Minds/Mines Don't Care, 2008. Photogram C-Print by Rebecca Loyche

Rebecca Loyche is part of an all female artist collective called tART who have organized a salon show opening tomorrow evening. If you happen to be in New York, hop on over to Rabbit Hole Studio in DUMBO. An added bonus: you'll also be able to see two of Olafur Eliasson's wonderful waterfalls on your way.

Rabbit Hole Studio
33 Washington Street
Brooklyn, New York 11201
718.852.1500
July 3 - August 1, 2008
Opening: Thursday, July 3, 6-8pm

Gas Station by Tema Stauffer

For those of you nearer to the Potomac than the Hudson, Tema Stauffer will be showing work in DC at Randall Scott Gallery. The show will be up for two weeks, opening July 12th.

Randall Scott Gallery
1326 14th Street NW
Washington, DC 20005
202.332.0806
Gallery hours:
Tuesday by appointment
Wednesday-Saturday 11am-6pm

Left: Lazuli Bunting, 2008, gouache on paper
Right: Yellow Headed Blackbird, 2008, gouache on paper

Lastly, for all of you Texas roses, Carrie Marill is showing new gouache paintings she made while on an artist residency, cleverly titled Resident Birds. The work is up now through July 19, 2008 at Conduit Gallery in Dallas.

Conduit Gallery
1626 C Hi Line Dr.
Dallas, TX 75207
214.939.0064
Gallery hours: Tue-Sat 10-5

UPDATE: Carrie Marill just got a nice write up about this show in the Dallas Morning News. Read the article here. Congrats to you, Ms Marill!

http://www.christinamuraczewski.com/
If you happen to be one of our dedicated Los Angeles collectors be sure to stop by 20x200 artist Christina Muraczewsi's space at Open Studio 2008.

May 3rd-4th 12pm-6pm
Santa Fe Art Colony
2401 South Santa Fe Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90058

Christiana's prints on 20x200 are almost sold out but there are still a few medium and large sized prints of Daisy and Polly available. The Polly original is also still available.

Muraczewski has just launched a brand new website.

Someone browsing a piece by Dan Perjovschi at the Armory Show, photo by Harry Swartz-Turfle

Friend of 20x200 Paddy Johnson's L Magazine column this week is on how art fairs are actually making it harder to see art:

Every time a series of works is exhibited for the first time at an art fair, its sale shrinks the public viewing time, while charging us for something we’d have previously seen for free. Sure, this art may be seen again on the secondary market or in exhibition, but tracking down a complete suite of works that may have been sold to a number of different clients often requires more resources than a space has at its disposal.

That's not something I'd ever thought about, but the increasing popularity and importance of art fairs, with their pricey admissions and exclusive off-site parties and viewings—Art Basel and its Miami offspring being the two most prestigious/notorious examples—mean that more than ever before, art is making it way into the hands of moneyed collectors without ever being seen by the public, i.e. the likes of you and me. Sad.

Untitled, Winter 2006 by Gregory Crewdson

One of my most vivid memories from my first few months in New York is standing in front of Gregory Crewdson's Twilight series at the Guggenheim and finding bits and pieces of myself in the photographs; despite being too perfectly staged, set in places I'd never go and featuring no one who looks anything like me, there was something so primal about the loneliness and longing in all the unerringly lit scenes that spoke to the part of me terrified I wasn't going to make any friends or get anywhere in the city. It's such a strange, painful thing to remember, and I guess it's why I have such a love/hate relationship with his work—I appreciate the beauty of the photographs and I enjoy the exercise of making elaborate stories in my head around the moment they present, but they always leave me so cold inside.

Having said all of that, I'm excited to see Crewdson's new show at Luhring Augustine here in NYC, Beneath the Roses, which opened this past week and runs through May 3rd. Amy Larocca talked to Crewdson about his process and approach for New York Magazine recently; the most interesting thing to me in the piece is finding out that someone who creates photographs with such a cinematic feel—using about the same manpower as a film crew to make his work, even— has zero desire to ever direct a movie himself. He says, "I think in terms of single images. My work is profoundly connected to that tradition. I really don’t know what happens before or after an image. I really have no clue."

Hyper No 04 by Denis Darzacq

The city of Fremantle in Australia is currently hosting the largest photography festival in the southern hemisphere: FotoFreo 2008 is a "biennial international festival of photography lasting a full month to showcase the work of photographers, to generate an awareness of and a discussion about their work, and to create a forum for the exploration of ideas and issues relating to the practice and art of photography." It's a very long and horribly expensive series of plane rides from New York to Fremantle, which is unfortunate because FotoFreo's list of core exhibitions looks amazing, there are so many photographers whose work I'd love to see in person.

Chief among them is Denis Darzacq, whose work I first encountered through his 2007 World Press Photo prize-winning series La Chute, in which he captures young people seemingly falling at high speed, in the moment before they hit the ground. The photograph above is from his show Hyper et Casqués, now open at the Perth Centre for Photography; "For Hyper," Darzacq says, "I asked young dancers and sportsmen to jump for the camera, inspiring themselves from the aggresive setting of the hypermarket as well as the body language found in mannierist paintings, unreal and exaggerated, futile. A form of resistance against an increasingly rampant consumer society."

Other highlights: Agnès Dherbeys' photos of the ongoing turmoil in East Timor, Chen Nong's hand-colored black and white prints of his recreated terra cotta armies at the Three Gorges Dam, and Wang Gang's portraits of the Yi people in remote China.

Installation Shot from Obsessive Consumption on view at Jen Bekman Gallery until October 27.

Please join us at Jen Bekman Gallery this Saturday, October 20 , from 3pm-5pm, where we'll be hosting an artist talk and book signing from this week's 20x200 artists, Michael Perry and Kate Bingaman-Burt.

Kate Bingaman-Burt will be talking about her current exhibition, Obsessive Consumption. She'll be joined by Michael Perry author of Hand Job: A Catalog of Type, which happens to include some work by KBB herself.

Hand Job: A Catalog of Type published by Princeton Architectural Press.

Kate and Mike will talk about art, design, typography and books. Copies of the book will be available for purchase during the event. If you'd like to reserve a copy in advance, send an email to rsvp@jenbekman.com.

Check out Mike's drawing and Kate's photo. [Her superb illustration is still available for purchase.]

You can read up on the editions on the 20x200 blog.

See you Saturday!

Postcard Image from Obsessive Consumption.