June 2010 Archives

Team Picture by Keith Shore

Tuesday-that-feels-like-Monday greetings, collector friends. I don't know how things are in your particular corner of the world, but it's definitely summer in this here city. I stayed put over the long weekend, reveling in the city's emptiness, catching up with friends and on gym time, and polishing my Tumblr to a high gleam. Over-socialized as I've been as of late, I also spent a lot of time on my own, daydreaming, thinking back and looking forward.

Today's edition—Team Picture by Keith Shore—provided fodder for all of the above. I optimistically vowed to get a jump on the newsletter well ahead of time (did not) and found the contemplation of Shore's uniformed denizens simultaneously reminding me of the day-camp summers of my childhood and of the World Cup madness that's about to ensue. And then on top of that, there are the many exhibitions and publications where I've come across Keith's work while catching up with the far-flung creators of our ever-growing 20x200 community.

It seems quite a lot to tie together coherently, and I confess that my creative juices are flowing a bit slowly on this particular Tuesday. So instead of belaboring over how it's all connected, I'll let the links do the talking and bid you all a fond adieu 'til tomorrow, when I'll be back with a funny and fantastic photo edition.

+ There's this interview with Mr. Shore.

+ I'm pretty sure Keith had me at first bearded portrait, spotted on My Love for You.

+ Then our friend Jeff posted more of his work on Booooooom a little over a year ago.

+ And this post about his new work on Lost At E Minor followed soon after.

+ Of course, Keith's work is pretty in print too, as found here in Dwell, and here, on the cover of Arkansas by John Brandon, published by McSweeney's.

+ I don't know where to begin with the World Cup craziness that kicks off this month. So I'll leave you with that Wieden + Kennedy Nike ad everyone's been talking about and a little more about the making of it.

+ We also happen to think that Keith's edition is one of many that a father's likely to love, which will come in handy since Father's Day is just around the corner.

Ringside by Jason Burch

Happy Wednesday collectors! It's Sara here to introduce a photo edition that we've been looking forward to releasing for months. I know that when everyone at 20x200 HQ huddles around the proofs of a new print, we're on to something good.

The bunch of us here represent a broad range of tastes in art, so it's not often that we all take an interest in the same image. But when this proof was unfurled, everyone wanted to take a closer look, and inevitably, every looker laughed—then lingered to look some more. Since then, Jen and I have been fielding "when are we going to release that one-black-and-white-image-with-the-two-guys-fighting-in-front-of-the-TV-set?" from all four corners of the office. Without further ado, here it is.

Ringside is deceptively simple and smart. One of a series of photomontages by Jason Burch, it's part of a larger experimental practice in art-making. As in the first two photographs we released from him, Natural Selections XI and Natural Selections XIII, Jason's interest in the rich tradition—from Hannah Hoch to David Hockney—of creating and re-creating meaning in photographs by plainly altering, omitting and adding information is clear. But where Jason's other images are more cerebral, Ringside is both sophisticated and a little silly—offering a potent one-two punch (couldn't resist).

Composed of just two carefully selected and layered images, Ringside is a Mad Men-ish mise-en-scène full of alternate realities—a perfect counterpart to Jessica Bruah's Untitled #6. Jessica staged her own set but Jason's images were pre-existing, culled from a home catalogue and a 1918 book on practical self-defense. While the boxing figures on TV look as if they could be leaning in for a kiss were it not for those gloves, the two men in the foreground aren't holding back.

Clever and a little nostalgic, this print makes a good gift for dad—even if (especially if!) he's never been one to get your thing for art. I'm betting upon getting this, he will crack a grin. After he laughs, you can impress him and tell him all about—as Jen likes to call it—the thinky art stuff—if you want. And maybe, just maybe, he'll start seeing it the way you do. At the least, he will be inclined, like the rest of us here, to take a longer look.

I don't sleep very restfully.

In order to get what constitutes in my world as a good night's sleep, there are several important criteria that have to be met: the room itself needs to be a near sensory-deprivation chamber, completely dark, with no loud noises (white noise is okay). It can't be too hot or too cold. I can't be inordinately anxious or completely stretched thin with deadlines and commitments, else my brain will spin for an hour or two before sleep, working its way through to-do lists, creating new ones, the superego in overdrive because of what it didn't get done but should have, and how I could have done certain things better that day than I did. The event of powering down the mind is complex and does not adhere to any neat or predictable timeline. And for all of that, even when such conditions are met, I wake up far too easily and frequently throughout the night.

Robert Knight knows these fits and knots of complexity well, having embarked on a multimedia project on the subject of sleep. Using a combination of layered photographs, audio and video recordings, he has created portraits of sleepers over time that speak as much about the notion of rest as they do on the sleepers themselves. From his artist's statement on the Sleepless project:

Sleepless examines the contradiction between our expectations about sleep and its nocturnal actuality.

[It] reveals a state of restlessness through the ethereal and translucent bodies which are captured during long-exposure nighttime shots. The resultant images are nighttime narratives—stories of our night's sleep which suggest a contemporary sleep crisis in our society.

Untitled, 4 hours 15 minutes, from the series Sleepless by Robert Knight

Untitled, 6 hours 35 minutes, from the series Sleepless by Robert Knight

These images are not ones of sweet sleep, or depictions that readily describe something specific about each particular sleeper. They successfully accomplish what Knight writes was his goal all along: a story about sleep itself, which is not an account about sublime subconscious reprieve, but rather the fact that in sleep we are often not at rest, not powered-down and not peacefully dreaming. While these images are not what I'd call serene, I take a certain comfort in looking at them and knowing that I'm not alone in my unrest.

If you're in Boston in June and July, you can experience this multi-dimensional and layered study firsthand at the Gallery Kayafas. Images from recent other series of Robert Knight's work (Dwelling and My Boat is So Small) have recently been acquired by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. A complete portfolio of Robert Knight's work can be seen on his website.

SLEEPLESS— An exhibition of recent photographs/audio/video by Robert Knight
June 4 - July 17, 2010

Gallery Kayafas
450 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA
Receptions: Friday, June 4, 5:30-7:30 pm & Friday, July 9, 5:30-7:30 pm

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short-and-sweet recap of 20x200 news and links!

20x200 News

• Over on Facebook we put together an album of how collectors (like you!) are framing their 20x200 editions. We've got quite a few awesome examples so far, but we're looking for even more. Send us a picture of your wall by posting it to our FB Wall, TwitPic'ing it, or emailing it to casey [at] 20x200 [dot] com!


• Robert Knight's series Sleepless is currently on view at Gallery Kayafas in Boston.


• JBP's Jonathan Melber (co-author of the book Art/Work) is giving a workshop at the School of Visual Arts on Saturday, June 12th about "10 Things Every Artist Should Know." The workshop will cover "professional practice, including finding grants and residencies, understanding contracts and copyrights, and courting galleries and non-profits."


• Thanks to MailChimp (the people who power our newsletter delivery) for sending us these awesome hats! We are taking turns sporting them in the office.


• What does Andrew Zuckerman trust? Find out in a series of beautifully shot series of videos on The Anthropologist.


• We hear that Mike Monteiro is taking over Brooklyn Museum's @1stFans Twitter Feed for the month of June. You can see a preview of his artist project and get more info on how to access the member's only feed on our Tumblr. Mike promises that this will be, "some kind of fun." Uh oh...?


• Eager to get out of town, and looking for somewhere to go? Over on the Jen Bekman blog, we suggest an art-filled weekend road trip to Massachusetts, including stops to check out work by Holly Lynton and Sol Lewitt among many others.


• The Paris Review blog interviews Jane Mount about her Ideal Bookshelves.


• Over at Hey, Hot Shot! we've announced Aperture Publisher Lesley A. Martin will be our Guest Curator for the 3rd month of competition. She'll select one photographer who applies by June 17th to win seven outstanding photography books. Every contender who applies by that date will be automatically considered for the award! Sound good? Send us your best photos.
  

New Editions

Ringside by Jason Burch	Team Picture by Keith Shore

Both of these new editions make great Father's Day gifts; art does have a way of warming the heart, after all!

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200 or our Facebook!

One of the most genius and not-too-pushy forms of self promotion for artists that I've ever come across has to be Kickstarter. If you've got an idea for a project that you need to generate some on-the-fly financing for, Kickstarter gives you a forum to do just that. You can lay out your case, show a video of what you're doing or are prepared to do, offer rewards and incentives, and provide updates as to how the process is going. The only catch is also some profound motivation for finishing what you start: Kickstarter is all or nothing funding, meaning: if a project creator doesn't reach their full funding goal in the time specified, then no one that pledged money is delivered to the creator.

But you might be surprised at how enthusiastic people can be when you crowd-source your inspiration, drive and energy. Below are some quick previews of some Kickstarter projects we're following, some that have already met their goals and some that are very much within grasp. Take a look at the project homepages and see if any of them strike a chord with you; you may be superstitiously or spiritually inclined to rack up a little art karma for $10 or more:

Camper Kart by Kevin Cyr

Inspired by the resourcefulness and autonomy described in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, Kevin Cyr was compelled to make a piece of functional, habitable sculpture that he dubbed "Camper Kart," which we've mentioned a few times here on this blog. Ultimately meant to be a mobile unit built into a shopping cart, Cyr declared his ambition to be no less than the construction of the "ubiquitous urban object." Cyr set his project goal at $2000, and offered up donation incentives at several price points (ranging from a woven patch at the $10 level to a 16x20" archival print at the highest level of $175). In around 6 weeks his goal was met, and Kevin's Camper Kart dreams were realized. You can see the finished piece, as well as other amazing sculptures and paintings he's created, on Kevin's website.

FV Meridian; Wrights Wharf, Portland, Maine by Mark Marchesi

Mark Marchesi's Kickstarter project is about his ability to continue a documentary project of Portland Maine's working waterfront. He is seeking a total of $2,000 funding in order to buy materials needed to continue work (the analog has become less cost-effective than ever, and Mark shoots with a large format camera). From his statement:

As the fisherman grow more scarce and their vessels rust at the wharf an entire network of processors, wholesalers and shipping agents also suffer. As the revenue stream that this network produces dries to a trickle, the wharves that they occupy become vulnerable to rezoning and at risk of being lost to the fishery forever.

Right now it looks like parts of the waterfront will be preserved for the commercial fishing industry for a long time to come. But the industry as a whole is in such a precarious position nothing is certain. The documentary project I am working on is an important one. I try to believe that fish stocks will bounce back and a way of life will not be lost. But in case of the worst, this project will at least preserve Maine's oldest surviving industry on film.

Mark's project has 16 days to go with Kickstarter's all-or-nothing funding, and you have just got to love the incentive offered at the pledge level of $50 or more:

A quart of home cooked lobster and haddock chowder made with locally caught seafood purchased on the Portland Waterfront AND an 11" x 14" limited edition print from this series in an archival matte AND a "Preserve Working Waterfronts" magnet.

Learn more about Mark's project on his Kickstarter pageor at his blog.

We've written about Rachel Sussman and Jon Gitelson, our last two Kickstarter artists before, but both are in the closing days of their project so it's your last chance to donate, receive prizes from each artist for supporting their work, and rack in that good karma for helping someone realize a dream.

Jon Gitelson has already met his funding goal for his book project, Scavenger Hunt, but it's worth mentioning that at a $25 pledge (which you can still make on the site), you'll receive an 8"x10" signed print from the book, which is a steal. For double that you get a double-down gift of any 10"x16" spread from the book of your choice.

Spruce Gran Picea, 9,550 years old, Fulufjället, Sweden by Rachel Sussman

Rachel Susmann's project is so righteously awesome, multidisciplinary, collaborative, exotic and romantic all at once. Teaming up with biologists, she's been researching the world's oldest living organisms (2,000 years old and older!) and traveling to places near and far to document them. Her project scope has been ambitious, as is her funding goal of $10,000. With just over two weeks to go, Rachel is nearly within reach of her project's total realization. She only needs $354 more to be able to find and photograph 5,000 year old moss in the Antarctic peninsula, find a 2,300 year old Banyan Fig tree in Sri Lanka, find up to 43,000 year old clonal shurbs in Tanzania and Australia, and go under the sea in Spain to locate and document 100,000 year old clonal sea grass. Rachel's also offering several incentive gifts for various donation levels as well; visit her Kickstarter page for more details, or her blog for more frequent project updates.

If you've got a little cash on hand, helping one of these artists realize their project dreams is a really worthy way to spend it. And if you've got a great idea yourself, why don't you get busy with your own Kickstarter project?

Filter Samples by Jessica Eaton

What could be better to jumpstart your brain on a Monday than a cup of coffee and a splash of color? Psychology Today reports that "viewing art for 40 minutes reduces stress as effectively as 5 hours of postwork decompression." Well, we've got a ton of art for you to look at! Releasing at least two new prints a week, it's easy to forget (in our newsletter-writing frenzy) that we have a virtual flat-file filled with beautiful editions from days past.

Browsing by color is one of the lesser known but most exciting ways to browse 20x200. Using our color browser, we took a scroll through our archives to rediscover hidden gems across the spectrum:

Verlag 3 by Carol Padberg

See more RED →

Untitled (Geese, London) by Dana Miller

See more GREEN →

La Paz, Bolivia by Stefan Ruiz

See more BLUE →

Photographer's Dilemma by Tatsuro Kiuchi

See more YELLOW →

Untitled (My bad) by Mike Monteiro

See more BLACK →

Polly by Christina Muraczewski

See more BROWN →

Mossball by Don Hamerman

See more PINK →

Lamb No. 3 by Sharon Montrose

See more WHITE →

Nonsensical Infographic No. 3 by Chad Hagen

See more PURPLE →

Lovebirds by Lisa Congdon

See more ORANGE →

The Pinetum, Wakehurst Place by Beth Dow

See more BLACK & WHITE →

In Mass Continuum, William Swanson's solo exhibition currently on view at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist paints his canvases with lurid, yet toxic greens, oranges and yellows, that reek—pleasantly, at least to the eye—of nature, architecture and manufacturing converging upon each other. This is William's "reflected reality," intertwining nature with architecture, from perspectives both observed and imagined. Landscapes and buildings bleed into one another, exist in partial form, and sometimes just float in two-dimensional space, as though usurped by chemicals, seeping in from the edges.

Terraform Complex, 2010 by William Swanson

The gallery writes of the paintings:

The works examine propagation of flora within vacated public spaces including halls, corridors and atriums. The empty spaces stand as skeletal frameworks holding grids of light fixtures, sections of walls and partitions. These structures indicate a once active corporate or retail infrastructure now abandoned and stripped of its original function.

... While Swanson’s earlier works begged the question as to whether concrete walls and barriers obstruct the growth of the natural world, the new works allow the viewer to speculate whether the environment has perhaps flourished in spite of artificial materials being set upon it.

Upon looking at these pieces, one can't help but think of the oil spill, overtaking the Gulf Coast, and the alarming shades of orange and green, rising to the surface as oil pulses beneath. Havoc is being wrought below the surface, yet the natural world persists—we hope. In this sense, William's work might be seen as vaguely optimistic, suggesting that no matter the industry, or the concrete and fluorescent barriers we erect, nature exists as part of our past and our future. It pervades our environment and becomes part of whatever landscape dares to challenge it, creating an entirely new palette defined by its adaptation.

Installation view of Mass Continuum

Mass Continuum
Walter Maciel Gallery
On view through July 2nd, 2010
2642 S. La Cienega Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90034
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 11:00 a.m. - 6:00 p.m.

William's edition, Chemical Schematic, which also marries architecture with a reflected sunset of fictionalized pinks and purples, is available on 20x200.

Untitled (300x404) by Greg Allen

Good day collectors! It's been nearly a year since we started planning today's edition. So, while I'm oft inclined to say that we've been talking about an artist and/or his or her work forever, we really have been talking about Greg Allen and Untitled (300 x 404) FOREVER.

From the beginning: In May of last year, internet-y, arty and sharp-thinking Greg responded quickly when Slate was (absurdly) denied the use of Untitled (Cowboy) 2003 by Richard Prince for a slide-show essay on the MoMA exhibition in which the work was featured. Prince's image was appropriated from a Marlboro campaign photographed by Sam Abell. So, following in Prince's footsteps, Greg pulled a low-res jpeg off the web, gave it a new title, Untitled (300 x 404), and offered it to Slate, as his own work. WHa-at? Let me allow our resident copyright expert, Mr. Jonathan Melber explain:

Greg Allen's 300x404 is a nice example of what Richard Prince, and appropriation artists in general, often do: start with someone else's work and present it in a new context, transformed in some way, to make a different statement from the original work's. Prince took Marlboro ads that exploited the myth of the American cowboy to sell more cigarettes, and re-presented them in a way that challenged our notions of authenticity. Allen has taken Prince's work and digitally manipulated and re-sized it, creating a new work that raises questions about the reuse of images online, fair use in the digital age and copyright policy in general.

At yesterday's 20x200 team meeting Jonathan gave us all an opinionated lawyerly, ok, lawyerly AND opinionated, talking-to as our extended round-table conversation surfaced a lot of divergent ideas about Prince's work, the issue at Slate, and Greg's resulting 20x200 edition. Jonathan isn't usually so involved in the details of an edition but this so happens to be his particular area of interest and expertise. The team conversation was layered—as information and details were relayed, almost like a game of telephone—which reminded me of the subtle, and sometimes not-so-subtle changes, that images go through, both in terms of visual aesthetics and meaning, as they travel through different contexts.

In Untitled (300 x 404), the image becomes less and less like Prince's version as it is printed in bigger and bigger sizes. As you'll see in the details below, the size of the pixels increase as the print gets bigger, further and further distorting the made-for-web 300 pixel by 404 pixel version. The 40x30 off-menu edition of two is a garish but gorgeous day-glo of a lo-fi Western fantasy. And with that, I'm done telling 20x200 and Greg Allen's cowboy story, so it's time for me to ride off into the sunset.

Artists, patrons of the arts, and Claire from LOST (among other celebrities) all headed up to The Whitney last night for the annual Art Party benefit. While the guests missed out on the premiere of Bravo's new reality show A Work of Art, they were treated instead to a series of "action art" performances by artists who have previously attended the Whitney's Independent Study Program, and given the opportunity to bid on artworks donated by a star-studded roster of artists. Not one...not two...but three 20x200 artists (Jonathan Allen, Curtis Mann, and Lawrence Weiner) generously donated works of their own to the auction. All proceeds from the night will go to furthering The Whitney's educational programming and Independent Study Program.

Red Carpet Ride, 2009, by Jonathan Allen

Cube, hover, #4 (Beirut), 2010, by Curtis Mann

Drawings from Venice Suite, 2002, by Lawrence Weiner

Untitled (cowboy) by Richard Prince

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short-and-sweet recap of 20x200 news and links!

20x200 News

• We anticipated some strong reactions to Greg Allen's edition (appropriated from the image above) and we've been enjoying the dialogue it has sparked, see: Dinosaurs and Robots, Blake Andrews, Art Fag City, Hyperallergic, C-Monster, and everyone on Twitter.
• The Whitney Art Party auction was held earlier this week, and three 20x200 artists (Jonathan Allen, Curtis Mann, and Lawrence Weiner) generously donated works of their own to benefit the museum's educational programs.
• A show of Jeff Lewis's grid drawings opens at We-Are-Familia in Brooklyn on June 11th.
• William Swanson's solo exhibition Mass Continuum is on view at Walter Maciel Gallery in LA through July 2nd.
• Did you know you can browse 20x200 by color? We plucked some colorful favorites from our virtual flat file to demonstrate how cool color browsing is.
• Many JBP artists are ambitious project-starters, using Kickstarter to fund their creative projects. The latest two are Kevin Cyr and Mark Marchesi, whose projects we posted about earlier this week.
• Happy end of the birthday-week to our own Sara Distin and David Yee, two of the hard-working people behind the editions!
• We've added nine new submissions to our "Show Us Your Frames!" album on Facebook. As Jen says, "you guys are aces!"

New Editions

EMPATHIC INVENTORY (Sea Creatures 2010) by Ed Baynard	Untitled (300 x 404) by Greg Allen

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200 or our Facebook!

ny.10.#01 by Jennifer Sanchez

Good day collector friends! As I sit here to write, it's actually Monday night, a full twelve-plus hours before we are due to release today's new print upon you. To what do we owe this late night scribing session? An early summer eve's spell? Nope, though it is crisp, breezy and cool—the type of evening you don't want to end because you know once the sun rises the air will be unrecognizably altered—warmer, denser and decidedly less fresh. And with back-to-back (but art full!) meetings, tomorrow's hours will spin too fast to pen a word in edge-wise. So under the tiniest sliver of a moon, I'm mustering all of my industriousness in the spirit of Jennifer Sanchez, a painter so productive that I'm pretty sure she never sleeps.

Today's edition, ny.10.#01 is the eighth from Ms. Sanchez that we've featured on 20x200, a small testament to her admirable work ethic. It's not just painting that she's up to—she works hard at making work and making sure the work gets seen. She's also always out and about, taking in exhibitions and sharing what's caught her eye. That she's been at it as long as I've known her—she was one of the first, along with Youngna Park, that we featured—and she shows no signs of stopping, is one of the things that makes me so proud of 20x200. Over the years, we, that's you, you collectors out there, and me and team 20x200, have helped to support Jennifer on this brave endeavor of being an artist. It takes fortitude and a certain kind of optimism, the same kind that gleams through Jennifer's works.

Her abstract canvases are ceaseless in their energy. In swirls and curls of color, layered paint and graphite, she spins her own orbs and slivers of moons, suns and never-ending nights and days. But this eve, I fear, is getting on and I'm so looking forward to some rest, and, come sun-up, this newsletter's arrival in your inbox.

I'm excited too for Wednesday when we'll have a not-to-miss edition from a photographer who now calls the country of World Cup headquarters home. Have a guess? It's no secret, we revealed his name in a round of Twitter hangman over the weekend but to see the world he's created, you'll have to be right here, just then, when the clock strikes 11:00 a.m. EST again.

Psst! If Father's Day has snuck up on you, see our Gift Guide for Dads and get your order in quick!

Album, 2010 by Clare Grill

Amuse Bouche, one of two summer shows that will be exhibited concurrently at Sloan Fine Art, features petite works that give viewers just a nibble of the styles of nine gallery artists. Amuse-bouche typically refer to single, bite-sized hors d'oeuvres that can't be ordered off the menu and are instead brought to you by the chef. In this case, the chef—the gallery's curators—introduce a range of sculpture and painting, including Album, by Clare Grill. Amuse Bouche is located in the Project Room of the gallery, with a second show, Nice to Meet You located in the Main Gallery. There is a reception for both exhibitions tonight, June 16th, from 6 to 8 p.m.

Amuse Bouche and Nice to Meet You
Opening reception: Wednesdya, June 16th, 6 - 8 p.m.
Sloan Fine Art
128 Rivington Street (@ Norfolk)
New York, NY 10002
212.477.1140

Place of the upside down by Roger Ballen

PLEASE NOTE PURCHASING LIMITS BELOW.

Good morning collectors! It's Sara today, proud and humbled to introduce you to the work of Roger Ballen.

Ballen was one of the first photographers I studied in high school. At that time, he had about twenty years of work under his belt and had published his third book, Platteland, a collection of photo-journalistic/documentary photographs of rural South Africa.* A few years later, in 2001, he published Outland, which departed from factual representations—in as much as a photograph can depict "fact," which is another discussion all together—into a realm that is described more by the unknown than the known. Place of the upside down, from 2004, is one of these images.

His work was—and still is—like nothing I had seen. It's strange, somber and seductive. A geologist by trade, when Ballen started taking pictures, he tapped into something that, seemingly, had been lying below the surface all along. His work does not linger at superficial levels—this is the thing so enchanting and terrifying about it. Sooty blacks, chalky whites and about every shade of gray in between, smolder and smudge to form half-dreamy, half-nightmarish images that stumble into the subconscious—an often uncomfortable confrontation. It's not something that's easy to talk (or write!) about but Ballen speaks honestly and openly about this in a Lens Culture Conversation. His forthrightness is a product of his rightness; these kinds of thoughts reside somewhere in all of us and recognizing that is probably one of the healthiest things we can do. It's, of course, a little clichè but we wouldn't appreciate lightness without some knowledge of darkness—we need both for the other to exist.

After knowing his work through books for about a decade, I had the opportunity to view Ballen's photographs in person when I moved to New York: first in the 2008 New York Photo Festival and then about a year later at Gagosian Gallery. While browsing books is an intimate experience, seeing Ballen's prints is bewildering. In Place of the upside down, orientation is lost—is it sideways? day or night?—and space is flattened into those gritty grays, and what is constructed or drawn versus found is not known. Any sense of distance is stripped away and the world that Ballen has created doesn't seem so far from the one you're standing in. Every crack in a wall, any stray mark, fallen branch or wandering pet begins to mean something else. If you're adverse to something you're seeing (like a rat), it's strangely harder to get away from—you can't just turn the page—and you must keep on looking.

*(Like Todd Hido's—whose nearly sold-out print was released last month—Ballen's books are sought after; many early editions are entirely unavailable.)

PLEASE NOTE THE FOLLOWING PURCHASING LIMITS:
- We're limiting collectors to two 10"x8" and 14"x11" prints each, and only one per collector for prints 20"x16" and larger.
- This edition is not eligible for any discount or promotion.
- We reserve the right to refund purchases if we determine that a single collector has acquired multiple prints or used a discount code.
- We are also offering an off-menu edition of five 40"x30" prints. Please email collector@20x200.com for more information.

Copyright is a messy issue, especially for artists, designers, inventors and other creative tinkerers. While copyright laws theoretically help and protect artists and designers, in recent years, as information has become easier to access and remix, these laws have become a burden on creators. Creative Commons (an organization whose name you have probably heard around the web, especially on sites like Flickr and, ahem, this one) is "a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright." By providing the licenses and tools to "mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry" they are empowering a generation of artists to share, remix and reuse.

Get Excited and Make Things by Matt Jones

If you've bought a print of Get Excited and Make Things by Matt Jones, you've already donated to Creative Commons, as the proceeds from that benefit edition go to CC! (There are just 100 prints remaining so consider taking one of the last ones!)

In fact, there's never been a better time to donate to CC because they just launched their new Catalyst Grants program, which is seeking to raise $100,000 to distribute as grants to "innovators, educators and researchers" working around the globe towards goals like open educational resources.

You can visit the Creative Commons website to learn more, including how to use their tools and how to donate.

Kate Bingaman-Burt at the Obsessive Consumption Draw-a-thon at Jen Bekman Gallery yesterday

Welcome back to the Week in Review, a (somewhat) short-and-sweet recap of 20x200 news and links!

20x200 News

• The inimitable Kate Bingaman-Burt did a 6-hour draw-a-thon at Jen Bekman Gallery yesterday! See lots of pictures: here, here, here, and here.


• Thanks to Daily Candy for featuring 20x200 in their Father's Day gift guide! Photographer Liz Kuball told us that her and her sisters bought their dad this print by Landon Nordeman.


• ...speaking of Father's Day, we have a gift guide especially for dad. You weren't really considering getting him another tie, were you?


• Don't miss this great interview with Jeff Lewis about art, India, and acid.


• Clare Grill is included in a show of petite works titled Amuse Bouche, on view at Sloan Fine Art


• Creative Commons, an organization you've probably already heard of (and maybe even donated to by buying Matt Jones' Get Excited and Make Things benefit edition!) just launched their new Catalyst Grants program to spread the virtues of remix and reuse across the globe.


• Thanks to CasaCullen for the great writeup about 20x200. We especially love that they picked up on our Hunch widget that can help you find art by answering a series of simple questions.


• Lisa Congdon's epic project A Collection a Day was featured on Flavorpill's Daily Dose on Thursday!


• Thanks to JustFabulous for featuring out Father's day prints as "the most chic sports related art" they've seen.


• We're hiring! Are you an obsessively organized, art-loving task masker? We're looking for an office manager/executive assistant to join our team. Head over to our jobs page for all the details.


• The great debate over Greg Allen's edition, Untitled (300x404), continues on Art Fag City.


• A huge week for Rachel Sussman, who was featured in the Wall Street Journal for her Oldest Living Things in the World project and will be speaking at TED Global Oxford. Congratulations Rachel!


• Austin Kleon's book of Newspaper Blackout Poems is featured on Book By Its Cover.


• Mark Ulriksen has updated his website, with awesome features like a tour of his studio and new work. Go check it out!

New Editions

ny.10.#10 by Jennifer Sanchez	Place of the upside down by Roger Ballen

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200 or our Facebook!

Things Happen by Wendy MacNaughton

Summer swelter-y Tuesday greetings, collector friends! I'm really excited about today's edition by one Wendy MacNaughton—a diversely talented, globe-trotting woman who's put her way with words and images to good use for a startling array of worthy causes. Her do-goodery manifests itself in a big picture save-the-world kinda way via humanitarian and civic projects she's done in Africa, while her regular stream of daily observations rendered in pen and ink provide a more meditative day-to-day comfort for behind-the-desk-and-glued-to-a-monitor sorts like myself.

The distinct sense of relief I felt upon discovering Things Happen prompted me to share it on my Tumblr about a month ago and with the internet being the echo chamber that it is, Wendy noticed that I noticed and once I noticed that, we got to chatting via @replies and DMs on Twitter. The next thing you know, we agreed to create a 20x200 edition with the image, which brings us to the here and now. (And she's now very high up on my list of favorite internet friends to boot.)

Perky as my inbox persona may be, my seemingly unbreakable habit of over-extending myself means that I'm often overwhelmed, anxious, stressed-out, snippy and/or downright feeling sorry for myself about the mess I've gotten myself into. I came across Things Happen during one of those low moments, and it both lifted my spirits instantly and became something of a touchstone. Wendy finally puts one of those pesky Venn diagrams to good use, mapping out the circular reasoning that can run one's spirits into the ground in a flash, and in doing it with a bit of playful edge, she makes it easy to laugh at oneself without feeling like too much of a fool. Also, she's right—the fact is that we all divert enormous amounts of energy towards worrying about "all the things you can't do a thing about", and there's really just a very small slice of it that's worthy of our attention.

Last week was one of those weeks for me—by the time Friday rolled around, I was bone-tired and wrung out and, being a heart-on-my-sleeve kind of girl, it was hard to miss. Near the end of the day, Sara dropped the proof for Things Happen on my desk and said, "I thought you might like to look at this now." I took it home and left it out on my kitchen table all weekend, both to remind me that what Wendy drew was true, and also because it had me looking forward to this very day, when I'd get to share it with all of you.

Frozen by Katie Baum

Hello collectors! It's Sara today, attempting to combat still sweltering temps in NYC with a delightful mirage of frosty freshness from Bay Area-based photographer Katie Baum.

When Jen and I were plotting our summer editions and first spied Frozen, I swore the popsicles featured were a very particular kind: paletas, the fruit-full, homemade treats from Mexico. I found myself flashing back to a time when I was peering into this very freezer in Sayulita, a sleepy-ish beach town in Nayarit, on the Pacific Coast. About four years ago, I had ventured south with my little sister—a last hurrah before I moved far, far away from her—to New York. We shared a small room with a big fan and spent everyday in the water, where I tried (unfortunately, unsuccessfully) to teach her how to surf. Mostly, we got bruised and battered and sucked down a lot of saltwater.

In the hot, hot, hot late afternoon, we'd wander up the dusty streets—tumbled, tired, thirsty and hungry—seeking refreshment. Whole avocados, mangos and tacos al pastor were washed back with Pacificos and followed up with paletas. We were tempted by the foreign flavors, but guava, tamarind and piña, made with water, usually lost out to the milk-based arroz con leche and coconut. We weren't about to tempt Montezuma, deserting on dubious (frozen) tap water.

Happily, I read Katie's artist statement: "It's already hot and sticky outside as I aimlessly wander through the early morning streets of Sayulita. My eyes glide back and forth from street to sidewalk: a pile of dirt against a turquoise wall, a bright purple blanket on a concrete bed." These *were* those popsicles in that town in Mexico! Like the other photographs we've released from Katie, Peeps and Gumball Machine, Frozen makes plain and playful the role that food plays in memory and nostalgia. We link sweet thoughts—sometimes surprisingly accurate, and sometimes totally imagined—with the things we taste, savor and delight in. Today will no doubt be marked by this afternoon's 20x200 field trip to Shake Shack as much by the shimmering heat we're escaping with this little jaunt back in time.

This summer I will be moving across the country and settling into a home I'm hoping to be in for a good long while. One small detail of domestic life that I've eagerly been anticipating is setting up subscriptions to some of my favorite print publications; something I've been unable to do thus far with my migratory lifestyle of shifting addresses every couple years. One of the publications on my must-have list is to reinstate my lapsed subscription to Aperture magazine. Long a signpost for both established and new artists, Aperture's reach and history is a long and gratifying one for both reader and the practicing photographer.

The current Summer issue (now available on news stands) features a piece on an artist that we love to follow, William Lamson.

Intervention 11.01.07 by William Lamson

The article focuses the relationship between photography and performance, and also showcases the work of artists Melanie Bonajo and Lilly McElroy.

Most of Lamson's work is in fact a mixture of science experiment and performance. In his body of work Interventions (which we've featured in multiple editions here) Lamson mixes a little bit of the mundane everyday that we tend to take for granted with surprising or startling elements of play and displacement.

Intervention 01.08.08 by William Lamson

Lamson's website functions not only as an artist's C.V., but as a viable alternative to being able to experience his work in person. Many pieces contain video features, and I can and have easily spend a lot of time completely engrossed in his many investigations that are concerned with the relationship between man, nature and time.

Timeline, 40 ft wall drawing with fuse and firecrackers, by William Lamson

Until I can make my way into an exhibition showing Lamson's work and stand in front of it in person, I will more than happily make do with his awesome web presence and in profiles like the ones in the pages of Aperture.

Welcome back to the Week in Review. We're keeping the recap short-and-sweet this week because we're busy, busy, busy being 20% more ridiculous than usual!

20x200 News

• Penelope Umbrico is included in the show Housed at the Alice Austen House Museum on Staten Island.


• Thanks to PopSugar for featuring the sale in their Daily Tips email!


• Scott Listfield has updated his website with "a bunch of new paintings that will almost definitely blow your mind (unless you've become so hardened by life that paintings of astronauts no longer thrill you)." Scott will also have work in the upcoming shows: Crazy 4 Cult at Gallery 1988 and the Mass Grant Winners show at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.


• 20x200 gets a little mention in this article about The Art of Selling on the Web in Adobe Airstream online magazine.

New Editions

Things Happen by Wendy MacNaughton	Frozen by Katie Baum

That's it for this week, collectors! See anything we missed? Let us know on Twitter @20x200 or our Facebook!

Irrelevant: Local Emerging Asian Artists Who Don't Make Work About Being Asian, Arario Gallery exhibition card

Who likes being pigeon-holed? Who cares for binary imperatives? Not the nearly fifty artists showing in Arario Gallery's Irrelevant show, or its curators, Joann Kim and Lesley Sheng. For most of the past decade, contemporary Asian art has been a hot commodity in galleries and institutional collections. As the hunger to anticipate the next Pacific-rim star has escalated, so too have the emphasis on "New Japanese Photography" or "New Video Art from China." Such trending of individual artists and entire swaths of culture has induced a little much-need backlash, and Irrelevant seeks to address its grievances that not all Asian artists are making art about their Asian-ness, per se. From the press release:

Irrelevant wishes to highlight artists who are more American than Asian, based in New York, and embedded in an expansive community of emerging artists struggling to show and succeed in this cutthroat city. You will not find paintings about the Cultural Revolution or Mao Zedong that sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You will not find manga-infused characters performing acts of hypersexuality nor will you find decorative miniature drawings with motifs embedded within a specific cultural history.

What you’ll find is a surging flow of creativity where artists actively engage in their practice, exploring the absurd within everyday experience, the use and misuse of materials both new and found, and the curiosity of defining artistic practice. Food and consumption is considered within an urban agricultural environment, and social interaction is taken out of norm and reenacted in refreshing alternative ways. Pictured narratives gear toward a dark and isolated realm and obsession is the source behind abstracted images.

Irrelevant is a friendly and humorous, and somewhat ridiculous, rejection of a neurotic art market and its obsession with specifying artists to a particular culture and ethnicity. This exhibition purifies and de-labels the artist as Asian, by labeling the artist as Asian, to be shown inside a contemporary Asian art gallery.

Two noteworthy participants in this exhibition is JBP's very own Youngna Park, and 20x200 artist and Hot Shot Yijun Liao.

Birdhouse by Youngna Park

Try to Live Like a Pair of Siamese Twins, from the series Experimental Relationship by Yijun Liao

Both photographers have understated qualities of lightness and looking to them; Youngna Park's images are those of a photographer's photographer, with a superhero ability to find quiet and resplendent light in even the darkest and busiest of places, and as Jen has written of her images, "What I love about Youngna's work is that it doesn't just remind me to look, but how." Her photos attest to her innate sense that home is wherever you are, and whether showing us a view of a swimmhole in Oregon, a backyard dinner in Berlin, or street scenes in her current hometown of New York, the felt sense of them is never photographer-as-tourist, but rather that of enviable insider giving us our own special secret to hold. (nota bene: her first 20x200 edition is completely sold out, but two others are available through 11:59pm, Tuesday, June 29th, 2010, for a complete steal at 20% off in our RIDONK sale)

Yijun Liao's images possess a quirky bemusement in projects that detail various forms of self-inquiry from actual relationships, imaginary ones and things she's both not seen and places she has really lived in. Sort of a kinder, gentler version of Les Krims, or maybe a more precise metric would be the dreamy, humorous narratives of Duane Michals, her work deals with the personal and autobiographical in a manner that is not off-putting or self-indulgent. Picking through the various bodies of work on her website, I am left wanting to see more of a series, or just more of her brand of vision in general. And I've been in love with her edition from 20x200 and intend to get it at sale price right after posting this (because I remain paranoid that all that I love will sell out before I can safely procure them).

The Arario Gallery opening is this Thursday, July 1, 6—8 PM. Put it on your calendar to go out and see their work (and them!) in person.

Irrelevant: Local Emerging Asian Artists Who Don’t Make Work About Being Asian
Arario Gallery
On View: July 1 - August 6, 2010
521 West 25th street, 212-206-2760
Chelsea

It is amazing to see how color can enhance your day. Several ancient religions used to employ chromotherapy, or the healing effects of color. More recently, scientists have developed color mood theory and color psychology. The hues can affect our disposition, appetite, self-esteem, and spirituality. For example, blue represents peace, tranquility, stability and confidence. Black fills one with feelings of sophistication, mystery and depth. Green is soothing, youthful, and associated with fertility. But, in general, the human eye is (supposedly) most attracted to red.

What color brightens your mood? Why not try some yellow prints for optimism? Or an orange based print for an energy boost? Explore the complete visible portion of the electromagnetic spectrum, the rainbow, here.

Also in honor of Roy G. Biv’s mood influences, there is a new and exciting project going on worldwide called the “Let’s Colour Project”. Imagine the planet as a giant coloring book. Before we color in the pages with magic markers, crayons, or colored pencils, they are empty and grey…rather drab. Well, the Let’s Colour Project sees the world as a coloring book yet to be filled in! They say, “Grey is out. Gloom is gone. It’s time to live our lives in colour.” The project, started in March 2010, is working together with local communities, across the globe, and rolling up its sleeves to paint streets, hotels, houses, schools, villas, and squares. More than simply gentrification and renovation, the "Let’s Colour Project" aims to encourage local participation and collaboration. It wants denizens of a town to design and style their own communities! So far London, UK; Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Jodhpur, India; and Marseille, Lyon, Paris have been colored in! The next stop is Istanbul, Turkey.

If you’re far and away from the aforementioned locales, do not fret, anyone can get involved! It doesn’t matter if it’s your bedroom wall or your local school. Everyone can be part of it. Read more about the "Let's Colour Project.

Browsing by color is one of the most exciting ways to browse 20x200. Using our color browser, we took a scroll through our archives to rediscover hidden gems across the spectrum:

Verlag 3 by Carol Padberg

See more RED →

Untitled (Geese, London) by Dana Miller

See more GREEN →

La Paz, Bolivia by Stefan Ruiz

See more BLUE →

Photographer's Dilemma by Tatsuro Kiuchi

See more YELLOW →

Untitled (My bad) by Mike Monteiro

See more BLACK →

Polly by Christina Muraczewski

See more BROWN →

Mossball by Don Hamerman

See more PINK →

Lamb No. 3 by Sharon Montrose

See more WHITE →

Nonsensical Infographic No. 3 by Chad Hagen

See more PURPLE →

Lovebirds by Lisa Congdon

See more ORANGE →

The Pinetum, Wakehurst Place by Beth Dow

See more BLACK & WHITE →

I've been to sweet sixteens, 21st birthday blowouts, and big bashes for friend and family turning ages 30, 40, 50, 60 and each decade after that. But, I've rarely commemorated age thirty-four in any context, especially not by way of photo zine.

The eleven different covers of zine, Get Off My Lawn

Leave it to Geoffrey Ellis to fuse photographic minds around the unifying theme of the artist being age thirty-four or older, which he writes is "a tongue-in-cheek response to the calls for entry, contests and publications that require “emerging photographers” to be somewhere between the ages of 18 and 34." These eleven artists come together from both coasts and everywhere in between in his new zine, Get Off My Lawn, featuring a breadth of landscapes, portraits, open vistas and several montages of urban life. The publication comes with eleven different covers, each by a different artist, and closes with a back cover photograph of a solemn and open grave with the artists' names hovering above it, eliciting a chuckle on behalf of these humored-and-oh-so-old photographers.

As Geoffrey writes to the young-folk out there: "We can no longer be in your club, but soon enough, you will be in ours…"

For those out in San Francisco, there will be a zine release party tomorrow night:

Sad Kids Zine Release Party
July 1, 2010, 6-9 p.m.
Casanova Lounge, SF
with DJs Utrillo and Forest Love
(RSVP here)

Get Off My Lawn is also available for purchase online for $10 here and here. It's 7"x7", color laser printed, and available in an edition of 222.

The zine features photographs by: Noah Beil, Geoffrey Ellis, Grant Ernhart, Alan W. George, Liz Kuball, Sarah Lacy, Ian Lemmonds, Jennifer Loeber, Dalton Rooney, Andrew Martin Scott and Justin Visnesky.