 6pm. I will most likely be here at the JB then, hanging out with the work of this season's Hot Shots.

* Not always tiresome, mind you. I've seen some stuff I like, and even shown some of it in the past.

Insomnia

My friend Luke told me a story the other day about something really mean I said once, in an elevator a long time ago, to another guy we were with. I have no recollection of it and it hardly seems like something I would say, but Luke has no reason to lie and he seems to remember it very clearly, and was in fact incredulous that I had no recognition.

I can vaguely remember the rattle of the old elevator in midtown and that it was crowded with just the three of us in it and the linoleum on the floor and the accordion gate, and even actually the smell of oil in gears and their grinding and the noises from the printing press coming from the floor above. (We were on our way to the printers, to proof postcards.) And in picturing the third guy standing there with us, I strongly recall all the things I still dislike about him and think, well he kind of had it coming. But I can't remember saying it, and I sort of wish I did.

What I remember about him was what started the conversation to begin with. I remember that this guy was really mean to me, and hurt my feelings and my pride. Luke countered with this story, saying that I gave as good as I got, maybe worse even. And it's a better version, in the end. In my version I was helplessly hurt, and in this one, I stood up for myself. Maybe I was a little mean, but hey the world's a tough place and believe me he had it coming. (I might not remember what I said or why, but trust me, he deserved it.)

I've been bookmarking insomnia articles when I can't sleep. One was about a recent study about how you can't regain sleep you've lost, which I've read before. I've never had any luck myself in catching up. Another talks about a theory that sleep helps us organize memories and make sense of emotional interactions:

...Researchers increasingly are focused on the role sleep plays in stabilizing and consolidating memories. Recent studies appear to catch the process of memory integration in action, and they hint at a neural nightlife that is richer than previously known. The sleeping brain not only sorts important facts from trivia, the findings suggest, but it also replays social interactions and carefully shades experiences with emotional color so they will be more comprehensible.

That's from an article in the NYT, The Necessity, and Elusiveness, of Sleep. Something to sleep on, if I can. Which I haven't been able to do thus far.

20x200 is here!

Screenshot of the 20x200 homepage. Check out the real thing.

It's still in Preview mode for a few days, but 20x200 is up and running. We've stocked up on the equivalent of 3 weeks worth of editions to give people an idea of the range of work we'll be showing. Live editions start next week.

Many, many, many thanks to Raul Gutierrez, David Yee, Alison Grippo, Jeff Kirsch and the fine folks at Little Jacket. I have never worked with such an amazing, talented crew of people.

We might still have some kinks and/or hiccups along the way, so please bear with us in these early days. If something doesn't seem to work quite right, or is confusing, or if you see a typo: do drop a note to hello AT 20x200 DOT com and let us know about it.

Beth Dow

Standard, Little Moreton Hall by Beth Dow

3 Trees, Blenheim Palace by Beth Dow

Mrs. Deane posted the lovely work of Beth Dow which looks so luscious and otherworldly, I can hardly stand it. (It also makes me think of the topiary maze from The Shining. I'm so pedestrian I know.)

I'd love to see these prints in person... I'm sure that much is lost in the translation to .jpg. The two images above are from her In the Garden series. The ones below are from her Fieldwork series which she recently exhibited at Franklin Artworks in Minneapolis.

Beth was a McKnight Fellow in 2004, putting her in the very fine company of many photographers I know and love.

Two Holes by Beth Dow

Broken Tree by Beth Dow

Links: Paddy has Answers, Alec has Questions

• Art Fag City » The Do’s and Don’ts of Press Releases for the Web
  Listen to Paddy! (And yes, the ArtCal resdesign looks great.)
  (tags: art pr press web internet galleries)
• alec soth - blog » Blog Archive » Can/should art be taught?
  The Soth takes up the topic of art education, reminding me that I never wrote my follow-up MFA post and perhaps obviating the need for it. (She says hopefully...)
  (tags: art education photography)