Wednesday Edition: Chad Muthard

The Drive with Christine by Chad Muthard

Wednesday greetings, my collector friends! I've been up since the crack of dawn, and am uncharacteristically ahead of schedule on my travel preparations. It's hard to imagine that I'll be an ocean away at this time tomorrow! I'm excited to expand my French horizons beyond the city limits of Paris, and I'm looking forward to catching up with friends and meeting a bunch of people whom I've long admired from afar. Of course, I'll also be polishing my 20x200 pitch — I'm always on the lookout for new artists to share with you. Speaking of sharing art... let's get to the business at hand, shall we?

The Drive With Christine has been in my life for a long time — I first exhibited this photograph at the gallery in the Fall 2006 edition of Hey, Hot Shot!, along with a couple of other curious and quirky images from Philadelphia-based photographer Chad Muthard. About a year after Chad's HHS! exhibition, I was pulling together a wall of art in my apartment for a photo shoot, and Christine was plucked from storage and placed just so. It's been hanging in my house ever since, oft admired and commented on by visitors. Now, thanks to the wonders of the interwebs and Chad's agreeability, I can share Christine with all of you.

I like Chad's out-of-the-frame creativity; he's always messing around and making stuff, and you never know for sure what he's up to. At the same time, you know how I feel about inaccessible art; what I love about Chad's approach is that he's not so arch that you feel like you're going to be left behind. There's enough room for your own imagination in addition to his. There's an up-to-no-good kid-stuff vibe that so draws me to this particular image. The incongruity of puzzle pieces planted on the face of a television set is akin to something my brother and I would've cooked up, left to our own devices on some rainy afternoon.

Work from his Lost in Thought 2007-08 series was just posted by our friends at I Heart Photograph, and more of his playful work can be seen on his sparely-designed website. And since the thrill of supporting a young artist is almost as great as that of owning a new artist's work, Chad points out on his blog that "a large amount of the money that I make from this sale will be put towards funding my current project The Desires of Fathers, which is being shot in Nevada and entails extensive travel and loads o'film."

Chad is the most recent of our talented crew of Hot Shots to release 20x200 editions, but he's certainly not the last! Our upcoming editions schedule is chock full photographers who have shown at Jen Bekman Gallery after being selected by our esteemed panelists. We've even got some contenders that we've featured on our blog in the mix.

We're currently accepting entries for 2009's first edition of Hey, Hot Shot! — we'll start reviewing the current crop of most accomplished contenders next month, right after the deadline which is Friday, May 1st — aka soon. If you've been considering it, there's no time like the present to gather your .jpgs and submit your work.

And with that, I'm off to The Hyères Festival! I'll touch down in NYC for just one day next week, then will be en route to Chicago to rendezvous with Jeffrey Teuton for the NEXT Art Fair. Our booth will be hung with a solo show of Sarah McKenzie's paintings, and we're bringing all kinds of additional arty goodness along in our brand new, custom-built portable flat file. Until next week, collector friends.