Jen Bekman Gallery blog

Art Benefit For Team in Training at JBG

Untitled by Anna Ullman

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!

Land Use Survey Reviewed in Dart

Indian Beach Surf, Oregon by Ian Baguskas

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.

Artlog / Collect + LES Artcrawl

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.

Suburban Ponderings

Rotations: Moore Estates #5 by Matthew Moore

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.

Happy 4th of July + Summer Hours

#6237 by Todd Hido

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!

Vince Aletti Reviews Gregory Krum in The New Yorker

Offering by Gregory Krum

Gregory Krum's ...Practice..., on view at the gallery for just one more week till Sunday, June 27th, has been reviewed by Vince Aletti in The New Yorker, available to online (now) and in the forthcoming print issue of the magazine.

Aletti writes:

There are pictures of gravestones in the snow, artfully decorated interiors, and what appear to be night skies dense with stars. But a series of twenty-four unframed color photographs hung in a grid across from these images brings the exhibition into focus. Collectively titled “Offering,” they’re shots of the coconut-leaf baskets of flowers and food left at various public sites in Bali as gifts to the gods. Seen from above, these colorful packages are a more exotic form of Irving Penn’s urban debris, but even more allusive and alluring. Through June 27.

More Images Coming At You From Today ' s Draw-A-Thon

Kate Bingaman-Burt Draws My Dave and Buster ' s Card

(yeah no comments on that one)

Drawing a Google Ad Purchase

JBG Closed for Memorial Day Weekend + (A few Art Review Drawings to Hold You Over)

The gallery will be closed from Saturday, May 29 through Wednesday June 2, 2010 for the Memorial Day Holiday. To tide over your artful appetite over the weekend, I found these AMAZING (ok, in my opinion) illustrations in Art Review's May issue last night. I apologize in advance for the low quality scans, though I am pretty sure that that this low tech presentation is the best way to display them. (If anyone can tell me who produced these drawings, I would be ever-so-thankful! I can't find any information about the artist, and literally cut them out of the magazine in excitement, so I could scan and post them here before taking note of whom to credit.)

Next week, once you're fully rejuvenated, come by for Gregory Krum's exhibit, ...Practice..., on view till June 27th. Till then, enjoy the sun!