NYAB Event - "Hey, Hot Shot! 2012 First Edition Showcase" Exhibition

"Hey, Hot Shot! 2012 First Edition Showcase" Exhibition

Jen Bekman Gallery

This event has ended.

Jen Bekman Gallery presents Hey, Hot Shot! 2012 First Edition Showcase. The exhibition features works from the five winning photographers of the First Edition 2012 round of the annual Hey, Hot Shot! international photography competition founded by Jen Bekman: Heather Cleary, Daniel Handal, Susan Magnus, Muge, and Zach Nader.

The opening reception will be held on Friday, January 11th, 2013, from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m. Hey, Hot Shot! 2012 First Edition Showcase will be on view Saturday, January 12th, through Sunday, January 27th.

The Hey, Hot Shot! 2012 First Edition Showcase presents a diverse selection of contemporary photography from across the globe. Muge's black-and-white photographs poetically interpret spirituality and evolving relationships with nature and time. By modifying and isolating domestic objects such as Styrofoam cups, Heather Cleary creates abstractions that seek to remove preconceived layers of belief and explore the relationship between impartial objects and personal perceptions.

Repurposing 4" x 6" snapshots of people and places she has accumulated, Susan Magnus paints over and distorts these often already blurry and awkwardly composed photos to create installations that question symbolic aspects of material culture and reflect the unreliable nature of photography and memory. By removing models and products from fashion-magazine advertisements, Zach Nader interrogates the usefulness of the visual information that remains in asking where an image’s value resides and how much meaning can be shifted. Daniel Handal's Rough Stock explores American ideas of masculinity through the world of motorsports, which are both a modern-day parallel of and a continuation from the idealized cowboys of the past.

The photographers in this exhibition were selected from a talented pool of submissions to Hey, Hot Shot!. A distinguished panel of arts professionals, together with the Jen Bekman Projects curatorial team, chose these five artists for their striking contributions to contemporary photography. Each photographer is awarded a stipend, and one winner will be selected for a $10,000 honorarium, a solo exhibition at the gallery and gallery representation for two years. Since its inception in 2005, Hey, Hot Shot! has debuted more than 140 photographers, including 2010 Whitney Biennial artists Nina Berman and Curtis Mann.