Route 27 by Tom Slaughter | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here.

In the newsletter, Charlie writes:

Daydreaming of summer getaways, collectors? Priming us for sun-soaked sojourns is New York-native Tom Slaughter, with two more love letters to his home state. Route 27 and Peconic Bay take us on an escape out of our beloved city to scenic, tranquil Long Island.

The Suspension of Physics Necessary for All Athletic Endeavors by Colin Blakely 

Love hearing about our collector’s experience with art!

From Jesper’s blog:

By first look the photograph appears to show little more than a lot of fog, but then you note the many small people. Its sepia tone and vignette gives it an old-fashioned look witch is immediately offset by the not-at-all old-fashioned way that the small people are moving around. And why are all these people moving around in the fog? This is mysterious in an intriguing way…

Read more here. 

Baby Donkey by Sharon Montrose | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here.

In the newsletter, Charlie writes:

Today’s featured animal reminds us that, while the country may continue to be divided over hot-button issues, there’s one thing we can rally behind: baby animals that bring smiles. Political persuasions aside, just try and dislike the adorable Baby Donkey, the 10th edition by the prolific and perennially popular Sharon Montrose.

Opening tomorrow!

Ricco/Maresca Gallery is pleased to present Silhouette Vessels, an exhibition of paintings by Bastienne Schmidt. In this series of thirty works on paper, the artist explores the innate connection she has to the concept of “vessel,” stemming from her childhood in Greece as the daughter of an archeologist. These powerful yet allusive paintings are based on images of ancient vases, such as lekythoi, amphorae, or kylikes in tones of red earth, which the artist infuses with memory and process. Schmidt uses a medium of water-down polymer paints mixed with pigments and espresso coffee on paper, which she applies wet-into-wet, creating varied passages of color, shape and depth. Each work exudes a dramatic stillness, as it explores the typology of a solitary vessel, its outline and its interior, within the parameters of the picture plane. Each vessel in turn informs the subsequent vessel as the vessels unfold and evolve.

Already acclaimed for her photography, Bastienne Schmidt’s recent paintings continue to reflect upon the themes of womanhood, female identity, and domesticity on both a deeply personal level and a broader cultural level.

Seeing the world as she does-through a broad but uniquely personal metaphoric and symbolic ‘lens’-results in work that is both reflexive and reflective. It is reflexive, in that she allows herself to enter the framework of a project as both the portrayer and the portrayed. In her published photography series, Home Stills, she places herself before the camera in the context of mother, wife, domestic worker, naturalized citizen, traveler, feminist symbol and faceless proxy for ‘everywoman’ in similar multi-faceted roles, bringing drama and political impact to her work. It is reflecting on those very life memories, associations, abstractions and extensions of logic that allows her to serve as an artistic ‘bridge’ between her interior world and the larger one outside - realigning and layering meaning as she creates.

- Richard J. Friswell, Managing Editor, Artesmagazine.com

Bastienne Schmidt is a German-American multi-media artist, whose formative years were spent in Greece and Italy. The artist has had numerous solo exhibitions in the United States and abroad, including the International Center for Photography, New York, NY. Four monographs of her photography have been published (Vivir la Muerte, American Dreams, Shadowhome and Home Stills). Her work is in private and public collections including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, England. This is Bastienne Schmidt’s first solo exhibition at Ricco/Maresca Gallery, New York.

Buy Bastienne’s 20x200 editions here. 

Rachel and David, by I-Hsuen Chen

Hey, Hot Shot! First Edition 2012 Contender I-Hsuen Chen

“For a knowledge of intimacy, localization in the spaces of our intimacy is more urgent than determination of dates.” So wrote French philosopher Gaston Bachelard in The Poetics of Space, his masterpiece that takes a profound look at how we experience intimate places. In the book, Bachelard narrates an exploration of space and place in a poetic voice—something Contender I-Hsuen Chen does much the same with his camera in In Your Place, another body of work he’d submitted after receiving an Honorable Mention and winning the Blurb prize in the Second Edition 2011 round of competition. Read more…

The winners of this year’s American Illustration 31 competition have been announced, and we’re thrilled to count several 20x200 artists among them! View the slideshow here: http://www.ai-ap.com/slideshow/AI/31/

A special congratulations to 20x200 artists:

Karen Barbour (http://bit.ly/20xKBh)

Chi Birmingham (http://bit.ly/20xCBh)

Jacob Escobedo (http://bit.ly/20xJEh)

Tatsuro Kiuchi (http://bit.ly/20xTKh)

Martha Rich (http://bit.ly/20xMRh)

Rachell Sumpter (http://bit.ly/20xRSh)

Mark Todd (edition forthcoming)

Mark Ulriksen (http://bit.ly/20xMUh)

Fig. 1a by Chad Hagen | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here. 

Eiffel Tower, Exposition Universelle, 1900 by 20x200 Artist Fund | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here. 

Midway, Neshoba County Fair, Philadelphia, Mississippi by Mike Sinclair

Opening TONIGHT at Jen Bekman Gallery:

Mike Sinclair first came into the Jen Bekman Projects fold via Hey, Hot Shot!, when his work impressed the panelists in 2009, and he went on to be selected as a grand prize-winning Ne Plus Ultra. So refreshing were his shots of everyday America, his work was included in three group shows at Jen Bekman Gallery and is also featured in the Museum of Contemporary Photography’s Midwest Photographers Project. Mike’s singular ability to capture the American experience—amidst ceremonies, functions and public get-togethers—is highlighted in his New York City debut solo exhibition, Public Assembly. 

Public Assembly will be on view at Jen Bekman Gallery, located at 6 Spring Street, NYC, from Saturday, May 12th, through Saturday, June 24th, 2012. Tonight (yes, tonight! Friday, May 11th) is the opening reception with the photographer, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m

someday by Yosuke Yamaguchi | Buy the limited-edition art on 20x200.com here.