Hurrah! Let’s give a big welcome to artist Gretchen Scherer, the latest artist to join the 20x200 fam. For her first edition we selected Camera Shop, a gooey, inventive, colorful, mysterious ode to late-night New York.
Camera Shop by Gretchen Scherer
8"x10" ($24) | 11"x14" ($60) | 16"x20" ($240)
Did we mention the color? Because Gretchen’s amazing with paint. She’s a bold one, and not afraid to mix all the colors in the tube to create a dazzling display of neon mixed with earth tones.
Our Brooklyn-based painter also has a knack for capturing the nighttime, the green neon signs and shop-lights that light up the big city when there’s not a soul in sight. Here, cameras bounce off the page. TV screens wobble. It’s almost like we’re underwater, and the neon-green sales tags are the only thing keeping the cameras from swimming away. Camera Shop is full of the magic that comes from slowly gazing at the world around us—then re-imaging what we’re looking at.
In our fast-scrolling culture of Insta-gratification, sometimes we miss the details that come from taking a long, hard look. You get the feeling this window-gazing scene could’ve been snapped in a moment, but there’s an internal brightness—and liveliness—that no quick-click filter could ever make.
Gretchen’s said that when she’s in the studio, she paints as long as she can. And that persistence shows in her decade-long focus on the dynamism and beauty of what goes on when people aren’t around. From capturing discarded dresses just bursting with movement to “What the Mirror Sees,” a series of ornately decorated, empty domestic interiors—every little bit in the world around us gets its due. In a world of zombie formalism (Hey, Jerry Saltz!), a little bit of patience proves Gretchen’s not just another New York painter.
We believe in Gretchen’s boldness—that’s why we’re happy at long last to release this edition. (We've worked with Gretchen since 2012 when the Alexander Hotel in Indianapolis invited 20x200 to spruce up their hotel rooms with some fresh contemporary art.) With Camera Shop, we were thrilled to have such a great excuse to work together again—and hopefully again and again.
With art for everyone,
Jen Bekman + Team 20x200
