Currently on view at Kerlin Gallery in Dublin is a solo exhibition of new work by British painter Phillip Allen. The elements of Allen's paintings exist almost independently of one another, with geometric patterns and blocks of color tidily trailing over the center of the canvas, while bright rays of beaming light penetrate the negative spaces and connect the shapes. And then, on the same canvas but in an entirely divergent approach, Allen layers thick applications of paint onto the top and bottom of the piece, as if rebelling against his own cleanly constructed geometries. The two styles seem to be at once fused through harmonious choices from the palette, and contradictory in terms of technique and style. Allen's work is also on view right now inClassified: Contemporary Art at Tate Britain.

Phillip Allen lives and works in London. He earned his BA at Kingston University, London and his MA at Royal College of Art, London. His work has been shown throughout the United Kingdom and internationally at Xavier Hufkens Gallery, Belgium, Brussels; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, New York, NY; and The Approach, London, UK, among others.

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John Wesley's engaging retrospective is taking place at Fondazione Giorgio Cini on the island of San Giorgio Maggiore in Venice, in conjunction with the Venice Biennale, and will be on view until October 4th. The project, which is curated by Italian curator Germano Celant for the Fondazione Prada, features more than 150 works from 1961 to 2007.

John Wesley distinguishes himself for his highly recognizable style characterized by simple tracings, flat areas of color, and the use of a palette dominated by pastel-like colors. Light blue tones and a decorative yet sensuous pink seem to be his favorites. Poster-like, flat, colorful and figurative, Wesley's paintings are a masterful fusion of tradition and pop cultural references. The linear technique, the essential painterly effects, and the often schematic format, all contribute to cartoons and comic strip appearance of Wesley's work.

Associated with Pop Art, reductionism, Surrealism, Art Nouveau, as well as artists such as Matisse, Wesley also incorporates clues from popular culture and Japanese iconography and mixes humor and sex in a way which is unpredictable, seductive and poetic. Delightfully painterly, his unique and compelling compositions present a variety of female and male characters, pretty human faces, naked bodies, details of lips, legs and thighs, animals, comic book characters, all populating a narrative that loops between the dreamy-like imagery of the unconscious and contemporary culture. Glamorous and irresistibly appealing, the works on show in Venice certainly bolster Wesley's position as one of America's most significant artists.

John Wesley was born Los Angeles, California, in 1928. He has no formal art training, and after holding various jobs, he began painting at the age of 22. In 1960 he left his native Los Angeles to move to New York city, where he met many artists of the time--among them, Donald Judd, who soon became a friend and supporter. He started exhibiting his work at the Robert Elkon Gallery in 1963. The current retrospective at the Fondazione Giorgio Cini in Venice is Wesley's second major solo show after the one held at the P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York city in 2000. He currently lives and works in New York city.

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Beset with bling and astral opulence, Hilary Pecis' collages are popping up everywhere; in contemporary art blogs, and reputable print publications. Currently, the artist has work in a solo exhibition titled Intricacies of Phantom Content, on view at San Francisco's multi-disciplinary art space, Triple Base Gallery and in the exibition Remix at Catherine Clark Gallery. Pecis is an emerging Bay Area artist whose work has been featured in Juxtapoz Magazine and twice in New American Paintings. In 2008, Pecis received the SF Examiner's Mastermind Grant and the San Francisco Arts Commission's Murphy and Cadogan Fellowship. Over the past five years, while garnering awards and gallery shows, Pecis managed to complete both her BFA and MFA degrees from California College of the Arts.

Pecis entrances viewers with meticulous depictions of angular patterns, whether they are the varying facets of cut gemstones or the repetitive planes of her trademark ink doodles. She utilizes the four C's of diamond grading in her own work: carat, cut, color, and clarity. All are working to entice and bedazzle the eye. Her collages are compositionally sound, linked by ribbons, shards, and broad patches of CMYK color. Cosmic landscapes are brimming with glimpses of society's prized commodities, however, they are void of humanity itself. The absence of a human population evokes a post-apocalyptic feeling and causes us to contemplate the lifestyle that may very well lead to our demise.

Intricacies of Phantom Content will be on display at Triple Base until July 26th. A video Installation by Elyse Mallouk, Trickle-down: Yours for the Mining, accompanies the exhibit in the gallery's basement. In addition, Pecis and Mallouk will curate a performance series throughout the month of July. The closing reception is on Sunday, July 26th from 3-6pm. There will be special performances by Raphael Noz & Trap Doors (Michael Guidetti.)

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The Rise and Fall of Shame, Jason Yates' summer exhibition at Circus Gallery, blurs the boundaries between high and low art, making the art world's obsession with cultural elitism seem prosaic and stifling. On Circus' first floor, Yates' ink, paper and mylar "paintings" riff off of Jasper Johns' Corpse and Mirror vocabulary, using hatch marks to set up a striking conversation between minimalist clarity and expressionist mark-making. Upstairs, Yates' posters (he makes these under the name "Fast Friends Inc") marry the same hatch-mark patterns with rock-fan exuberance. Jagged patterns drawn on the gallery walls make Yates' point decidedly clear: there's not much difference between the canvas-confined marks we art-snobs value and the language of taggers and punks.

In 2000, Yates' graduated from Art Center in Pasadena. He has since shown at A+D Museum, Glendale College Gallery, and Black Dragon Society, among other venues (and non-venues--Yates doesn’t let his work be solely confined to galleries). Over the past two decades, he has also made posters for numerous bands and concerts.

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This month, Mark Moore Gallery is presenting new paintings by Gavin Nolan in an exhibition titled Hexen Reflex. Nolan's paintings are presented opposite artist Julie Heffernan in the project room of the Bergamot Station gallery. Nolan's new hyper-real portraits continue to border on surrealism, drawing reference from contemporary image sources coupled with a technical confidence on pair with the Old Masters. The works have a subtle visual shift or stutter that allows from a small amount to movement or time to take place on an otherwise static picture plan. The artist has stated "I build the paintings through a mixture of chance and control. I like them to slip between being a sloppy mess and a finished recognizable whole."

Nolan is a graduate of Loughborough University School of Art in the UK, and received his masters from the Royal Academy of Art in London. Recent exhibitions included New London School, at the Changing Role Gallery in Rome/Naples, Italy, The Future Can Wait at Atlantis Gallery in London and Icons at Chung King Projects in Los Angeles.The artist currently lives and works in New York City.

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On view until June 28 at Rowley Kennerk Gallery, is an exhibition of works by Gaylen Gerber. In this exhibition, Gerber presents three artworks in a modified exhibition space. The work confuses easy distinctions between object and context and heightens awareness of visual perception in a way that questions how we differentiate what we are looking at from what surrounds it. Gerber is interested in addressing ideas surrounding perception and particularly the role of context in perception. Gerber's own work often acts as the contextual ground for the expressions of other artists. For this exhibition, Gerber continues to examine the role of the contextual ground in the interpretation of art, but also specifically highlights the background as an expressive element itself.

Recognizing the shifting relationships between deviation and the normative ground is at the heart of Gerber's exhibition and draws attention to a central aspect of perception, which is that to perceive something at all you must first be able to distinguish it from its background.

Gaylen Gerber has exhibited widely. Recent solo exhibitions and cooperative projects include: The Musee d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg, Luxembourg; The Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois; Neues Museum Weserburg Bremen, Bremen, Germany; Kunsthalle Bern, Bern, Switzerland: and the FRAC-Bourgogne and Musee des Beaux-Arts, Dijon, France.

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When Jeff Zimmermann came to Charleston, South Carolina magnolias were in bloom, so he painted them, picked fresh and also withered up, placed in bottles. He found local faces and, with a lightness of hand, made these characters breathe with realism that's expressive, showing the subtleties of identity, yet graphic enough to pop from a distance.

During his artist's residency at Redux Contemporary Art Center, Zimmermann painted directly on the white gallery walls and the exterior facade, incorporating objects that seem to reference our city in an exhibition titled, Self Control. We see a golf ball suspended over a glass of wine, props of the prevalent resort lifestyle, contrasted by an empty wine bottle wrapped in a brown bag. But the imagery is obscure and not made to be metaphors. The viewer is invited to contextualize and draw associations between objects and familiar, but unidentified, faces.

Zimmermann is known for seeking out a variety of quotidian subjects that give richness to our communities and daily experiences. He's not idealizing famous and powerful leaders in history, but instead he seeks to empower and honor regular folks, and be a painter who loves his paintings. However, Zimmermann played around with the historical portrait while at Redux, incorporating monochromatic busts of a couple famous dead white guys, and also Milton Friedman, the Nobel prize winning economist who popularized laissez-faire policy. These characters are polarizing in a state like South Carolina that votes "red" and whose tourists come to see the architectural masterpieces of a slave economy.

Zimmermann is renowned for his large-scale mural projects, most recently completing a five-story wall in Memphis, TN, titled A Note for Hope: Turn the Page. His work has been featured institutions such as the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, but also on the streets of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. His recent commissions include: Nike, House of Blues Chicago, LaSalle Bank, Whole Foods Inc., DreamWorks LLC, and Rhodes College. A Chicago native, he obtained a BFA in Graphic Design from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and has since gained international notoriety for his works. DailyServing has previously featured Zimmermann's mural projects and object-based installations.

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Mario Wagner

This Saturday in Culver City, Cerasoli Gallery will present new work from three artists: Matt Phillips, Mario Wagner and Seth Curcio. The three artists implement collage to reference sound, vintage imagery and mass commerce. Each show will run from this Saturday, June 13th through July 8th.

In gallery one at Cerasoli Gallery, Matt Phillips will present a new body of vibrant paintings that play on shape, color and movement. Matt Phillips work subtly references sound, textile making and Modernism through patterned visual space that pulse and vibrate. Matt Phillips graduated from Boston University in 2007 and has exhibited with Mehr gallery, Place Space Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents, in New York City. He has also exhibited in 1000DAYS, the DailyServing exhibition at the Scion Installation Space in LA, as well as with Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC and SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine. Check out his interview with DailyServing.

Seth Curcio

In gallery two, new work by German-born artist and illustrator, Mario Wagner, depict vintage settings that combine 1960s culture with elements of modernism. The result is a surreal landscape of figures wrapped in visual elements of color and shape, alluding to a time of overindulgence and a false sense of nostalgia. Wagner's work has been shown with 2AGENTEN GALLERY, in Berlin, the 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco, and the Meat Market Gallery in Washington. His illustrations and artwork have been commissioned by publications such as Esquire, Vanity Fair and the New York Times.

In gallery three, DailyServing's publisher and editor, Seth Curcio, will present new work of collage and painting which comment on image distribution, constructed reality and contemporary culture. Curcio's images resemble familiar contemporary landscapes, yet quickly splinter, dissolve and reconstruct into a new environment. Implementing a complex series of collage and painting, the surface and imagery combine to create a space both familiar and unknown. Curcio is the co-founder of DailyServing and has worked as the Director of Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. His work has been shown across the Southeast and will be featured in the upcoming issue of Beautiful/Decay Magazine.

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Image courtesy of the artist and Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, NY

Rosemarie Fiore is drawing with fireworks, low explosive pyrotechnic devices such as color smoke bombs, jumping jacks, monster balls, and ground blooms, to name a few. The artist recently exhibited several of these large scale works on paper in a solo show at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York. The artist's incendiary process of exploding and containing live fireworks over paper reveals her remarkable aesthetic control over the combustible material. Photographs of this process recall Hans Namuth's photographs of Jackson Pollock slinging industrial paint onto canvas and the indelible images of Richard Serra hurling molten lead against the walls of his studio.

Image courtesy of the artist and Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, NY

Fiore ignites her chosen explosive inside a bucket or other container, which is inverted on the paper. The explosions create strokes and sunbursts of vibrant pigments, including magenta, ochre, rust, and copper, all varying in saturation and intensity. Gunpowder marks and sooty burnt surfaces provide visible traces of the detonation. Fiore overlaps and collages the best effects on large sheets of the same paper, repeating these actions a number of times. The final works are heavy and contain multiple layers of collaged explosions, resulting in abstract compositions and fields of color described by Robert Schuster of the Village Voice as "op art visions of the cosmos."

Fiore has often worked out of action, considering each process a performance and documenting it by video and photograph. She has used repurposed machines and has previously painted and drawn with a modified floor polisher, a windshield wiper, and a Scrambler (the multi-armed amusement park ride). She received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1994 and her M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and has also shown at the Gallery Bar and the Winkleman Gallery in New York.

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Riki Kuropatwa's new body of work is currently on view in a solo exhibition at Vancouver's Elissa Cristall Gallery. The show, entitled derby girlz, chronicles Kuropatwa's reaction to the rampant oversexualization of women in advertisements. Offering up women in the context of the roller derby rather than the lingerie shoot, the oil stick on panel works depict the same sort of suggestive poses and provocative peaks at bare skin that we might see in Victoria's Secret ads, but the "derbygirlz " have traded in their stilettos for skates and tousled Giselle waves for helmet hair. Certainly the works are a comment on the absurdity of the way women are generally portrayed in the media, but if they're still conveying the same sense of sex appeal--and thereby conjuring the same reaction--in this new context, is the message really clear? In the gallery's press release, they offer the sentiment that "for every Kate Moss there is a Venus Williams." Yet the work seems to be a bit more of a satirical look at the sexualized Kate Moss (one piece, Cheeks, is a cropped view of derby racers rounding a corner, though all the viewer sees are bare mid drifts and barely covered butts) rather than a straight-faced attempt at Girl Power a la Venus Williams. Kuropatwa seems to take a dynamic approach to the subject and render it with a soft, feminine-evoking palette and Degas-like interpretation of scenes and forms. derby girlz is on view through June 20, 2009.

Riki Kuropatwa earned an MFA from York University, Toronto, ON and a BFA from the University of Manitoba. She has had solo and group exhibitions across Canada; her work is collected in both Canada and the United States. Kuropatwa lives and works in Edmonton.

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Currently on view at Freight and Volume in New York City is the exhibition Super! Natural!, new paintings by Toronto-based artist Kim Dorland. For this exhibition, which is his second with the gallery, the artist has continued exploring elements of suburbia in connection to the northern wilderness from which he lived. Many of the works contain odd juxtapositions such as abandon cars floating in a murky yet seemingly untouched landscape or the density of a forest, littered with graffiti on the trees. Other works depict the boredom of suburban youth, lounging on the curbs of extended lawns, creating a scene that is rather ubiquitous in much of the United States and Canada.

Formally, the artist renders these images with a hyper-colored palate, which helps to activate the rather mundane scenes. The artist applies paint with an exaggerated stroke, with volume often sitting well off of the canvas and very loosely rendered. In addition, much of the surface is also blurred through the mixed use of spray paint, oil and acrylics, creating a surface that is both luscious and seductive.

Dorland is a graduate of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design and the York University in Toronto. He recently completed exhibitions at Bonelli Arte Contemporanea in Montova, Italy and Los Angeles, Angell Gallery in Toronto and Skew Gallery in Calgary, Alberta.

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Shinique Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert Paris, New York

Yvon Lambert in New York is currently showing recent work by American multimedia artist Shinique Smith alongside a show of Michael Brown's melted record albums cast into common domestic objects, such as chairs, mops, and buckets. Smith's exhibition, Ten Times Myself, includes painting, assemblage, and sculpture. Smith is interested in discarded objects and the complicated social and cultural contexts of what we keep, give away, and throw away. The artist's anthropomorphic bundles of vibrantly hued textiles are on display as well as the more dynamic two-dimensional works.

Shinique Smith, Courtesy of the artist and Yvon Lambert Paris, New York

Her two-dimensional collages fuse the bombastic energy of Abstract Expressionism with the more subtle scripts of Japanese calligraphy. And the World Don't Stop, 2009, combines ink, acrylic, enamel, fabric, and cultural ephemera on canvas stretched over two wood panels. The work bursts with an energy that is tempered by the artist's careful and controlled placement of text and imagery. These elements combine and produce a forceful but delicate movement across the composition.

Smith received her M.F.A. in 2003 from the Maryland Institute College of Art and has previously shown her work at The National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C., Deutsche Guggenheim in Berlin, and at the New Museum and P.S.1 Contemporary Arts Center in New York. This is her first solo show at Yvon Lambert New York.

Ten Times Myself and Michael Brown's An Object is Just Material will remain at the gallery until July 31, 2009.

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Marion Peck's first solo show in New York, entitled Ladies & Clowns, is currently on view at Sloan Fine Art on Rivington Street. While the exhibition's title isn't the most subtle, it's a good indicator for what you're getting into with Marion Peck's new paintings. The darkly comedic renderings of jovially surrealist scenes, including lederhosen -donning peasants dancing and art history referencing portraits of ladies, are both whimsical and highly disturbing. If you're one of the many Americans who list clowns high atop your list of fears, then you'll surely feel a chill down your spine seeing Peck's sad clowns wandering around Northern Renaissance-invoking landscapes or frowning pie-eyed in portraits. Ladies & Clowns is on view through June 13th.

Marion Peck earned her BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design and did MFA studies at Syracuse University in New York and Temple University in Rome, Italy. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, Mondo Bizzarro Gallery in Rome, Galerie de Magda Danysz in Paris and Davidson Galleries in Seattle. She currently lives in Eagle Rock, CA.

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Opening tonight at the Scion Installation Space in Culver City, CA is the DailyServing exhibition 1000 DAYS. In the exhibition, painter Caleb Weintraub will present 3 large-scale paintings and two small sculptures, which feature his signature surreal narrative. This work along with the others are not to be missed. If you are in the Los Angeles area this evening, please join us for the opening!!

In the world of a Weintraub painting, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong. Stern-faced, costume adorned children run rampant with no apparent boundaries, tracking down the last remaining adults and turning them into wall-mounted trophies of the hunt. Weintraub explores potentials for the future of humanity through large-scale hyper-colored narrative paintings, which are saturated with information and describe a world where morals have fallen and children act without consequence.

In Weintraub's new body of work, the children are up against a new enemy, paint itself. The new piles of paint are presented as an amorphous blob, which act as proto-versions of the children as well as a metaphor for the state of painting itself, in its death or perhaps its afterlife.

The artist is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and is currently an assistant professor of painting and drawing at Indiana University. He has completed recent several solo exhibitions including, Whatever Shall We Do With These Piles and Piles of Paint at the Peter Miller Gallery, Chicago, All the Way Home at Projects Gallery in Philadelphia and Cloudy With a Chance of Apocalypse at Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, NY. Weintraub will participate in an upcoming group show titledSigns of the Apocalypse/Rapture this summer at Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago.

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Opening tomorrow evening in Culver City, CA is the DailyServing curated exhibition 1000 DAYS. Artist Matt Phillips will present 3 large scale paintings in the show, representing sound through the medium of painting. In the painting shown below, titled Guitar, the artist creates an oscillating mathematical rhythm, creating the illusion of movement as the patterns collide in the center of the work.

Phillips approaches painting and collage as both object and illusion, often creating images that explore the relationship between light and sound. The artist's work synthesizes information into an entirely graphic language, starting with the formal concerns of surface, composition, color and tension, while introducing a range of subtle contemporary references and symbols. The resulting works unite a methodology, which folds the formal concerns of Modernist painting into the intimacy of folk art.

Since completing his MFA at Boston University in 2007, Phillips has exhibited works at Mehr gallery, Place Space Gallery and Jack the Pelican Presents, in New York City. He has also exhibited with Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC and SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine. The artist currently teaches painting at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts.

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For the 1000 DAYS exhibition, artist Mark Mulroney will present a new site-specific wall painting. The images shown are studies from the artist's sketchbook in preparation for the new piece, which is being created at the Scion Installation Space in Los Angeles over the next few days.

The artist's work is linked together by an unmistakable humor and graphic sensibility. Mulroney moves seamlessly through several types of media, including installation, painting, drawing and photography, not allowing any one medium to define his practice. Similarly, the artist freely selects pop-cultural sources to serve as inspiration for his works, pulling from magazines, cartoons, and advertisements. Synthesizing these sources with disconnected personal memories, Mulroney's work results in an array of irreverent imagery infused with unsurpassed wit.

Mulroney is a graduate of Casino and Gaming Management Degree Program at Morrisville State University. This year, the artist has exhibited Follow the Nosebleeds with Mixed Greens in New York City and Wet With Glee at ArtSpace in New Haven, Connecticut. Mulroney has also participated in countless group exhibitions including works at Evergreene Gallery in Geneva, Switzerland, RAID Projects in Los Angeles and the National Gallery of Art in Warsaw, Poland.

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Last Thursday marked the opening of Adriana Varejao's new exhibition at Lehmann Maupin, Two Paintings and Ten Drawings, which will run through July 10. The works in the show appear more subdued than many of her previous works, but don't be fooled. After more consideration, the viewer is confronted with an exhibition full of art historical references and cultural histories. The lines and forms are reductive and analytical, recalling aspects of both minimalism and cubism. Her dynamism is reflected by her skill in many disciplines, focusing for this exhibition on painting and drawing. The works range in size from small graphite on paper pieces to the largest work, O Iluminado (The Shining), which is oil on linen. The architectural drawings of an otherwise sterile sauna are imbued with an emotion through color and light.

Varejao is one of the most significant contemporary artists to come out of Brazil. Born and raised in Rio di Janeiro, her work continues to be influenced by her experience growing up in South America. Her accomplishments include pieces in collections at the Tate Modern, London, Guggenheim, NYC, Hara Museum, Tokyo, and Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego.

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Currently on view at Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle is a solo exhibition of new and past work by Victoria Haven, entitled HIGHER... HIGHER. For Haven's first solo show at the renown Seattle space, the artist expanded her practice of creating works on paper and sculptural pieces to explore additional media, including photography and wall painting. This exhibition incorporates works in all of these disparate mediums, but with a cohesive aesthetic of geometric shape, delicate lines and text. With this work, it's as much about what the artist created as it is about what she didn't touch. The negative space that lingers inside the pointed angles of Haven's paintings and amid the matrix of shapes illustrated in works of ink on fragile varieties of paper, consorts with the work to create a full, yet ethereal image of her investigation of shape and space. Shadows on the wall below the lifted steel sculptures become as important to the pieces as their polished nickel or powder coated finishes. HIGHER... HIGHER is on view through May 16th.

Victoria Haven lives and works in Seattle. She received her BFA from the University of Washington and her MFA from Goldsmiths College/University of London. She was the 2004 recipient of 'The Stranger' Genius Award as well as the Betty Bowen Award from the Seattle Art Museum. She also received a Pollock-Krasner Fellowship in 1996 and in 2000. Her work has been exhibited at the Frye Art Museum, Seattle; PDX Contemporary Art, Portland; the Austin Museum of Art, Texas; the Drawing Center, New York; and RMIT Gallery, Melbourne, Australia, among many others.

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There is a striking visual dichotomy present his work, especially in the oil and acrylic on wood piece Human don't be angry. The natural wood panel contrasts with the perspectival, geometric image and shiny varnish to raise viewers' awareness of these contributing elements. Prints like, Garden Ruin 1, broach the subject differently, by superimposing shapes over nature scenes. Without being overbearing, these shapes suggest the presence of humans in the landscape, creating a visually and psychologically unique composition.

Bob Matthews currently lives in London. He teaches at his alma mater, the Royal College of Art, where he received his MA in Printmaking. His recent curatorial endeavors include shows at Cell Project Space, London, and Aspen Museum of Contemporary Art. He has exhibited in London at the Collyer Bristow Gallery, Monika Bobinska, and the Keith Talent Gallery.

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Currently on view at SHAHEEN Modern and Contemporary Art in Cleveland, Ohio is a solo exhibition of work by Craig Kucia, entitled we left with our hearts tired. Kucia's paintings offer entree into a dreamy land of nostalgia, memory and curiosity-- a virtual huddle of memories rendered in bright crayola hues. He renders scenes that appear innocent and playful at first, because of their cheery palette and storybook imagery, but we soon find that within the paintings hide layers of deeper meaning and even somber sensibilities. The quirky titles paired with the paintings will most often confound you if your goal is to use them as a reference point for deeper understanding into what is offered visually. Taken from lines that the artist has overheard in conversation or song, or read throughout the years, the seemingly nonsensical phrases are works of art in and of themselves, rather than simple captions for the paintings they give name to. They are poetic pieces, almost designating Kucia's paintings multi-media by offering another layer to their construction. We left with our hearts tired is on view through June 5th.

Craig Kucia studied art at the Chelsea School of Art in London and the Cleveland Institute of Art in Cleveland, Ohio. He received his MFA at the Edinburgh College of Art in Edinburgh, Scotland. His work is in the permanent collections of the Miami Museum of Art and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia. He has exhibited at Kevin Bruk Gallery, Miami; Blum & Poe, in their Santa Monica space; Marlborough Chelsea, New York and Roberts & Tilton, Los Angeles, among others.

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Amongst the labyrinth of booths at this year's Art Chicago is Partisan, a special exhibition of works that explore social and political ideas. Selected from Art Chicago and NEXT galleries by guest curator Mary Jane Jacob, independent curator and director of exhibitions at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Partisan works represent a multitude of political ideas and positions from around the world.

According to Jacob, "It is no wonder in this day and age that artists are reengaging one of the most critical subjects in art: the political and social climate, war and survival. Such human dramas that shape destiny have always existed in the history of art, but they are not usually found, no less highlighted, in the environment of an art fair. So this year's "Partisan" show is evidence of inescapable concerns on everyone's minds and which have a place in every sector of the art world."

While Partisan offers global insights, the exhibition is anchored by the inclusion of politically-oriented works by American artists such Philip Evergood, who is known for practicing a brand of Social Realism in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as prolific artists Leon Golub and Nancy Spero, of whom works will be on view from the 1970s and 1980s.

Much of Partisan's energy, however, comes from newer generations of artists whose project-oriented works not only demonstrate critique and resistance, but they also imagine new possibilities.

Highlights include the video installation, The Penal Colony, by Vietnamese artist Dinh Q Le, which depicts the inside of the walls of a Vietnam prison historically known for abuse of activists and was inspired by the inhumane treatment of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay detention camp in Cuba; There are things we know ...a large scale installation by New York-based artist John Delk features 26 security surveillance globes. Finally, Maximo Gonzalez imagines new uses for obsolete vehicles in large drawings from the series Project for reutilization of vehicles obsolete after the extinction of petrol, whereby abandoned motorcycles become gardens and cars are oversized planters.

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On view at the Deitch Projects Wooster Street Gallery is The History of the Heart in Three Rainbows, a new series of large-scale watercolor paintings by Francesco Clemente . For this series, Clemente has literally wrapped the gallery with his new water colors, creating an immersive environment for contemplation. The artist has also continues his use of capturing spiritual experiences through art. As the title suggests, the rainbows are a metaphor for a bridge, connecting the body to more religious or spiritual ideas.

The Italian born artist's work has been the subject of numerous exhibitions and retrospectives. The artist has completed major exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Royal Academy of the Arts and the Pompidou among many others.

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San Francisco-based artist Ted Vasin creates a wide range of works, often bound by their digital origins, presented as painting or as sound. The artist uses sleep visions as his starting point for visual inspiration. He then takes these ideas and renders them through the use of 3-D computer programs in order to achieve multi-dimensional qualities within the work. The renderings are then re-photographed and used throughout subsequent works as visual cues, building an entirely new graphic language. The artist often uses sound installations to accompany the paintings and other 2-D works, mimicking the formal qualities of the paintings with sound.

Vasin was born in Russia and currently lives and works in San Francisco. The artist has exhibited internationally with recent exhibitions Non-Local Cues at Tarryn Teresa Gallery in Santa Monica, CA, and Paintings and Sound at Davis Art Center in Davis, CA and Limn Art Gallery in San Francisco, CA. The artist has also been published in New American Paintings several times, and was a recipient of the prestigious Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2006.

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Anderson is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His recently solo exhibitions include Rendezvous Point at the Light and Sie Gallery in Dallas and Misiisto at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago. The artist has also completed exhibitions with Kavi Gupta Gallery in Berlin and Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica. The artist also exhibited in the Beautiful/Decay retrospective group exhibition, A to Z, this spring at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles.

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Opening this Friday, May 1st at 643 Project Space in Ventura, CA is a solo show of work by Washington based artist Charles Timm-Ballard. The exhibition, entitled Terra Form, displays work that contains many of the aesthetic elements found in contemporary landscape painting, yet it is created out of ceramic material. The thick slabs of clay are a testament to the sculptural and tactile qualities of ceramics, while the painterly images pay homage to the tradition of abstract landscape painting through light, shadow and a certain diaphanous representation of nature. The juxtaposition is created in a typically postmodern manner, not allowing the work to be fully one thing or the other-- rather it finds itself straddling the lines concerning media and disrupting the hierarchical categorization of genres. Terra Form runs through May 29, 2009.

Charles Timm-Ballard earned his MFA at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and his BFA from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He is currently the chair of the art department at Whitman College. He has held residency at the European Ceramic Workscentre in the Netherlands. His work is in the permanent collection of the Daum Museum of Contemporary Art and has been exhibited in solo shows at the Pomona College Museum of Art in Claremont, CA; The Clay Studio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; the Wisconsin Academy of Arts and Sciences Gallery in Madison, Wisconsin; Thomas Barry Fine Arts in Minneapolis, Minnesota and in a group exhibition at the Art Museum of the Americas in Washington, DC, among others. He is represented by Sherry Leedy Contemporary Art in Kansas City, MO.

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Gagosian Gallery is presenting two major exhibitions in New York and Beverly Hills to celebrate Yayoi Kusama's eightieth year. The artist, born in Japan in 1929, started painting with polka dots and nets as motifs around the age of ten. She moved to the United States in 1957, where she showed large scale paintings, soft sculptures, and environmental installations using electric lights and mirrors. From 1998-1999, a major retrospective opened at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo.

The exhibition in New York, which opened on April 16th, features a large yellow pumpkin sculpture with black spots in a specifically designed space at the front of the gallery. This piece is based on a similar work Kusama showed at the Japanese pavilion at the Venice Biennale in 1993 - a mirrored room filled with pumpkin sculptures in which the artist resided in color-coordinated attire. The pumpkin, made of fiberglass and reinforced plastic, represents a type of self portrait or alter ego for the artist, whose compulsive covering of surfaces and infinite repetition of dots, patterns, and forms is characteristic of her entire body of work.

For the back of the gallery, Kusama has constructed a hypnotic optical environment, Aftermath of Obliteration of Eternity (2009), featuring the infinite interactions between lights, mirrors, and water. Viewers step into a dark chamber that is softly lit by several gleaming golden lights, closing the door behind them. Standing on a platform surrounded by water, the viewer is reflected in this "infinity room" by walls of mirrors. This experiential encounter with oneself represents the artist's "preoccupation with mortality, as well as with enlightenment, solitude, nothingness, and the mysteries of the physical and metaphysical universe," as stated in the press release.

The exhibition in California will open on May 30th and last until July 17th. The exhibition in New York will remain at the gallery's location on West 24th Street until June 27th.

Yayoi Kusama currently lives and works in Tokyo, Japan.

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Opening this weekend in Brussles will be a new exhibition titled Against the Day by famed painter Luc Tuymans. WIELS will be presenting the first solo show in Brussels for the artist. The exhibition will feature twenty new paintings which were created specifically for the exhibition. The new paintings are a continuation of a previous series, which explores and manipulates television-based imagery through painting practices.

This year, the artist will have work in Galaxy: A Hundred or So Stars Visible to the Naked Eye (group show), Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive in Berkeley, California, Private Universes, Dallas Museum of Art in Texas, and Luc Tuymans at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

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The recent work of Amelie Chabannes is vivid, delicate, and contemplative, begging the question of identity. Her medium varies tremendously and includes sculpture, drawing, and painting. She attributes her technique to that of the automatic surrealists. Some of her drawings recall those of Andre Masson. This in mind, a thematic continuity emerges when looking at body of her work. Like those before her, Chabannes is intrigued by the ever-changing unconscious. She explores this subject and subsequently proves its infinite nature.

Her compositions are unique. Often there is a focal point created by bold color and rich patterns. These forms anchor the composition. The color can be described as bright, fruity, and intense. Meandering lines reflect exploration of the subject of identity, engaging endless possibilities.

Amelie Chabannes was born Paris and graduated ENSAD in 2000. She now lives and works in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited around the world. She is represented by LUXE Gallery.

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Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles is currently presenting Beaut-esque, an exhibition of new paintings by Queens-based artist Yi Chen. The artist's process begins by culling images from popular advertisements and fashion magazines and selecting distinctive facial characteristics from both human and mammalian figures. He then rearranges these physical features to create a hybridized race, disregarding color, age, gender and even species. These composite figures are then painted with varying degrees of detail, and set in a background or landscape of solid color fields.

The artist's paintings reflect the heterogeneity and interconnectedness of global culture. As stated in the press release, Chen's "concept of hybridization and mutation formulate a tense balance in his work, combining enticing beauty and repelling grotesqueries that result in magnetic paintings."

Chen attended the Affiliated Art High School of Central Art Academy in Beijing before receiving his B.F.A. from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 2000. He then completed his M.F.A. at Purchase College State University of New York in 2003. He has shown work at Marianne Boesky Gallery and Plum Blossoms Gallery in New York and will have a solo show later this year at Gallery Beijing Space in Beijing.

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Of Flame and Splendour is the title of a new exhibition at Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York City. The exhibition marks the debut solo exhibition for artist Kamrooz Aram at the gallery, featuring new paintings and drawings. The gallery states, "Aram explores such diverse themes as new age mysticism, the glorification of violence, and the idealization of revolutionary, religious and nationalist ideologies, most significantly through an investigation of contemporary Orientalism." The artist's work contains an iconography that is often centered on the concept of contemporary Orientalism, a term that refers to the generalization of the East as interpreted by the West, often resulting in a misunderstood cultural portrayal. The work, which somewhat abstracts any direct iconography associated with the East, features references to Persian miniatures and patterns, Christian and Islamic religious imagery, and includes elements from contemporary pop culture.

Aram is an Iranian-born artist that currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. The artist has participated in several major group exhibitions, with works included in the Busan Biennale and at the Orlando Museum of Art. The artist has also completed several solo exhibitions with works on view at Wilkinson Gallery in London, and Oliver Kamm/5BE Gallery in NYC.

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Greta Waller, a current MFA graduate student at UCLA, is currently presenting her first Los Angeles-based solo exhibition with David Salow Gallery. Titled One Item Or Less, the exhibition features a large collection of modest still life paintings in oil on canvas. The artist's reductive paintings are subtly steeped with art historical references, and willingly defiant of many current artistic trends. The artist's seductively rendered paintings play up formal qualities of composition, texture, and color palette rather than placing an emphasis on content. The press release states, "Painting what is at hand, without too much deliberation or regard for subtext or grafted-on meaning, is a choice that intrinsically foregrounds technique, perhaps even at the expense of perceived prestige." This statement indicates the artist's willingness to move against current artistic trends, which can heavily focus on content and theory, in order to focus on the act of painting as a primary concern.

Greta Waller has completed one additional solo exhibition, Greta Waller: Contemporary Antiquarian at Umbrella Arts Gallery in New York. The artist has also participated in Water, Water, Everywhere at Washington Art Association in Washington, CT and ARTVIEW at The National City Museum of Washington D.C.

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Sholem Krishtalka is based in Toronto, and received his MFA from York University in 2006. The artist has completed several solo exhibitions in Canada, including Wish You Were Here at Paul Petro Multiples and Small Works and Idiot Sketches at Lennox Contemporary Art Gallery and Zsa Zsa Gallery in Toronto. The artist is also a frequent contributor to Xtra! Magazine.

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Opening tonight at Deitch Projects' 76 Grand Street, New York City space is Pictures of Women, new works by Matt Greene. In his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Greene will present, as the title suggests, representational images of women. The large scale works blend formal concerns such as surface, color and abstracted space, with what the press release states as, "...investigations into the connections between sexual fetish of the female figure, and forms of nature."

Physically, the works begin as paper collage. The artist then builds the surface through paint and subsequent layers of collage, which are peeled back to reveal earlier incarnations of the work.

The artist has been included in countless international and museum-based exhibitions. Recently, his works were included in Mannerfantasien 2 at COMA in Berlin, Eden's Edge at the UCLA Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, Fractured Figure at the Deste Foundation in Athens, and Dream Trauma at Kunstalle Vienna.

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The opening of Wish You Were Here marked a milestone for young painter Julienne Hsu. The exhibition ran from March 9th through the 13th at CGU's East Gallery. It was Hsu's first solo exhibition sampling her work from the past few years. The exhibition featured a variety of subjects including dogs, humans, and machines. Her concern lies in the juxtaposition of nature and the imposition of man. Although Hsu deliberately limits the objects in her paintings, the viewer is still able to come to their own conclusion about the morality of the subject. Hsu has found a noteworthy balance - presenting subject matter and formal style - without allowing one to dominate the other. At first glance, the color appears bold and dark, but is often punctuated by a carefully decided upon bright hue. The formal qualities of paint application and color palette creates an interesting emotive relationship between the subject and the viewer. The resulting psychology helps to extend the potential for dialogue between the works.

Hsu was born in Taiwan and immigrated to the US at the age of fifteen. Since then, she has been living and working in Los Angeles. Hsu received a BFA from the Art Center College of Design and is currently an MFA candidate at Claremont Graduate University, graduating this year.

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Stella Lai's paintings are so bright and lush that it's easy to get lost in their beauty, and not notice the macabre cast of characters lurking in the background, until it's too late. Each piece is delivered to the viewer with a smile and a wink--inviting us in to play, but not telling us what game. In classical poses, women sit atop Lilly pads or wander in winter wonderlands, only things are never quite as they should be. Born in Hong Kong and currently living in Los Angeles, Stella Lai is a graduate of California College of the Arts who has exhibited internationally, and whose work currently graces the cover of Giant Robot Magazine, and has been seen in VOGUE China and Flash Art.

DailyServing.com's Allison Gibson recently got a chance to pick Lai's brain about her multinational inspirations and the hidden messages found in the worlds she creates.

Continue reading "Stella Lai" »

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Currently on view at Zach Feuer Gallery (LFL) in Chelsea is new work by artist Dana Schutz, in the exhibition Missing Pictures. This marks the fourth solo exhibition for the artist at Zach Feuer Gallery. The show mostly contains large-scale paintings supplemented with a few smaller works.

The paintings in Missing Pictures depict a variety of social situations contained within both interior and landscape scenes. Images of people engaging in a game of chess and group massage are activated through a surreal fragmentation leaving some figures literally ripped with seams exposed. Many of the figures, which are loosely rendered, seem to be rather comfortable existing within the turbulent and sometimes mildly horrific scenes.

Formally, the artist utilizes a diverse application of paint within this new body of work. Stains, washes and linear mark making exist alongside thickly applied paints. The resulting effect seems to make the paintings dissolve before the viewer.

Schutz, who was born in 1976 and graduated from Columbia University in 2002, has exhibited internationally. The artist's work appears in the permanent collections of many museums including the Guggenheim, NY, the Hammer Museum in LA and the Museum of Modern Art in NY, among others.

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Currently on view at 2x2 Projects in Amsterdam is a solo show of work by Berlin based artist Torsten Ruehle, entitled FILTER. FILTER is Ruehle's debut solo exhibition in Amsterdam, and features a variety of his recent works in conjunction with the early 2009 release of a published catalog of his work, also entitled FILTER. Ruehle's astutely political and socially provocative paintings are at first imagined by the artist when he spots images in newspapers, movie stills and even other painters' work. In a manner of creative interpretation that sometimes mingles with appropriation, and other times gets so worked over by the artist's hand that any trace of the former image is lost for good, Ruehle's paintings have a childlike accessibility to them, despite the often heavy subject matter. With thick black pigment pen outlines, citing his graffiti art background, he presents us with the essence of the scene without overindulging in visual minutiae. FILTER opened on March 21st and runs through April 25, 2009.

Torsten Ruehle was born in Dresden, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin. His work has been exhibited in solo shows internationally, including at Galerie Kai Hilgemann in Berlin and Galerie Hubert Schwarz in Greifswald.

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Entitled Soft Skills, Birgit Megerle's exhibition at Galerie Neu in Berlin presents her most recent suite of paintings. Megerle's past exhibition in 2007 at Daniel Reich Gallery in New York laid the groundwork for using the gallery's physical space to make painting theatrical. At Galerie Neu, she extends this line of thinking, showing how ideas are transposed between painting, music and literature.

A flaneur smokes his pipe, caught in a stroll, he glances sideways towards the viewer. His riding boots gleam in a gentle light, just like the locks of his straight brown hair. He's haughty and a bit sly. His life-size counterpart faces him from the side of the space. Hidden behind her dark jumper and polka dot sleeves, she may be as deceitful as she is demure. Told by the canvas laying face up on the gallery floor, something nefarious has transpired - a murder for reasons still unknown. One sees a figure - a boy with fair skin wearing blue jeans - laying limp and lifeless across a rectangular abstraction. Its palette of faded sage, turquoise, and olive greens make for eccentric tiling. As romantic as it is criminal, Megerle's paintings ask that one imagine what series of events has led to this point. These figures are further characterized by a number of abstract geometric works. Their patterns and texture emulate architectural reliefs or patterned fabric and arguably are the strongest works in giving the exhibition its calculated aesthetic. While the size of the works are quite different, they each still impart a feeling of a small vignette, which comprises the larger. Trying to create linearity is futile, as anything that gets pieced together is just as easily rehashed into another story. What does create continuity is the specific piano soundtrack Megerle created. The track is synonymous with the sensual aesthetic of the work; no matter in what medium Megerle works, there is nuance and deliberation.

Birgit Megerle is a painter in Berlin. In the past, her work has been exhibited at Galerie Drantmann in Brussels, Galleria Fonti in Naples, and Galerie Christian Nagel in Cologne. She is represented by Galerie Neu in Berlin and Daniel Reich Gallery in New York City.

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In a world where tabloids trump real news, artist Rachel Kaye embraces celebrity culture through the reappropriation of paparazzi images into her own medium. She creates paintings, drawings, and sculpture that mimic a world washed by fame, excess, and money. Exhibiting at Triple Base Gallery in San Francisco, Kaye's solo show, The Colony, draws its name and concept from the early-twentieth century Colony Clubs created for New York socialite women. Her work moves amongst the social circles of the fictional Blair Waldorf from the television series Gossip Girl, to a portrait of Wyntoon, William Randolph Hearst's secret Northern California hamlet, complete with colorful gestures alluding to the famous murals of Willy Pogany, that are painted on the cottage's exterior. Kaye's painting technique is reminiscent of her famous contemporaries Elizabeth Peyton and Hernan Bas--figurative, representational, and, as described by Triple Base, "loose and whimsical". For The Colony, Kaye has curated the arrangement of her works in a salon-style display akin to a way that they might have been seen at the real Colony Club. She has also made sculptures of paper mache--almost mockeries of the sculptural ornamentation of the wealthy--and a bubble-gum pink ottoman invites guest to lounge and enjoy the glitz of the fabulous world of the rich and famous.

Rachel Kaye received her BFA from California College of the Arts in 2004 and currently lives and works in Los Angeles. The Colony will be on view at Triple Base until March 22, 2009.

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On view through April 5, 2009 at the Chicago Cultural Center is House of the Rising Sun, an installation of paintings by the collaborative duo of Robert Davis and Michael Langlois.

Though their output primarily consists of paintings, the pair also collaborates to create sculpture and large-scale installations with a conceptual bent. Their scrupulously crafted, whimsical and stinging paintings explore the lowbrow with a fastidious fixation on the human figure as it undergoes psychological or physical stress. Their work is replete with historical and pop culture characters, loving family portraits, controversial icons, and hard core sensibilities.

For this exhibition, a small number of related paintings are presented in a similar but new configuration from their 2008 exhibition at Steve Turner Contemporary in Los Angeles, under the same title. Among the works on view is Babylon, a large canvas depicting among other things female nudes, airliners, oil derricks, and a pig fucking a goose, all rendered in shades of blue. While this painting is displayed centrally in the gallery space, it is flanked on either side by two smaller paintings to round out the installation: Face of God, and Dads.

Robert Davis and Michael Langlois have been collaborating as artists since they met at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1997, and divide their time between Chicago and Brooklyn.

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Swedish painter, Sigrid Sandstrom, exhibits twelve of her newest abstract paintings at The Company in downtown Los Angeles from March 14th through April 18th. Sandstrom's strength is revealing the paradoxical in both painting and nature. Even the artist's preferred technique is an oxymoron--the transparent layering of opaque whites. Decision making, editing, working, and reworking are crucial elements of Sandstrom's finished work. She purposefully leaves behind squeegee smears, paint drips, and brush marks that not only reference her process, but also signifies her work. Milky acrylic washes, often of snowcapped mountains and angular glaciers, sit underneath layers of planar geometric shapes. The polygonal shapes contrast in a variety of ways: irregular vs. regular, convex vs. concave, and rough/torn edges vs. hard/masked edges. Though the shapes are painted, they are made to look as though they are torn paper collage, textured pieces of wood, or see-through strips of masking tape. The shapes' faux edges are yet another reference to painterly fabrication and thus, process. In her artist statement, Sandstrom mentions " the cumulative activity of adding layer-upon-layer is the evidential aftermath of mental engagement which, in turn, insinuates and provokes the next painterly response." By constantly juggling interactive variables, the artist explores the self-reflexive nature of decision-making and the creative process.

In 1997, Sandstrom received her B.F.A. from Academie Minerva in The Netherlands, and in 2001, an M.F.A. in painting and printmaking from Yale University. She is the 2008 recipient of The Joan Mitchell Foundation: Painters and Sculptors Grant as well as the 2008 John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Sandstrom's paintings are in permanent collections at the Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX; Ulrich Museum of Art, Wichita KS; and Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT. Currently, she lives and works in Stockholm.

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Travelers, 2008, oil on linen, 77 x 62 x 1 1/4 inches

David Zwirner in Chelsea is currently presenting several recent large scale oil paintings by contemporary American figurative painter Lisa Yuskavage in her second solo show at the gallery. Since receiving her M.F.A. at Yale in 1986, Yuskavage has shown her work across the world and is included in several major museum collections. Works included in this gallery exhibition are PieFace (2008), Travellers (2008), Figure in Interior (2008), Snowman (2008), Reclining Nude (2009), The Smoker (2008), Pond (2007), among others, in addition to small oil paintings, including Figure in Landscape (2008) and Chrissy (2009).

Yuskavage began her career as a key part of a new figuration movement taking place in the 1990s (the "Bad Painting" movement), which occurred when the glitz of the previous decade faded and painting became more personal and traditional. Other artists grouped in this movement include John Currin, Elizabeth Peyton, and Luc Tuymans. Yuskavage's now iconic sexualized young females are painted in a refined style that recalls the technique and skill of the great masters. These female characters are given anatomical irregularities, such as bloated bellies and exaggerated breasts, but sustain some mesmerizing sexual appeal. They are placed into erotically charged settings and positions, forcing the viewer into a sometimes uncomfortable voyeuristic situation. Yuskavage's suggestive subject matter and her employment of a kitschy soft core aesthetic highlight the artist's impeccable technical ability.

Figure in Interior, 2008, oil on linen, 72 x 52 x 1 1/2 inches

In several works on display in the show, Yuskavage places her signature voluptuous beauties in mystical mountainous landscapes, sometimes accompanied by less prominent figures, as seen in Travelers, 2008. The vaporous lighting of the composition and the incomplete narrative suggested by the title trigger a slight feeling of unease, not unlike her earlier works. The artist has cleverly been able to maintain the critical balance between psychological and erotic content, but works such as Figure In Interior, 2008, call this balance into question with its salacious sensationalism.

The compositions representing interactions between two female figures are more psychologically compelling than the singular portraits, such as Teresa and Lauren, 2008, which depicts an impending encounter between two women in a warmly lit private chamber. The alluring glance of the woman looking back at us serves as both an easy entry to the rendezvous and a startling reminder of our fictional intrusion. The rousing exchange between these sapphic sirens is indicative of the artist's continued ability to provide an undeniably stimulating experience.

Teresa and Lauren, 2008, oil on linen, 25 1/2 x 24 x 1 1/4 inches

Yuskavage was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and currently lives and works in New York where she is represented by David Zwirner. Over the past year, she has participated in group exhibitions at The FLAG Art Foundation and Thrust Projects in New York and the Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien in Vienna.

Yuskavage's paintings will remain at David Zwirner until March 28th.

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Los Angeles-based artist Robbie Conal has made a name for himself over the past several decades for his poignantly irreverent and ultra-humorous political posters featuring unforgettable one-liner jokes. The artist wittingly simplifies issues that surround political figures and delivers the work to a mass audience by creating reproductions of his painting, pasting the posters in cities throughout the country. His clever insight can be seen over countless paintings such as a rendering of Dick Cheney with bunny ears bearing the simple phrase 'Enronergizer Bunny' over a hot pink ground.

In his current series of work, the artist has begun to move away from his well-known political poster portraits and has been investigating other, equally clever, connections between popular culture and politics.

The artist recently exhibited a new painting in the retrospective exhibition Beautiful/Decay: A to Z, which opened at the Kopeikin Gallery in Los Angeles last weekend. In addition, Conal recently teamed up with By Osmosis TV and Beautiful/Decay magazine to produce a short interview video that features the artist at work in his studio.

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What would it look like if you compiled fleeting images from some of the most popular film moments onto a painted canvas? Artist Jim Gaylord shows the viewer this point of view in his solo exhibition Cliffhanger at the Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco. Moving away from the more collage-like paintings of his past, Gaylord's latest work carefully marries his interest in film and the history of painting, and the result is a collaboration of recognizable imagery and colorful shapes in variety of painting techniques. Combining the brushwork of abstract impressionism with the psychological limbo of the Surrealists and the ambiguity of conceptual art, Gaylord's paintings and prints reflect an artist who is informed of those who preceded him as well as by a vast popular culture which  surrounds him. Titling his work such things as Study (Braveheart + Jackass: the Movie + Cloverfield + Last of the Mohicans + Home Alone 2), Gaylord gives credit to his sources and influences as well as providing the viewer with an acute lens with which to understand his creative process. Among the eleven works on view at Gregory Lind Gallery, the most noteworthy is a set entitled Final Destination 00:15:11:22 and 00:15:22:07,  paintings highlighting a convergence between some sort of outer-space video game and a crude oil fire, evoking a feeling of playfulness and cultural despair.

Cliffhanger will be on view until March 14, 2009.

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Daryoush Asgar and Elisabeth Gabriel, the Austrian collaborative duo that makes up Asgar/Gabriel, focus of the current Mark Moore Gallery exhibition "Bucolica Obscura," cites the breadth of art history (with specific nods to Baroque and Abstraction) as influences of the large-scale oil on canvas works of their latest collection. Despite this, the dwellers of their paintings (attractive, scantily clad contemporary twenty-somethings in various states of loungey boredom) seem to speak exclusively to an MTV audience. The figures, who listlessly strum instruments, sneer, pass out, and sip from red plastic party cups are half-heartedly transported to centuries of yore with haphazardly added accessories like Marie Antoinette wigs and photorealistic bouquets that recall those from Flemish still life painting. Perhaps just for chaos' sake, we also find strange Surreal objects like a giant elephant's head, dogs, flames, and firearms.

The contemporary accoutrements of the works go beyond their glossy inhabitants. The massive canvases are littered with abundant neon colors showcased by drippy, graffiti-style texts that scream words like "ABYSS" or "EXODUS", air brushy clouds of bubblegum pink, acid yellow, and tangerine, and psychedelic patterns that aim to enhance the noise of these compositions. The problem with the paintings is not their celebration of the present, but the lack of juxtaposition with the past by which they claim to be equally inspired. Labeling their disjointed narratives "postmodern" only excuses the lack of balance it would require to successfully marry the old and the new. While Asgar/Gabriel likens their work to previous Pop Art icons like Andy Warhol or Jasper Johns, their latest collection does not seem to be a joyous and ironic appreciation of Pop culture, but rather a lackluster, manufactured hodgepodge of the superficial.

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On view until March 19th, Gio Marconi gallery in Milan is presenting a series of large-scale printed works by American artist Wade Guyton. Displayed in the ground floor area of the gallery, Guyton's elegant Xs and stripes are an emblematic manifestation of the concept of mechanical reproduction within the art-making process. Guyton's 'paintings' are produced by printing and re-printing the same digital file drawn by the artist in Photoshop on pieces of folded, oversize, pre-primed linen, first on one side, and then on the other. Focusing attention on the medium is definitely characteristic of Guyton's 'paintings'. Each one, bearing marks of its somewhat 'forced' making process, becomes a visual record of the action of the forty-four inch wide Epson 9600 Ultrachrome inkjet printer used by the artist. The works should not merely be regarded as finished artifacts but as physical traces of a conceptual operation, and as records of the process of their production: the central, vertical line, or seam, shows exactly where the linen was accurately folded to pass through the printer. A reference to 20th century art history and American abstract expressionism is more or less detectable in the exploitation of the medium. Just as the action painters of the mid-20th century relied on the physical act of painting and the chance effects of dripping and spilling paint onto the canvas, Guyton turns to a device to transfer his 'paintings' from a computer onto primed linen, letting the medium decide.

Currently living and working in New York City, Wade Guyton was born in 1972 in Hammond, Indiana, and received a B.A. from the University of Tennessee in 1995 and his MFA from Hunter College in 1998. He has recently exhibited with solo shows at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris, at Portikus in Frankfurt and at LAXART in Los Angeles. Represented by Friedrich Petzel Gallery in New York, his works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York and the Mamco (Musee d'Art Moderne et Contemporain) in Geneva.

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Western Project's current exhibit, Sush Machida Gaikotsu: New Wave of Turner, New School Pollock is as rife with art historical reference as it is pertinent to contemporary art. Public Image, one of Machida's smaller, four-part compositions, entices us to enter the gallery, where we're surrounded by roiling seas and flocculent clouds. The mural-scale paintings are multi-paneled and linked by vibrant lines that follow a spiral or curvy course until they are interrupted by cresting waves. Machida uses phalangeal forms to represent sea foam, which calls to mind 19th century Japanese woodcuts. Often, Katsushika Hokusai's Great Wave Off Kanagawa is mentioned by reviewers when citing Machida's inspiration. Hokusai's famous woodcut also influenced Takashi Murikami. Contemporaries Murikami and Machida share a common process as well, which involves masking hard edges and using air-propelled paint to flaunt a "superflat" surface. Subtle chromatic shifts, varying tones, and hard edges make Machida's lines appear to glow like neon lights. His artifice becomes obvious only when looking closely at the paint-ridged edges of the glowing lines or the tiny dots of misted paint.

Machida received his M.F.A. from University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2002. New Wave of Turner, New School Pollock is his third solo exhibition at Western Project. His work is represented in prominent collections such as Las Vegas Art Museum, Phoenix Art Museum, Portland Art Museum, and the Frederick R. Weisman Art Foundation, Los Angeles, CA. His show at Western Project runs through February 7, 2009.

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Broken, Beaten and Buried is the title of a new site specific installation by the artist James Marshall (aka Dalek), currently on view at the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina. The exhibition was organized by DailyServing founder and editor Seth Curcio, and was completed in its entirety over a seven day period by a team of 10 assistants led by Dalek himself. The show broke new ground for the artist, being his most ambitious exhibition to date. Featuring an entirely new and more reductive style of painting, the immersive installation focuses on the psychological effects of color. Dalek painted every part of the exhibition space, literally placing the viewer directly in the artist's paintings with little to no room for escape.

In April of 2008, Dalek appeared on the cover of Juxtapoz Magazine and in late 2007 he was a featured artist in Swindle Magazine. In years past, Dalek has been featured in countless publications including Tokion Magazine and New American Paintings. In addition, he had his first monograph printed in 2003, Dalek: Nickel Plated Angels, published from Gingko Press.

The artist is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and in 2001/02 he worked as an assistant to Takashi Murakami. He is currently represented by the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in New York, Irvine Contemporary in Washington, D.C, Elms Lester in London and Galerie Magda Danysz in Paris.

Broken, Beaten and Buried will be on view until March 7th, 2009. Upon the closing of the exhibition, DailyServing and Redux Contemporary Art Center will release a full-color catalog, featuring full documentation of the installation with rare photographs, articles and interviews featuring the artist.

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A group exhibition entitled Lucid Dreaming opened Saturday, January 17th at Curator's Office. The exhibition includes works from the Estate of critically acclaimed abstract symbolist painter Simon Gouverneur, who pursued a lifelong investigation into the structures of language and meaning. His work invokes a wide range of ideas--from the principles of structural anthropology espoused by Claude Levi-Strauss to the teachings of Jewish mysticism, Buddhist texts and linguistic theories.

Also in the show are works from brilliant architect Paul Laffoley, who is reputed to have created over 800 works, mixing precise technical work with philosophical ideologies from ancient times to the present. Laffoley has described his work as blending the purely rational, Apollonian impulse with a more emotional, Dionysian stances.

Jason Hughes, who is directly influenced by both Laffoley and Gouverneur, will also be exhibiting his works. His iconic works appear like objects designed to inspire higher consciousness or serve as the focus of meditation.

The exhibition interestingly situates the artist's conceptual framework around lucid dreaming, a dream stage in which the person is fully aware they are dreaming while the dream is in progress, without waking up. In this stage, the dreamer can act and create as they would in reality, though with limitless capability and imagination, a sort of moving painting. To reflect the continuing visionary tradition in modern and contemporary art, each of these artists attempts to harness this realm of a waking dream-state as part of their practice.

Through obtuse, and irrational visual logic, each artist creates a kind of mesmerizing mandalic emblem. These symbolic structures and tandototems attempt to organize and stratify consciousness itself.

Artists from top to bottom: Simon Gouverneur, Paul Laffoley, Jason Hughes

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Bejing-based Yue Minjun is one of the most important artists of the Chinese avant garde. Part of the Chinese avant garde movement, Cynical Realism, Yue Minjun's work is characterized by a signature laughing figure which serves as a portrait of the artist. Upon greater inspection the smiling faces contain fear, animosity, and a sense of discomfort that is a product of facing reality in contemporary times. After working as an electrician, Yue Minjun studied painting from Hebei Normal University. In 1999 he was included in the Venice Biennale and in 2000 exhibited with Chinese Contemporary, London. In 2004 the artist was included in both the Gwangju Biennale, Korea, and Shanghai Biennale in China. Yue Minjun currently lives and works in Beijing, China.

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Amy Bennett's newest work captures viewers with cinematic scenes marked by stark contrasts. Reflective symmetry, gestural figures and overcast skies portend any number of human misfortunes. Past first glance, her acute realism reveals that she studies more still-lifes than she paints en plein air. Her crisp lines and angular brush strokes depict the multifaceted surfaces of a 13 x 3' styrofoam and resin model of lakefront property she constructed in order to complete her recent work.

Bennett constantly reminds us that the emergence of a painting's meaning is often tied to the artist's process. Fabricated landscapes are flawlessly painted, accented with miniature figures gesticulating near the surface of a New England lakeside. Keen observation and technical ability help Bennett direct the viewer to explore themes like loss, solitude, and aging. Bennett also invites the viewer into her world, where protagonist often becomes narrator. In the end, we are trapped beneath a smooth, shiny, seal of lacquer that covers each painting and encapsulates the unfolding events in time.

The young artist's professional career is an impressive, ten year, time-line dotted with multiple group and solo exhibitions, prestigious awards, and many high honor degrees. She uses a realistic approach to representation, likely influenced by her training at the New York Academy of Art, where she received her MFA in 2002. Bennett displayed her infatuation with fictional constructions early in her career, as witnessed last year at exhibitions Buried at Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden, 2007, and Size Matters: XS at Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY, 2007. Her recent series, At The Lake, opened at the Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles on January 10th and runs through February 14th. In fall, the show will travel to the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo.

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Los Angeles-based artist Tomory Dodge creates paintings that contain formal abstraction and representation within the same ground of the work. Dodge renders landscape environments that are fragmented and intentionally distilled. Often the disarray in his work is a reference to disaster and chaos as a potential force for transcendence. Dodge is a graduate of the California Institute of the Arts and Rhode Island School of Design. The artist has exhibited at the Knoxville Museum of Art and the CRG Gallery in New York and has a forthcoming exhibition this year with ACME in Los Angeles. Dodge was a grant recipient of the Joan Mitchell Foundation MFA grant in 2004.

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Like the Spice Gallery in Brooklyn will be presenting Jenny Morgan's recent figurative oil paintings in the exhibition Abrasions, opening on January 9th. Morgan completed her M.F.A. in 2008 at the School of Visual Arts in New York and this will be her first solo show in New York, where she currently lives and works.

Abrasions presents several startling portraits of people close to the artist, painted on monochromatic grounds and often depicted nude. The artist first paints the subcutaneous flesh of the subjects, and then scrapes and sands away at the top layers of the paint, causing their skin to look abraded and scorched in areas. This physical layering of the paint mimics the layering of dermis and epidermis of human flesh. Her remarkable realism, skillful technique, and ability to portray psychological subtleties through facial expression are astonishing.

Morgan has exhibited nationwide and has participated in group shows at Columbia University, The LeRoy Neiman Gallery, and the Smithsonian Institute's National Portrait Gallery. Her was recently featured at Scope Art Fair, Miami and Bridge Art Fair, Miami Beach.

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Galerie Michael Janssen in Berlin will be presenting the work of two artists, Tine Furler and Gerard Hemsworth, in January and February of 2009. Both Furler's show, Vererbungslinie Vampyropoda, and Hemsworth's show, Now Then, will be on display at the gallery from January 17-February 28, 2009. The opening will take place on Friday, January 16th from 7-9.

Berlin-based artist Furler began as a painter and currently combines collage, multimedia, and painting. Her works often reference evolutionary and social history while emitting some ominous tone through her selection of imagery. Some works are vicious and startling while others seem more serene and contemplative. Furler studied under Dieter Krieg at the Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf and participated in the third Prague Biennial in 2007.

Gerard Hemsworth is currently a Professor of Fine Art at Goldsmiths College, University of London where he is Director of Postgraduate Studies in Fine Art. He studied at St. Martin's College in London from 1963-1967. His simplistic paintings are executed with a purity and restraint of line and evoke peculiar narratives, often involving cartoonish characters. Hemsworth was originally associated with the conceptual movement in the 1960s and 70s, but has expanded his practice to include painting and printmaking. In 2000, he was a winner of the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition Charles Wollaston Prize.

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Seattle-based painter, Grant Barnhart, recently shifted the focus of his paintings to directly confront certain iconic American imagery such as cowboys, football players, cheerleaders, and showgirls in an attempt to build a vocabulary that is positioned neatly between satire and homage. In a time where it is increasingly easy to portray American life and culture in a generally pessimistic light, Barnhart takes on the challenge of providing commentary that is much more insightful, investigating the nuances and recent history of our culture to provide the viewer with several avenues to explore the work. However, these avenues are not always glorifying. Barnhart explains that often the characters in his work, "represent romanticized notions of American masculinity, symbolic agents of conquest and glory... subverting these figures of strength, by depicting them in states of defeat, confusion, and humiliation."

These new painting were recently exhibited along-side select sculptures at OKOK Gallery in Seattle for the show Remember Me When. That exhibition received reviews from the Seattle Times, The Stranger and the Seattle PI.

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Over the past forty five days, Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina has exhibited new paintings by Matt Phillips and Josef Kristofoletti, in a show titled the The Sun Machine Is Coming Down. The exhibition uses the language of geometric abstraction to discuss scientific processes, phenomenological experiences, and the nature of illusion.

The artists, who met in graduate school at Boston University, push the boundaries of pattern, color and space, synthesizing these elements into a formal system of painting which examines the basic building blocks of matter. In an attempt to better understand the world around us, Josef Kristofoletti focused his attention on the CERN particle accelerator, the world's largest and most expensive laboratory for particle physics. While CERN was preparing for its first ever successful collision, Kristofoletti was creating The Angel of the Higgs Boson, a large-scale painting of a cross section of the CERN accelerator on the outside walls of Redux. The end result was a strikingly bright mural that furthered the dialogue about scale, the tradition of public mural painting and scientific theory. Kristofoletti is currently a part of the mobile living experiment Transit Antenna, giving the opportunity to create murals across the U.S.

Inside Redux, are the encompassing paintings of Matt Phillips. Phillips paintings go far beyond the modernist ideals from which they are built. They attempt to simulate situations that speak about the phenomena of deep space, energy transfer and optical illusion. Some of the paintings in the gallery reach 16 ft. in length, and incorporate paint with collage, sewn surfaces and irregularly shaped canvases. Since completing his MFA at BU, Matt Phillips has completed an exhibition with Petra Projects hosted at Mehr Gallery in NYC as well participated in Gangbusters at Plane Space Gallery, also in NYC. The artist currently teaches painting at Hampshire College in Amherst, MA.

The exhibition, which was curated by DailyServing.com Founder, Seth Curcio, is accompanied with a full color, 50 page catalog documenting the exhibition, including special articles and essays about the artists' work. A limited edition catalog release event is scheduled for today at Redux and the book will be available for purchase on the DailyServing.com site by the end of next week.

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Craig Kucia received degrees in art from the Cleveland Institute of Art and Edinburgh College of Art in Scotland. His has completed recent solo exhibitions at The Melvin Art Gallery of Southern College in Lakeland, Florida and the Art and Culture Center in Hollywood, California.

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Wandering through the caverns of the Miami Art Fairs can allow you to miss what is right in front of you. One of this year's standouts came from Allison Schulnik, showing with the Mike Weiss Gallery in the Scope Art Fair. Using a Guston-influenced meaty texture and a spontaneous gesture, Schulnik's paintings reference folklore and fairy tale through the mind of an animator. Her subject matter ranges from cats and skeletons to the still life and hobo clowns, but all rely on an innate gesture that makes them gripping and highly emotive. Her subjects have a intense glare, which reference the greatest of the classic Dutch portraits. Her shows consist of paintings and paper pieces, combined with small ceramic sculptures and beautiful stop motion animated films.

Schulnik received her BFA from CalArts in Experimental Animation in 2000 and since then, she has been named by Art Review as one of their "Future Greats," and had features in ArtSlant and Whitehot Magazine. In 2007, she had two major solo shows with the Rokeby Gallery in London and the Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica, California. In 2009, she is scheduled for two upcoming shows with the Unosunove in Rome and Galerie Huebner in Frankfurt, Germany.

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Artist Jay Kelly currently has a new series of works on view in the exhibition titled Rawness & Polish with Commissary Arts in Venice Beach, California. The works on view will include several medium and small-format collages. Some of the works are illuminated by light boxes, constructed of photographs, stencils, spray paint, and found imagery. The artist successfully fuses his personal interests of natural and urban-based elements, found in the land and cityscape of Southern California, with a highly decorative method of visual arrangement. The result reflects a slice of contemporary life synthesized into a graphically compartmentalized surface.

Kelly is a graduate of the UCLA, and has recently exhibited with Go Go Gallery in Miami, Florida and Museum Works Gallery in New York City and Los Angeles. The artist was also commissioned this year to create a new work of art for The Abbot Kinney District Association, for this year's Abbot Kinney Festival in Southern California.

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Currently on view at the Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York City are new paintings and sculpture by artist Mark Shetabi. For his second solo exhibition with the gallery, Shetabi was constructed subtle paintings in a muted palette, exploring ideas related live performance, public space, crowd manipulation and the energy that exists between the performer and audience. For his exhibition titled ARENA, the artist has closely examined the video documentation of an 1985 performance in Wembley Stadium featuring the band Queen. During this performance, Queen's front man Freddy Mercury successfully built a wave a ecstatic emotion which took over the crowd and created a forceful spectacle.

From this point, the artist has created several scenes that are related to the moments direct before or during the performance. Oddly, the viewer is given the opportunity to view the magnitude of these moment through the static medium of painting.

Shetabi is a MFA graduate of Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art and is a 2002 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in the Arts. The artist has completed solo exhibitions at the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, Project Room in Brooklyn and with Ration 3 in San Francisco.

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In the world of a Caleb Weintraub painting, it is clear that something has gone terribly wrong. Stern-faced, costume adorned children run rampant with no apparent boundaries, tracking down the last remaining adults and turning them into wall-mounted trophies of the hunt. In his recent body of work titled Whatever Shall We Do with these Piles and Piles of Paint?, currently on view at the Peter Miller Gallery in Chicago, the artist introduces a new antagonist, the amorphous pile of paint. An MFA graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, Weintraub has risen to success exhibiting with galleries such as Jack the Pelican Presents in New York, Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC, and Projects Gallery in Philadelphia.

In a recent interview with DailyServing.com, Caleb discussed the future the children, the meaning of the pile, and the afterlife of painting.

Continue reading "Caleb Weintraub" »

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Jack The Pelican Presents is currently showing a new body of work by New York based artist Rob Fisher, These are the People in Your Neighborhood. Fisher's paintings often use the flattened table top positioned in a shallow space as a motif to frame his narratives. All of his paintings are executed on handmade paper, allowing him to incorporate other technical processes such as silkscreen. For this show, each painting is a documentation of a real crime that took place in New York City circa 1900-2007.

Described as "Hitchcockian," Fisher's paintings set up a tableau of materials and evidence for viewers to decode. Some of the crimes he represents are less known, while some have become infamous, such as the 2005 "Fake Firefighter Rapes Woman in New York City Apartment."

Fisher received his BFA from the Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, FL and was previously represented by the Marlborough Gallery. His last solo show took place in 2003 at Pierogi Gallery in Brooklyn.

These are the People in Your Neighborhood will remain at Jack the Pelican presents until December 21, 2008.

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Sweeping the BQE is the title of Jessica Rohrer's second solo exhibition with P.P.O.W Gallery in New York City. The works on view investigate the area surrounding the Brooklyn Queens Expressway, a throughway that was designed to alleviate traffic within Brooklyn and on the bridges to Manhattan. For the past seven years, Rohrer has lived within 100 ft of the BQE, and has been able to intimately document the area through the medium of painting. Using photography, memory, and observation, the artist constructs quiet images void of figures. The main subject in the paintings become cars with a highly reflective surface. This mirror-like surface serves as a tool to offer more information about the surrounding area. The paintings not only document the areas around the BQE. The works in Sweeping the BQE also serve as documentation of the artist's own life, a theme that has been consistent through her past several bodies of work.

Rohrer is a MFA graduate of Yale University School of Art. Since graduation, the artist has completed two solo exhibitions with P.P.O.W and one with Arena in Brooklyn.

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It is a rare moment when an elusive street artist agrees to display a collection of works in the space of a white-box gallery. Stolen Land, the current exhibition at Needles & Pens Gallery in San Fransisco features the work of the infamous street-based painter Other. He is known for his spray-painted and wheat-pasted figures that appear on buildings and in train yards throughout the country. Other challenges the traditional notions of graffiti and the cultural associations of street art by creating somber characters made of photo realism contrasting flat elements of abstraction.

The Canadian-born artist began to create his unique work on the streets of Toronto in the late 1980's. Since then, he has managed to create and display his work internationally in the cities of Berlin, Paris, Barcelona, Bucharest, Fez, and Lima. Many of these works continue to travel through endless rail systems, having the opportunity to be revealed to a massive audience that would have otherwise never experienced it.

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Currently on view at Galeria Thames in the Palermo Hollywood neighborhood of Buenos Aires, is a solo exhibition of paintings by Rosemarie Allers, entitled es fetichista tu obra. An anomaly occurrence in the art world, the crowded opening of Allers' exhibition, under the direction of Mabel Ibarra, resulted in an overwhelming number of red dots and discussions. This, beyond the usual consumption of wine and cheese, which was being handed out generously. Allers' work has the power to push far beyond the role of a backdrop and demand the viewers full attention. The sensuous paintings recall Picasso in a rather overt way, but lack any sense of actual or intentional appropriation. Manic scenes of lust bleed into chaotic depictions of overlapping figures. People are more than often defined in Allers' paintings by sketched black outlines and punches of red lips, stalkings or heels. In Hombre protegido ("Protected man"), we are invited to view an episode of passion-- seemingly throwing love, lust, hate and hurt up for grabs-- as androgynous female figures crowd over an indifferent looking man, crying and entangling their limbs. Informed by her protracted background in theater, Allers brings drama to her work in a very narrative manner, telling three acts worth of stories within a two dimensional plane. Es fetichista tu obra is on view at Galeria Thames through November 25th.

Rosemarie Allers was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. She has exhibited internationally at The National Art Gallery Palais de Glace in Buenos Aires, Argentina; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Santiago, Chile; SOHO20 Gallery in New York, among many others, and is in several private and public collections throughout the world.

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Russian-born artist, Shimon Okshteyn, is currently presenting a series of new paintings in an exhibition with Stefan Stux Gallery in New York City. Dangerous Pleasures: New Paintings and Sculptures marks an expansion of the artist's previous series which depicted representations of old master paintings. In Dangerous Pleasures, Okshteyn has rendered several large-scale hyper-real paintings depicting the intoxicating vices of contemporary life. Works titled, Heroin, Cocaine, Ecstasy and Pills, are formed from thick paints on the reflective surfaces of glass and mirror. The reflective surface also acts as a catalyst for self awareness, forcing a confrontation between the viewer and the vices, further pushing the question, "Is my happiness really only one pill away?"

The artist was born in the former Soviet Union in 1951 and emigrated in the U.S. in 1980. The artist recently completed a traveling retrospective exhibition which was organized by the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow. The artist is also in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of Contemporary Art, NY, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, NY.

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SAKS, a new gallery which opened this year in Geneva, Switzerland is currently presenting a new series of paintings and pastels from New York-based artist Sarah Davis. The artist has rendered this new series of work from specific paparazzi images that unsuspectedly catch young women like Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton in compromising situations. The series focuses as much on the predatory practices of the photographers and all prevailing surveillance that these young women are subjected to as much as the characters themselves.

Davis is a graduate of the School of the Visual Art in Chicago and has completed recent solo exhibitions at Michael Steinburg Fine Art and East Galley, both in New York City. This year, the artist exhibited with ExitArt Summer Mixtape Volume Two.

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In Chicago, Carl Baratta's latest solo show Light Up and Be Wonderful is now on view at Western Exhibitions until November 15. Carl Baratta drops the viewer into open-ended narratives, primarily landscapes, where winds swirl menacingly, plant tendrils rise up from subterranean depths, rivers bend violently and mutant figures do battle or find themselves in desperate isolation. In addition to Baratta's paint and color handling, he utilizes glam rock looks from the Seventies and rubber suits from Japanese monster movies to undercut the heaviness. In regard to his paintings Baratta states: "My open-ended narratives never seem to settle down. When each work is looked at in its entirety, it adds up to a simple conclusion: something is wrong. That's the feeling I want to start with. The clues that are given won't yield a solution; they are too busy bouncing off each other and only show how far-reaching the wrongness is. As the scene unfolds, this unnerving feeling ensures that each element and its constituent parts add up to a sense of energetic wonder. I depict imaginative worlds in moments of constant transition, creating a tension between static images and dynamic narrative. If things do not become fixed, they cannot be dismissed or forgotten."

Carl Baratta's recent shows have included a solo at Vox Populi in Philadelphia and group shows at the Carl Berg Gallery in Los Angeles, Lump Gallery in North Carolina and Green Lantern in Chicago. Baratta received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and currently lives and works in Chicago.

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Currently on view In Chicago is Amy Mayfield's installation Doog Vs. Live at threewalls. Mayfield's exhibition marks the beginning of threewalls SOLO program for 2008/09, running until November 15th, 2008.

Known for her paintings that depict ecstatic landscapes located between terrifying and medicated, fear and joy, greed and grandeur, Amy Mayfield's paintings employ personal-world symbolism to inform fantastic landscapes. Here for threewalls, Mayfield has moved off the substrate, turning the gallery into a funhouse that embodies the feminine, ornate and chaotic worlds that she cultivates in her paintings. Employing patchwork colors, decorative black patterning, photo collage, pins, house plants, a stacked wall of books, and sculptural blobs of poured paint, Mayfield manifests here an environment for the audience to enter and occupy. Mayfield will be giving an artist talk at threewalls October 30th at 6pm.

Amy Mayfield has exhibited her paintings throughout Chicago at Gahlberg Gallery, The Hyde Park Art Center, Bucket Rider and Zolla Lieberman Gallery as well as Franklin Parrasch in New York. In 2007 she exhibited in the MCA 12x12 series. Mayfield received her MFA from the The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2006 where she was a recipient of several grants and scholarships.

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Happy Lion Gallery in Los Angeles recently opened Marina Kappos' POLITICUS, an exhibition of new paintings inspired by the forthcoming Presidential Election. The artist's style recalls that of Greek vase painters, her crisp imagery referencing politics, war, and the economic crisis. Her overlapping compositions provide layers of meaning, depicting both cultural history and daily life.

Kappos received her BFA from California Institute of the Arts in L.A. and her MFA from Yale University. She has previously exhibited at Haunch of Venison in London, I-20 and P.S.1 in New York, and Galleria Marabini in Bologna. Her current exhibition at Happy Lion will run until November 29, 2008.

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Currently on view at Loyal Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden is a new group of water color paintings on birch panel by New York based artist Suzannah Sinclair. The exhibition, titled Eyes For No One, largely consists of portraits of young woman bearing confrontational gazes, though not always back at the viewer. The women convey a multitude of emotions ranging from the vulnerable to the proud all the while in a seductive manor that calls into question both sex and sentiment. Sinclair completed two exhibitions earlier this year with Voges + Partner Galerie in Frankfurt and with Samson Projects in VOLTA NY.

Sinclair first exhibited with LOYAL in the Spring of 2007 in the group exhibition I've Been Setting Fires All Day. LOYAL was founded by Kristian Bengtsson, Amy Giunta and Martin Lilja in 2005, and was born from Loyal Magazine.

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Blair Thurman's first solo exhibition opened last week at Galerie Frank Elbaz on rue St.-Claude in Paris's Marais neighborhood. The show, entitled Krumms Along the Mohawk is named after an ice-cream flavor at Thurman's local gas station in New York. The exhibition is in concept a mini-survey of Thurman's work over the past decade and a half - although most of the pieces are new, completed in 2008.

Press releases can be daunting and artist statements can often be even more conceptual than artist's work. However, Thurman's statement in the press release trumps any words that could be said by the gallery about the show, and worth noting, simply asserts that, "It's been said of some of my favorite painters that they are always repeating the same painting. Sam Grosse told me painters always do the same show throughout their career - which I took as a compliment. Maybe it is something about painting. The point of Krumms Along the Mohawk is to show the trail of my work has changed and hasn't changed over 15 years." The works exhibited, acrylic paintings on unconventionally shaped canvases, often in three-dimensional form, are more architecturally aesthetic than what we tend to expect of paintings. Bringing neon sculptures into the mix continues the sense of dimension and tangibility not often seen in a show of predominantly paintings.

Blair Thurman lives and works in New York. She received her MFA at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. She has exhibited at Triple V in Dijon, France, Hard Hat in Geneva, Switzerland and Galerie Hubert Bachler in Zurich, Switzerland, among others.

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Opening this Friday, October 17th, at Thierry Goldberg Projects on Rivington St., on the lower east side of New York, is the first solo exhibition of paintings by Logan Grider. The exhibition will include Grider's latest work - paintings depicting colorful blocks and abstract shapes of the bold-colored and moody-shadowed variety. Grider's oeuvre conjures up Cubist kings like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, within a history-obsessed and history-rejecting, postmodern era. In Grider's pieces, everyday objects in abstract form sit stacked atop one another in front of vague, textured backdrops.

Grider was mentioned along with Rosson Crow and Dash Snow in an article by Kelly Crow of the Wall Street Journal in 2006, about the rise of young artists to galleries and collections of notoriety. He has exhibited in group shows at Yvon Lambert Gallery in New York, Jack Tilton Gallery in New York, Baumgartner Gallery in New York and Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston.

Logan Grider was born in Salem, Oregon and currently lives and works in Connecticut. He holds an MFA from Yale University and a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, having completed programs at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and The International School of Art, Italy.

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Among the works featured in the exhibition are Noelle Mason's window installation of Mag-lites spelling the word SILENCE in Braille, and an illuminated stained glass that projects a surveillance image of 9/11/2001 hijackers passing through security at the Portland airport. Another work by Mason consists of 10 stitcheries that depict x-rays and infrared images of undocumented immigrants crossing the US/Mexico border illegally. Mason collected the images from the US Border Patrol and Minutemen websites, and then sent the images to Brazil where they we embroidered by Bilu Alcantara in exchange for the amount it would cost her to illegally immigrate to the United States. John Delk contributes a candy-coated American flag, and a drain installed in the gallery floor spewing George Bush's past five State of the Union speeches, which he has edited to consist solely of fear-inducing buzzwords and phrases. For his part, Conor McGrady offers up four new vignettes that are de-contextualized portraits depicting roles played by those at various levels within the political power machine.

John Delk is a Brooklyn-based artist whose work has been exhibited nationally in New York, Chicago, San Francisco, and Washington. He received an MFA in 2001 from the School of the Art Institute.

Noelle Mason graduated the School of the Art Institute's MFA program in 2005. Her work has been exhibited internationally and she is a member of the faculty in the University of Houston's sculpture department.

Conor McGrady has recently exhibited his work in the one-person exhibitions, New Arcadia at M.Y. Art Prospects, New York and Green and Pleasant Land, Saltworks Gallery, Atlanta. In 2002 he was selected to participate in the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

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Mekanism Skateboard Company recently partnered with German artist Dirk Skreber to custom paint a new series of skateboard decks. Skreber explores imagery related to natural and man made disasters. In this project,
he renders the pieces of a vehicle in the process of being blown up, which is further echoed in the fragmented grid of skateboard decks. In total Skeber completed fifty skateboard decks in over four paintings.

The artist, who was born in 1961, currently lives and works in New York City and Dusseldorf, Germany. His rencent exhibition Blutgeschwindigkeit (Blood Speed) is currently on view at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany and will travel to the Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland. The artist is currently represented by Blum and Poe in Los Angeles and Friedrich Petzel Gallery in NYC.

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This exhibition marks Woodruff's seventh solo exhibition with P.P.O.W. The artist has exhibited internationally with recent shows including the major traveling project FREAK PARADE which is presently held at the Herron Gallery in Indianapolis, IN.

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On view now at Giant Robot's GR2 gallery in Los Angeles is the exhibition Under Fluorescent Light, featuring new works by artist Masakatsu Sashie. The artist, who is from Kanazawa, Japan creates intricate paintings of hovering orbs, which contain details of his youth, densely packed in an auto-biographical manner. The work references, video games, fast food signs and vending machines, among other highly recognizable imagery.

The artist is currently a professor of art at Kanazawa College of Art, the same school from which the artist graduated. Sashie began his carreer as an artist by exhibiting in Takashi Murakami's GEISAI exhibitions in Japan. Under Fluorescent Light, will be the artist's first solo exhibition in the United States. The work will be on view at GR2 until October 15th.

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Vivid, Tofer Chin's current exhibition at Commissary Arts in Los Angeles, doesn't look like it's about sex, even though the works' titles and the press release explicitly reference gender, sexuality and adolescent ambivalence. Yet maybe the best thing about Chin's work is that it asks us to reassess the way we associate psychological and bodily phenomena with graphics.



Chin's paintings occupy the place where decorative and minimal meet hipster, where grids and lines start to become fun instead of austere. The fetish-finish majesty of Confirmation, the largest painting in the small gallery, seems a warped redress of color field painting, its big blue rays shooting up past the skewed checkered background into a pastel-colored halo. Yet putting Chin's work into an art historical narrative seems somehow wrong. Ultimately, he's more interested in the here and now.



Chin starts his work at the computer, experimenting with perspective and color. When he translates his digital manipulations into paint, the interaction between his sleekly composed images and the tactile nature of paint emphasizes that strange disconnect between systematics and visceral, bodily sensations. Chin, who graduated from Otis College of Art and Design in 2002, has recently exhibited at Fecal Face Dot Gallery in San Francisco, Ad Hoc Art in Brooklyn, and Rojo Artspace in Barcelona. Vivid continues through October 25th.

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AIKO opened a solo exhibition of recent works at Brooklynite Gallery on September 13th with live music by Soul Sonic Force. The exhibition, entitled Shut Up & Look, will remain at the gallery until October 11, 2008. AIKO combines a mastery of stenciling with brushwork and spray paint to emulate the urban decay of her street works. She creates city sirens, whose seductive glances and poses captivate the viewer, exploring female identity and sexuality. AIKO recently departed from the artist collective Faile, where she was a founding member.

AIKO moderated Brooklyn Museum's Visual Release: Gender, Art, Representation and Exchange as part of the museum's Love and Pop symposium and was a guest speaker at Envisioning Japan: Creative Dialogues with the Wider World during the Murakami symposium. She has also exhibited with Lady Pink in PINK/AIKO: Brick Ladies of NYC.

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In addition to the exhibition, 73 Funshine serves as a launch for Jagel's new monograph book (also titled 73 Funshine), which features over 200 colored pages of work dating back to 1997, most of which is musically oriented. Music is a strong driving force behind Jagel's artwork. The book and exhibition include Jagel's colorful palette and multifaceted paper canvases which demonstrate his "fictional autobiography". His use of gauche, pen, ink, and pencil creates a diaspora of dimension-optical diversions which exist side by side one another, and the viewer is invited into the delightfully dizzy scenes of Jagel's conception. Cityscapes, people (generally himself or those close to him), nature, and text are common images found in Jagel's work, themes which he states are narrating his fictitious life story. His aesthetic shows Guston-esque influence with overtly exaggerated brush strokes, the use of hands and smoke. In addition to painting and drawing, Jagel creates paper sculptures and site-specific installations. He has also produced album covers for such notable musicians as Madlib and MF Doom.

Jagel currently lives and works in San Francisco and has shown extensively throughout the United States and Europe. He is simultaneously showing at Los Angeles' Richard Heller Gallery. He received his BFA from California College of the Arts and his MFA from Stanford University.

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After first being introduced to the artists dealing with the decades long conflict in Lebanon after seeing Walid Raad's Let's be Honest, the Weather Helped at MoMA's Color Chart exhibition earlier this year, I quickly learned that John Jurayj is among the other prominent artists involved in this global discussion. In his second solo show at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles, entitled Untitled (We Could Be Heroes), which opened September 6th and runs through October 25th, John Jurayj continues his dialog of discontent regarding the violent civil war through new works in nontraditional media. Jurayj exposes the "power players" in the Lebanese Civil War through Untitled (15 Men), his series of portraits of top-tier cohorts, including then PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat. The unconventional portraits are made from gunpowder screened onto mirrored stainless steel, and scaled to the size of an official embassy portrait. The eyes of the portraits are left blank, revealing the mirrored surface underneath and creating the eerie sensation of looking at oneself while looking at each piece. Across the main gallery from the portraits are a series of paintings made on colored mirrored plexiglass, which seem to be color abstractions at first, but reveal imagery of attacks, explosions and the ruins of real estate caught in the battles. 

John Jurayj lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. He earned his MFA at Bard College in New York in 2005. He is currently in the "New Acquisitions" show at the Smithsonian's Hirshhorn Museum of Art in D.C. He had a solo show at Massimo Audiello Gallery in New York City in the fall of 2007. Upcoming shows include a solo exhibition at the Alberto Peola Gallery in Turin, Italy, opening November 2008 and a group show at Hafriyat Karakoy in Istanbul, Turkey, opening October of 2008.

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Miju, the artist collaboration of Michele Muennig and Juan Carlos Quintana, is currently exhibiting at Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco. Though the work of the collaboration is thought out and purposeful, a clear dialogue of spontaneity exists among the paintings. Each artist adds his and her own artistic technique while collectively they maintain a polished aesthetic of drawing and painting. In their show, Effigies and Demagogues, the San Francisco-based artists reveal themes of destiny, nature, delight and desire, the subjects of fairy tales, and political and historical figures. Muennig's own imagery borders on the surreal, where freely associated objects, characters, and themes (femininity being a focal point) powder her vibrantly colored canvases. Quintana's work shows the influence of political satire, his latino ethnicity, as well as youth and classic children stories.

Both Michele Muennig and Juan Carlos Quintana were educated at Tulane University in New Orleans and have shown extensively as solo artists, though they are making a name for themselves as a collaborative throughout the Bay Area. They have have also exhibited as a duo at art fairs in Miami and New York as well as a recent show in Quezon City, Philippines. The paintings of Miju can be seen at Jack Fischer Gallery until September 27.

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Diamonds and Rust is a new exhibition which opened just last night in Los Angeles, as the debut solo exhibition for the artist Sarah Cromarty with Circus Gallery. The artist's paintings reflect "new visions of the American landscape and American Dream. She brings her simmering and dreamy ideas and style to cowboys, ravers, motorcycle riders, sports cars, and Los Angeles." The exhibition acts in part autobiographically, as she uses images of herself and ex-lovers within the work, while also carefully referencing elements of art historical painting through appropriation and defacement.

The artist is a BFA graduate of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena California and has recently exhibited with Sixspace, High Energy Constructs and The Balmoral, all in Los Angeles. The artist currently lives and works in LA.

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Painter and recent Rhode Island School of Design MFA graduate Ricky Allman, creates post apocalyptic landscapes that simultaneously reference dynamic mountains with architectural structures such as skyscrapers. The artist utilizes geometric abstraction along with organic forms to stimulate the image and allow for the multiple layers to tell a narrative about the possibilities of earth's future.

Allman has a forthcoming solo exhibition next year with Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri, which comes after Your smallest sins are my greatest accomplishments: Recent work by Ricky Allman at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Allman was featured in Beautiful / Decay Magazine Issue P in 2006 and was featured in Wallpaper Magazine 2008: 110 Art and Design Graduates to Watch.

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Jaguar Shoes will present Tonight I am an Owl, new work and the first solo exhibition by Hannah Waldron, one of London's hottest emerging artists and illustrators. The exhibition, which will be located at The Old Shoreditch Station, will focus on the artist's imaginative drawings which feature an abstract vocabulary built from the artist's own world. The works will include glow in the dark screen prints, fantastical landscapes and images of the animal kingdom.

The work often exists as a hybrid of art and design and includes animation and film. Waldron grew up in Lewisham in South East London, close to where the artist continues to live and work. She attended the Chelsea College of Art and Brighton University, where she began her career as an illustrator. Since her graduation, the artist has completed several major projects including the design of a new magazine Counterpart, a music video for Good Shoes and various book covers.

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Oakland-based artist Deth P. Sun will be presenting new paintings for an exhibition titled I See it All, opening this weekend at Giant Robot's GRNY Gallery on East 9th St in New York City. The new works will feature the artists epic landscapes and characters which reference both cosmic and very personal worlds. The narrative works attempt to create "a place where cold mountains loom under the stars, cloaked figures arrive with the night, and lone dreamers struggle." The show is inspired by the films of Terry Gilliam and the work of David Attenborough.

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A new collection of works by Hong Kong born artist Kate Beynon are currently on show at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Demonstrating influences from a range of art forms including calligraphy, graffiti and textiles, the series reflects a variety of multicultural stimuli in order to create the artist's interpretation of today's global citizen. Oriental inspired imagery is a prominent feature of the artist's work, while the merging of Western attributes reflects the artists own dual heritage of being born to a Chinese mother and Welsh father. Her work is bold and ornate, often consisting of both acrylic paint and aerosol enamel, on either canvas or linen, adorned with clusters of Swarovski crystals.

Beynon immigrated to Australia as a child where she later studied at various universities including The University of Melbourne, Prahran College and The Victorian College of the Arts. Her work has been exhibited on both a local and international scale at institutions including The Brooklyn Museum of Art, Bendigo Art Gallery, Netherlands Media Art Institute and Stills Gallery, Edinburgh. She has received various awards and grants for her art practice including The 1995 George Award at Melbourne Fringe Festival, the 1999 Arts Victoria Women's Artist Award and a 2004 Professional Development Grant from the Visual Arts/Craft Board of the Australian Council for residency in Harlem, New York.

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Nashville-based photographer, painter and draftsman Chris Scarborough creates diverse works that references the archetypes of Japanese cartooning similar to Manga. The cultural concepts of cuteness and beauty mixed with the playful violence of Japanese cartoons all inform Scarborough's imagery and process. While working in graphite, painting or the computer, the artist painstakingly renders his subjects with absolute precision. The artist's drawings were recently featured in the Southern Edition of New American Paintings, and he has been featured this year in The Constructed Image at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. The artist has ongoing gallery representation with the Curator's Office in Washington D.C., Foley Gallery in New York City, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and TAG in Nashville. Scarborough is a graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and has been included in several publications such as ArtPapers and The Red Clay Survey.

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In Jack Hanley Gallery's 389 Valencia Street space in San Francisco, Michelle Blade is exhibiting large scale paintings on Dura-lar along with some sculptural pieces in the exhibition The Elliptical Good-Kind. In her compositions, Blade transitions from gestural to more more restrained brush styles. Washes of color are punctuated by areas of greater detail, while a constant undercurrent of mystery pervades all of her work.

Blade's compositions emphasize the vastness of nature, and explore man's place within. Her captivating imagery invokes Romantic sublimity, with anonymous figures rendered in silhouette gathering in groups, dancing, and celebrating some unknown event. The artist insists her paintings are an exercise in "questioning and understanding humanity, and what drives us to form relationships with one another, build societies and then break ties to try and create something better and stronger".

The artist received her B.F.A. from California College of the Arts and has previously exhibited at V1 Gallery in Copenhagen, and Space 1026 in Philadelphia. She was included in Nylon's May 2008 issue and has been interviewed by FecalFace.com. Her work will remain at Jack Hanley Gallery until August 8, 2008.

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The Prestige is a new work by Chicago-based artist Jeff Zimmermann featuring a small room-sized cage with a with a grouping of contained cellophane balloons. Zimmermann, who is known largely for his large-scale paintings and public wall murals, has been experimenting with more conceptual, object-based installation and sculpture including SHARE, a single barrel of light sweet crude oil in a highly polished container, and an untitled work featuring footwear from a Peruvian working child on a long red carpet. Zimmermann debuted many of these works for the first time at NEXT an invitational exhibition of emerging art in Chicago this past May. Zimmermann has completed a recent artist in residence with the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and solo exhibition with Swope Art Musem in Terra Haute, Indiana. DailyServing featured the artist for his mural projects in November of 2007.

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Los Angeles based artist Holly Williams paints images based on photographs of the city of Los Angeles, mixing her interest in the concepts of painting with the inherent mythology of film and television. Her blurred and ambiguous settings (taken from a city known for its ability to manipulate the truth) are captured and given their own significance. Williams' nebulous compositions create narratives for the sidewalks, corridors, balconies, and tunnels of Los Angeles. Her paintings include typical L.A. imagery such as the iconic palm trees lining the streets, light posts, and the glowing orbs of street and car lights. Occasionally, anonymous figures inhabit her settings, their actions remaining as mysterious as the space itself.

Williams transfers the photographic images into paint by using a multi-layered dry brushing technique that mimics the signature qualities of film photography. The blur effect is created through a slow buildup of paint, as oppose to the diminishing effect of dragging a brush through wet paint, for it is important to the artist that "the areas of color be built up rather than homogenized." With the increasing malleability of digital photography, the photograph loses its authenticity and is no longer purely a source of documentation. By painting the images, Williams takes from her own experiences and creates new and unique handmade objects. Each painting then has a tangible connection to the maker, lending a certain authenticity.

Williams received her B.F.A. from the Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles and her work is held in various collections, including the Creative Artists Agency in Beverly HIlls.

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Los Angeles based artist Tabitha Morris is presenting her first solo show of hallucinatory watercolors titled, Predacious Panopticon, at the Happy Lion Gallery in Los Angeles' Chinatown. The opening reception will be held July 12th and the exhibition will remain at the gallery until August 9th.

Predacious Panopticon, an appropriate title for Morris' seductive and repulsive landscapes, includes several large scale works, enveloping the viewer in a dense foliage of nature and sex. Her cast of characters includes siren-like erotic female nudes being devoured and re-birthed by carnivorous plants in a fantastical organic setting. The pleasing pastel palette visually soothes and entrances the viewer until the subject matter is discovered. The density of the the composition is balanced by its fluidity as the viewer's eye gently follows flowing hair to outstretched stems to smoke-like forms.

Tabitha Morris received her B.F.A. from the University of Kansas and an M.F.A. in Painting and Printmaking from the University of Pennsylvania. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles.

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Nigel Cooke's paintings lie somewhere in between fantasy and reality, often employing the urban landscape to provide grounding for surreal scenes executed in the most delicate palette. Cooke's paintings rely heavily on traditional techniques of oil painting that allow for the imagery to subtly mimic illustration and surrealist landscapes. The everyday details in each painting leaves the image somewhere inbetween the recognizable and the foreign. Since the completion of his doctorate from Goldsmith's College in London in 2004, Cooke has exhibited with some of the most internationally prestigious galleries. Since graduation, Cooke showed with the South London Gallery (2006), the Tate London (2004), Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth in Texas (2006) and the Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York (2004). There have been several reviews of his work with Art Review as well as an article in ArtForum.

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High Energy Construct's recent exhibition champions the unexpected potentials of colored pencils. Working in the underrepresented drawing medium, artists Dennis Koch and Claudia Nieto channel the psychedelic effervescence of 60s album covers while also referencing the geometric formalism of modern design. Koch's drawings of multi-colored twin targets have a playful ritualism that seems like a hybrid between Jasper Johns' smart target paintings and Laylah Ali's idiosyncratically self-confident caricatures. They complement Nieto's more narrative topographies, which seem to freely reinterpret nature's most symbolic shapes - rivers, rainbows, mountains. Like most shows at High Energy, one of the newer galleries in LA's Chinatown, new work shows that fine-tuned craftsmanship doesn't have to be canonical or crippled by the austere history of modern art. Koch's and Nieto's work not only evidence diligent attention to finish but also evidence equally diligent attention to the exuberant, culturally-charged potentials of color and shape. While they have the classy expertise of any color field masterpiece, the drawings in new work also gauge the high energy allure of a rainbow colored parachute.

Claudia Nieto, who received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University in 2006, previously displayed work at Center for the Arts, Eagle Rock, and participated in a 2006 group show at High Energy Constructs. Dennis Koch studied political science and studio art at University of Iowa before moving to Los Angeles in 2006. This is his first show at High Energy. New work runs through August 2, 2008.

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Currently on view at Platform Gallery in Seattle's Pioneer Square is the exhibition A Peculiar Brightness in the Sky, new works by artists Patte Loper. The artist uses historical accounts of discover in Antarctica as a framework for her drawings in her second solo exhibition with Platform. Impromptu huts and primitive exploration equipment are used to convey a sense of desperation along side a emotional rapture as these uncharted lands are discovered. The artist also uses the landscape as a metaphor for personal and emotive states, "hostile, empty, beautiful." Loper is a MFA graduate from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent exhibitions include A New Way North at Lyonswier Ortt Contemporary in New York City, Octet at Center on Contemporary Art in Seattle, and Monster Susan Cummins Gallery, Mill Valley, CA.

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New York-based Artist Adam Cvijanovic is currently exhibiting new work in Colossal Spectacle, his latest of four solo exhibitions with Bellwether Gallery in New York City. The exhibition contains several landscape paintings that are rendered with latex paint on Tyvek, as well as a massive painting installation which surrounds the viewer with a scene from Intolerance, a D.W. Griffith film from 1916. The epic film was a financial failure, due mostly to the elaborate sets used to depict the invasion of the babylonians by the Persians.

Adam Cvijanovic has exhibited internationally with recent solo exhibitions at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. Cvijanovic is said to have a large installation in PROSPECT.1, the Dan Cameron curated, first-ever New Orleans Biennial, opening November 1st, 2008.

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Clayton Brothers, Rob and Christian, take root in the artists' immediate environment, referencing local business, neighborhood characters, overheard conversations and local signs that exist outside of the artists' California-based studio. Dense with information, these fractured narratives come to life through a unique collaborative process. The brothers rarely work on the same canvas at one time or even discuss the work while it's being created; instead they work through improvisation, adding to, editing and reconstructing the work as it develops through their independent approaches. The artists' co-creation is completed without ego and is thoroughly organic, allowing the final production to be ambiguous and developed directly from the employed process. Both brothers are graduates of the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif. The Clayton Brothers have exhibited in numerous national solo shows including "Wishy Washy" at the Bellwether Gallery in New York (2006) and "I Come From Here" at the Mackey Gallery in Houston, Texas (2004). The artists have also exhibited in several exhibitions with the La Luz de Jesus Gallery in Los Angeles, such as "Six Foot Seven" (2003), "Candy Lackey" (2002) and "Lucky 13" (1995).

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Currently on view at the Cerasoli Gallery in Culver City, California is a double solo exhibition featuring Mario Wagner's Lost Art of Murder in Gallery One and Marco Cibola's A New Division in Gallery Two. Mario Wagner is a German artist and illustrator who is exhibiting a series of paper-collage canvases that employ traditional methods of collage and consequentially reference modernist qualities, yet they also utilize a flat spacial aesthetic with loud colors that are reminiscent of more contemporary trends. With the image's hard-edged structure being the most unifying element between the two shows, Marco Cibola's A New Division series makes use of geometric abstraction with muted palettes and unique spacial construction. Both artists have exhibited internationally, and Wagner's illustrations have been featured in Playboy, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. The exhibition will be on view through July 5, 2008.

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Fraleigh's oil paintings depict struggles between couples in intimate relationships, thereby addressing the universal themes of power and gender. Her large-scale compositions focus on the realistically rendered faces and hands of her figures, which are surrounded by layers of beautifully applied swirling and dripping paint. This method simultaneously reveals and conceals the encounter occurring amidst the paint, a visual tease that enhances the sexual and physical tension between the figures. In her compositions, it is difficult to distinguish violence from lust. The strong glances of the female protagonists could easily express all-consuming desire or furious terror. This ambiguity is heightened by the alluring tactility of the paint's surface.

Fraleigh's command of her medium can be seen in the easy transitions from extreme realism to elegant abstraction. Due to the size of her compositions, we are immediately thrust into these salacious scenarios, being at once voyeurs and participants in this greater dialogue of gender and identity.

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Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art in Sydney will open an exhibition of recent paintings by Melbourne artist Marc de Jong on June 10th. de Jong gained recognition as a street artist in Melbourne and his work is now held in several collections throughout Australia. He collects the imagery for his paintings from a variety of sources, including the Internet, television, movies, and newspaper. His contemporary scenes include an isolated car crash, an image of Princess Leia, a video still from a gas station hold-up, men huddled on Wall Street, and two cheetahs hovered over the entrails of a zebra. The artist then translates this diverse subject matter onto his canvas by painstakingly painting individual dots, personalizing the wide realm of technological imagery and humanizing the prolific pixel.

There was an eruption of public art in Melbourne between the 1990s and 2004, and de Jong was actively producing during this time. The practice gained institutional respect in 2007 when the National Gallery of Australia purchased its first collection of contemporary street art, which took three years to compile and included 300 stencil designs by 30 artists, including works by Marc de Jong. Melbourne is now an international hotspot for urban art, with world renowned graffiti artist Banksy calling Melbourne's street art, "..arguably Australia's most significant contribution to the arts since they stole all the Aborigines' pencils."

Marc de Jong's paintings will be on view at Sullivan+Strumpf in Sydney until June 29th.

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Argentinean artist Marcelo Pombo creates large, colorful paintings that are rooted in a surrealist vocabulary and contain abstracted landscapes, architecture and figurative elements. The artist approaches his paint application through pointillism, employing thousands of small dots to assemble this primitive yet deliberate imagery. Pombo, who currently lives and works in Buenos Aires, is a prominent artistic figure within South American contemporary art. He has exhibited in countless museums and cultural centers on the continent, including, "Antologia de Dibujos" with Fundacion Vox in Bahia Blanca, Argentina, and "Dibujos" with the Centro Cultural Ricardo Rojas in Buenos Aires, Argentina. U.S. exhibitions include shows with the Christopher Grimes Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., and the Marvelli Gallery in New York, which was reviewed by The New York Times.

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Loyal Gallery is presenting fifteen new paintings by Eddie Martinez in his third solo show with the gallery. Martinez attempts to capture the chaotic nature of life in his paintings, both formally and conceptually. The artist uses the mutability of his medium to add and subtract layers of paint and to create constant movement across the canvas. His bold and sometimes aggressive approach to the imagery gives the work a fresh and raw quality. The longer the viewer studies the painting, the more recognizable the plethora of cultural references become. Martinez revisits certain motifs as well, such as block headed monolithic figures. He is constantly drawing which results in an incessant stream of new imagery, pulling inspiration from daily life, conversations, and his own thoughts and ideas.

Martinez currently lives and works in Brooklyn and his recent exhibition at ZieherSmith in New York was met with wide acclaim. He has previously exhibited at Deitch Projects in New York and Peres Projects in Berlin. This solo exhibition will be accompanied by a catalogue that includes essays by Brian Belott and Stefan Simchowitz and will be on view until July 6, 2008.

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Emily Huffman's works include paintings, drawings, sculptures, and installations. Her artwork emerges as she is informed by inner and outer landscapes and relationships. The works are created to bridge spiritual and physical, inner experience and outer world.In her paintings, fluid, dynamic fields and gestures form a context for imagery. The imagery is drawn from a personal library of symbols, objects, and stories; often inspired by nature, the body and dreams. The content in her paintings does not have strict form, but has multiple allusions. A single object can be a 'thing' as well as a growing plant, organ, and animal. A field of marks is flowing water, empty sky, and expansive breath. This layered imagery gives a rich feeling and emotional sense to her work. The body is often an influence on her visual forms because Huffman works with the body on a daily basis as a healer.

Huffman is showing new paintings this summer at Zely & Ritz in Raleigh, NC. She received a BFA from Tulane University, and currently lives and works in Raleigh. She is a member of Bonded Llama Artist Studios, and has a private massage therapy and energy work practice. She is one of the artists involved in The Body Center, a new creative space in Raleigh that is both art gallery and sanctuary. Over the last 4 months, she has exhibited two installations at The Body Center, and is currently part of a collaborative installation opening August 1st.

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Currently on view at the Nathan Larramendy Gallery is the solo exhibition Pedestal featuring new paintings and sculpture by artist Amir H. Fallah. Continuing the use of imagery such as terrariums, botanicals and Persian miniature painting, Fallah's work explores his experience of adolescent development when his interests were being formed and new paths were constantly discovered. Fallah has become known for his large scale fort structures, which are built intuitively on site and can reach over 16 ft in both height and width. Fallah has exhibited these structures at the L.A.Louver Gallery in Los Angeles, RHYS Gallery in Boston, Art Dubai 2008, Dubai U.A.E., and has work scheduled to be exhibited at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC this fall.

Amir, who is a previous DailyServing interviewee, is also the founder and creative director of Beautiful/Decay Magazine, an international quarterly publication that is a synthesis of art, design, fashion, music and contemporary culture. Exhibiting simultaneously with Pedestal will be the photographic works of Fallah in the group exhibition After the Revolution: Contemporary Photography from Tehran and California on view at the San Francisco Arts Commission at City Hall until June 27th.

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Alex Lukas and Brian Willmont present new work in their two-person exhibition at Park Life in San Francisco opening on May 9th. Both artists are members of Philadelphia's Space 1026 artist collective.

Alex Lukas paints contemporary landscapes depicting moments of disaster and destruction as seen from a distance. He collects his imagery from various sources, including the mainstream media and blockbuster films, which pump out threatening messages on a daily basis. All paintings include an element of unease and anxiety, familiar feelings in a post-9/11 atmosphere. He works with a variety of materials, combining watercolor, ink, spray paint, acrylic, and enamel on paper, creating a dynamic textural as well as emotional effect. In addition to painting, Lukas runs a small 'zine publishing company called Cantab Publishing. He began making 'zines in 5th grade when he created his first Xerox comic and continued throughout highschool and college. Lukas attended the Rhode Island School of Design and has previously exhibited at White Walls in San Francisco and Galleri Loyal in Sweden.

Brian Willmont describes the new American folktale in his Technicolor paintings that are tarnished with traces of American History, Pre-Renaissance and Persian miniature painting, as well as dreamscapes and the fantastic. Willmont received his B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art in 2007 and has previously exhibited at LaMontagne Gallery and the Mills Gallery.

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A recent collection of works by Indian artistic duo Jitan Thukral and Sumir Tagra are currently on display at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Waterloo. Known for their prolific use of color, their works often reference advertising and consumerism as a response to contemporary culture. Entitled Somnium Genero 02, their current exhibition is a combination of paintings and sculptural works, all of which include vibrant imagery and surrealist influence. Symbols of man-made technology including planes, television screens and radio transmitters are interwoven with images of flowers, evoking a sense of natural beauty. Such hybrid imagery is affixed to canvases and some circular sculptural works, causing them to appear almost as enlarged, ornate Christmas decorations.

Thukral and Tagra were both born in New Delhi, where they still currently live and work. Both artists attended Delhi College of Art, while Thukral furthered his studies at Chandigarh College of Art, Tagra chose to do so at The National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad. They have collaboratively exhibited at institutions including Bose Pacia, United States, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai and Teatro Armani, Milan. In 2006 they were honored on the list of 101 Emerging designers of the world, as featured in Wallpaper Magazine.

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Currently showing at Sarah Cottier Gallery, Paddington is a recent collection of paintings by Queensland based artist, Julie Fragar. Entitled Liar, Fragar's works include depictions of people in a multitude of scenarios. These include children at play, people appearing ambiguously alone and families enjoying each other's company. Often her paintings include an overlapping of imagery, with the inclusion of thin outlines of figures which appear in other works within the series. Judging by the title of the exhibition, one could assume that these depicted people's often contemplative expressions suggest that they are guilty of lying to themselves or those around them.

Fragar studied at Sydney College of the Arts, before later earning her doctorate in visual arts at Queensland College of Art. She has received various awards for her art practice including the 2005 ABN Amro Emerging Artist Award, The 2001 Freedman Foundation Traveling Scholarship for Emerging Artists and the Griffith University Postgraduate Research Scholarship. She has exhibited widely on a national scale within various solo and group exhibitions. Galleries her work has been displayed within include Mori Gallery Sydney, Boutwell Draper Gallery, Sydney and Queensland Centre for Photography, Brisbane. Her work also belongs to permanent collections at Artbank, Gold Coast City Art Gallery and Ferrier Hodgson, Sydney.

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Grant Barnhart, a previous DailyServing interviewee, is preparing for an upcoming exhibition entitled "Spread Eagle," on view from May 2nd - May 31st at Leslie's Art Gallery in Luxembourg. This will be the Seattle-based artist's first European exhibition. Barnhart investigates American archetypes of masculinity and heroism through wit and tounge-in-cheek humor. For his upcoming show, the artist will be using the images of cowboys and football players in absurdly vibrate color-field backgrounds. The newer metaphors of masculinity such as football players and cowboys are coupled with the artist's previous imagery such as urinating tanks. Together the images offer a glimpse into contemporary American culture and humorously sheds light on the current aggressive and confrontational nature of the U.S. Barnhart uses humor to disarm the viewer and allow for reflection on the American identity. Barnhart is a graduate of the Columbus College of Art & Design and is currently represented by OKOK Gallery in Seattle. The artist has a forth coming exhibitions with OKOK in 2008 and under their new gallery name Ambach & Rice in 2009.

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Becker received his B.F.A from Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and his M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. He has had solo exhibitions at King County Art Gallery in Seattle and at Anna Leonowens Gallery in Halifax, and has two upcoming exhibitions. The first is Works on Paper at Sunday L.E.S. in New York from April 24-May 25 and Eden's on Fire! at the Platform Gallery in Seattle from May 8-June 14.

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Alkadhi works in series, his latest series being Al-Ghareeb (which translates as "stranger" or "the strange one") and Father of No One's Son. Al-Ghareeb explores the complex emotions of fear, loss of control, anger, and rebellion in a war-torn society. Most of the figures used in this series are based on photographs of the artist himself taken by photographer/video artist Scott Gerst, lending an intensely personal aspect to the works while simultaneously drawing attention to the position and problem of the artist surrounded by war. The faces of the figures are obscured by weaponry and masks illustrated using the elegant Arabic script, as seen above in If Words Could Kill II, thus elevating the emotional content of the work by referencing imprisonment and torture.

Alkadhi received a Bachelor's Degree in Engineering Sciences from the University of Technology in Baghdad. He has exhibited at the Orfally Gallery in Baghdad, but left Iraq at 23 after the first Gulf War. He has had a solo show at the Aeotea Gallery in Auckland, New Zealand before moving to New York in 2000 where he earned a scholarship to the ITP/Tisch School of the Arts graduate program at New York University. Since then, he has shown at the Fire Island Pines Arts Project's 9th Biennial, The National Arts Club and Nader Gallery in New York, and Exposure Gallery in Palm Springs, California.

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Appropriate, a recent collection of works by Sydney artist, Cash Brown is currently on display at Robin Gibson Gallery, Darlinghurst. The exhibition is comprised of various works on canvas which appropriate Gustave Courbet's infamous vaginal painting Origin of the World, 1866. While utilizing this image as a central source of inspiration, Brown has also incorporated influences from other western artists, painting Courbet's figure in the style of Tom Wesselmann's pop art nudes, integrating fish used in John Currin's The Moroccan and utilizing geometric Suprematist imagery ala Kazimir Malevich.

Brown received her BFA from National Art School, Sydney and has had her work extensively exhibited on a national scale at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Greenhill Galleries, Adelaide and MOP Projects, Redfern. She is currently the coordinator of Off the Wall, a showcase of works by unrepresented Australian artists, taking place as part of The Weekend Australian Art Sydney, Art Melbourne and Art Brisbane.

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Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art presents Kate Shaw in "Redux", opening on April 15th in Sydney. Shaw paints landscapes that waver between pictorial illusion and complete abstraction and evoke images of the alpine wilderness and tropical jungles. The bottom half of her compositions is devoted to watery reflections, displaying a distinct Rorschach effect. She uses a cool pastel palette which varies between gentle washes of color and areas of dramatic saturation to create beautiful yet foreboding environments, inevitably awakening our own environmental consciouses and fears of global warming. Her landscapes are uninhabited, representing a time when nature has regained her control over mankind and lending a sense of apocalyptic immediacy. The artist describes her paintings as "disaster scenarios kind of...but only a disaster for humanity..".

Shaw graduated from RMIT University in Melbourne with a Bachelor of Arts and then completed a Diploma of Museum Studies at Deakin University in 1997. She has exhibited in Australia and internationally, at Luxe Gallery in New York and at the Glendale College Art Gallery in Los Angeles. She had a solo exhibition at SSFA in 2007 and recently finished a studio residency in Brooklyn, New York.

"Redux" will be at Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art until May 4th.

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De las Reyes uses red bister to make lush stains on paper. At first glance, these stains seem unassuming. But a closer examination reveals the intricate marine scenes that play out within the jurisdiction of the stains: rollicking waves or the confident mast of a ship. In Ahab's America, de las Reyes has also included a bronze sculpture of a skull, an elongated resin spout, and text paintings that quote passages from Moby Dick. The exhibition is a well-crafted, visually alluring exploration of American identity.

De las Reyes received his BFA from California State University and his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. He has had solo exhibitions at Bentley Gallery in Scottsdale, Arizona, Howard House in Seattle, and Artplace in Los Angeles. His work has been featured in Art in America and Modern Painters. Ahab's America runs through April 12, 2008.

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In Germany, Asja Jung completed a Study of Preparation of Cadavers for Scientific and Medical Studies at the University of Bochum and in pathologies, morgues, and museums in the area as well as in Munich and Berlin. She then began Art Studies at the Muthesius Hochschule in Kiel, Germany. She describes her subject matter as "in between the world of Bosch and Gruenewald creatures and science fiction movie aliens".

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On display until November at the Rubell Family Collection (RFC) in Miami is a decade of Hernan Bas' works collected by the Rubell Family. The RFC is a museum-size collection of contemporary works dating back to 1960 housed in a converted 45,000-square-foot former Drug Enforcement Agency (D.E.A.) confiscated-goods warehouse. The Bas exhibit opened in early December 2007 to coincide with the movement of collectors and dealers flying south for Art Basel Miami. Hernan Bas is one of South Florida's most well received artists. Though only thirty years old, his work is included in the Museum of Modern Art and Saatchi Gallery permanent collections. He graduated in 1996 from the New World School of the Arts and lives and works in Miami. Bas' acrylic, watercolor, and gauche paintings take on the aesthetic of a blurry photograph, capturing intimate moments with a wide brush. His figurative subjects, if any, are always boys and men, and the viewer is invariably invited to peek into Bas' world as a gay man. Bas' vibrant pallet and the fairy tale and mythological scenes that he creates-often derived from history and high-art does not linger far from stereotypical utopian playgrounds. In the RCF exhibit, Bas features three multimedia works one of which is an underwater symposium, titled "Ocean's Symphony (Dirge for the Figi Mermaid)." The installation includes a phantasmagorical documentation of an underwater dance searching for the Figi Mermaid. In the gallery space adjacent lays an archive of ocean treasures carefully collected including a life-size replica of the mummified mermaid herself.

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Now showing at Toronto's Power Plant is Benning's 2006 video, Play Pause, directed in collaboration with Solveig Nelson. This two screen video installation is made from hundreds of Benning's drawings which follow anonymous urban figures through public and private city spaces. Throughout the course of a day, the characters move through a city resembling Chicago, engaging in quotidian city activity which then leads to drinking and dancing at night. The video ends at the airport at dawn with a security guard scanning bags and two people having sex on the wing of the plane as it takes off. Play Pause is similar to Benning's earlier work in that it follows characters as they go about the process of defining themselves and their sexuality.

In addition to her film and video practice, Benning is a former member and co-founder of the band Le Tigre.

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For his first show with Freight +Volume in New York, Canadian artist Kim Dorland will be presenting several new paintings in the exhibition "North," in which he explores placing figures in various surroundings. Born in Alberta, Dorland draws his imagery from his native landscape in large-scale representations of a forgotten mid-century suburbia and its surroundings, ennobling the banal. His settings are as much the subject of his canvas as are Edward Hopper's peripheral locales. Dorland's strong compositions are punctuated by a high chroma palette and executed in a non-traditional media mix of oil, acrylic, and spray paint. His immediate and confident brushwork, along with the use of thick impasto combine to depict the familiar in a vibrant and unexpected way.

Dorland received his B.F.A. from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and his M.F.A. from York University in Toronto. He has had several solo exhibitions, having shown at Angell Gallery in Toronto and Kasia Kay Art Projects in Chicago. "North" will open on April 5 and will be Dorland's first exhibition in New York.

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Faught received her B.F.A. from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2004 and has previously exhibited at Merry Karnowsky Gallery and Gallery Nucleus in California. She has also been featured in the Italian magazine Abitare and on Juxtapoz.com.

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This same ambiguity towards wealth is seen in 17th-century Dutch still life painting, which is full of symbolic references to mortality, wealth, and corruption, including skulls and spoiling luxury foods. Sam Leach, who also received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting from RMIT in 2003 and is in the process of completing his Master of Arts (Fine Arts) at RMIT, combines his economic and artistic interests in his exquisite still life paintings for the Sullivan + Strumpf Fine Art show titled Negentrophies. He chooses preserved game animals, insects, skulls, and other objects indicative of wealth as his subject matter.

The artist states he is "investigating how the aesthetics of corporate space convey attitudes towards wealth and power using the conventions and principles of Dutch painting as a frame of reference." The artist paints darkly lacquered, fascinatingly detailed and hauntingly beautiful images of animals and relics. Meticulous attention is paid to each subject, echoing the fine calibration seen in nature. He encases each painting in a layer of glossy resin, recalling the glossy expanses of polished stone seen in corporate spaces. Through exquisite lighting and compositional simplicity, Leach evokes the transience of life and wealth. Leach was voted one of the '50 Most Collectable Artists' by Australian Art Collector magazine in 2007 and 2008. The exhibition Negentrophies will be showing at Sullivan+Strumpf Fine Art in Sydney from March 18 - April 6, 2008.

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The Gagosian Gallery is unarguably one of the most successful contemporary art galleries of our time. The current exhibition of works by the Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha gives us new reason to delve into history and understand what it takes to become a historically important artist. Ruscha seems to intuitively know which new galleries would go on to claim their place in art history, and he wants to show his work in that context. His list of exhibitions includes Ferus Gallery in 1963, Nicholas Wilder Gallery 1967, Texas Gallery 1973, MTL 1978, Galerie Rudiger Schottle 1978, and Galerie Tanja Grunert 1984. Although these galleries may not be household names, a quick check will make it clear, (considering the other artists they showed early in their careers), that these are ground breaking establishments, and they've all shown Ruscha.

Another thing that sets Ruscha apart from the field, he doesn't follow trends, he sets them. Quite possibly the first artist to make work using exclusively text, (his earliest text pieces are from 1963), clearly predating Laurence Weiner, Martin Maloney and Christopher Wool. While most artists wanting art world recognition move to New York, Ruscha stayed home in LA. He along with John Baldesarri, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman and a few others trusted the future of LA. He also shares with Nauman and McCarthy a restless creative spirit, producing work in all mediums available. Maybe not good for the market originally, but it's certainly not a problem for them now.

Fast forward to the present day. For his current exhibition at Gagosian, Ruscha again heads into new territory. Unafraid to challenge his own previous ascertains, this time he picks works from his own history, and pairs them with his new version of the original. "Tool and Die", "Tech-Chem", and "Trade School" take on a whole new meaning when combined with fences, buildings and barbwire. The original works done in nostalgic black and white have now been updated with futuristic color. Ruscha
has said that these new combinations, "air my doubts about progress in the world and hopes for the world... They reflect my feelings about how things change, and that they don't always change for
the better." All this leaves us hoping for more.

Ed Ruscha, at Gogasian Gallery, London until March 20, 2008

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Currently exhibiting at Mary Boone Gallery in New York until March 1st is German artist Kati Heck. Heck earned her Masters in Painting from the Akademie voor Schone Kunsten in Antwerp and has recently exhibited at Annie Gentils Gallery in Antwerp and Marc Selwyn Fine Art in Los Angeles. The artist has previously been featured on DailyServing.

Heck creates colossal paintings that link cultural imagery to give the allusion of collage. Formally reminiscent of Rita Ackerman and often somewhat disturbing, Heck's visual language includes references to art history, pornography, cartoon, and film. Each painting presents a new narrative, such as in "No Time for Masterpieces: Ascension Commando," which uses the gazes and gestures of the characters to direct the viewer across the canvas. This seemingly nonsensical, but incredibly theatrical, composition takes place over an image of the German flag, executed in huge painterly gestures. The anatomical anomalies and burlesque quality of these characters is initially confusing, but Heck's compositional tour de force is helpfully arranged according to our natural left-to-right scanpath. The masterful execution in the artist's chosen traditional medium of oil adds technical sophistication, and references to Magritte enhance the integrity of the work. By juxtaposing the formality of academic painting with inchoate imagery, Heck engages the viewer in an intellectual striptease. We want to know more.

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Opening this weekend at Freight and Volume in New York City will be "I and Thou," new paintings by Israeli-born artist Ophrah Shemesh. This will be the artist's debut exhibition with the gallery, and her third in NYC. Her work confronts and explores the psychology of the gaze, objectifying women by placing them in vulnerable and seductive situations. Shemesh is aware that she is working in a long art historic line of artists whose work functions through the gaze, and she addresses the notions of objectification with a quite empowerment embodied by her subjects. Her current body of paintings is based on the '70s art house film "Night Porter," a tragic love story of a woman and her Nazi captor.

Shemesh received her BFA from the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem, and continued her studies at the New York School of Drawing, Painting and Sculpture (NYSS). She has completed solo exhibitions at Stephen Wirtz Gallery in San Francisco, Baumgartner Gallery, New York and Mario Diacono Gallery, Boston, and her work has be featured in Art in America and Bomb Magazine as well as several other publications.

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Now showing at Horus and Deloris Contemporary Art Space, Pyrmont is the latest exhibition by Sydney artist, Monika Behrens. Entitled "Cool the Globe: Glam Barbie," the vibrant paintings are a tongue-in-cheek reflection of the media’s depiction of global warming. Polar bears can be seen stuffed inside martini glasses, while elongated structures at a windfarm are juxtaposed against the superfluous height of Barbie's legs.

Behrens recently completed a Masters of Fine Art at the College of Fine Arts, Paddington. "Cool the Globe" is only her second solo exhibition, yet she has appeared in various group exhibitions both locally and internationally. The prominent inclusion of Barbie dolls within the series tie in with Behrens' previous solo show "Silent BANG," which depicts other children's toys such as plastic soldiers, babushka dolls and train sets in quirky scenarios. In 2005 she was awarded the Viktoria Marinov Scholarship in Art, and has appeared in several publications including Australian Art Collector, The Sydney Morning Herald (http://www.smh.com.au/) and Art and Australia. All works on display are able to be purchased.

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Williams' children are depicted alone or in multiples, engaged in quotidian childhood activities, such as drinking juice, jumping on trampolines, and blowing bubbles. The subjects have a disturbed quality, but are executed in a colorful palette. The limited surroundings allow the viewer to focus on the children, who seem terrified, as in Double Mint. The young twins are stuck in a gummy embrace, with their rheumy eyes glancing outward and their soft flesh displaying an unhealthy pallor. Formally recalling earlier figurative artists Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin, Williams departs from their purely aesthetic approach by portraying the anxiety-riddled psychological aspect of modern childhood. Williams received her B.F.A. in 2006 from Rhode Island School of Design and has previously shown at Nathan A. Bernstein & Co., Ltd. in New York and at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

Nathan Lewis creates epic scenes of fear and disaster that often directly reference authors and events of the past. His compositions typically include several people in a dramatic state of panic, evoking themes of catastrophe and mortality. Lewis draws on our post-9/11 perpetual state of apprehension, allowing viewers to relate to the collective terror and fundamental futility presented in these large canvases. Lewis received his M.F.A. from the Tufts University and his B.F.A from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. He has exhibited at Golden Street Gallery in New London, CT. This is the first solo show in New York for both Williams and Lewis.

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Christofer Chin received his BFA from Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles in 2002 and was included in Otis' 2006 exhibition Otis LA: Nine Decades of Los Angeles Art at the LA Municipal Art Gallery, Barnsdall Park. Chin has exhibited his work internationally, and a book of his photography, Finger Bang!, was released in 2006 with book signings at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles and POP in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Chin is featured on the cover in the November issue of Flaunt Magazine.

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In an old wallpaper factory in the West End of Leipzig, Germany is the collective gallery space Tapetenwerk Galerien. One of the contained galleries is display, a space directed by Galerie Emmanuel Post and Kunstraum Delikateessenhaus. Next week display will open the new exhibition "Unschuld in tausend Noten," featuring watercolor paintings by Berlin-based artist Caro Suerkemper. The artist's work often contains heightened sexual imagery, exploring the mechanics of seduction and submission while employing the female form. Formally, the paintings utilize geometric abstraction to reduce the subject and detach it from a greater context. Suerkemper studied at the Akademie der Bildenden Kunste Karlsruhe from 1984-90 and since has exhibited internationally with shows at Galerie Haus Schneider, Ettlingen and Galerie Wallner in Malmo, Sweden.

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Currently on view at OKOK Gallery in Seattle is Exact Change, new works by artist Grant Barnhart. For his fourth exhibition with the gallery, Barnhart has completed a series of paintings and a site-specific installation in the space. Barnhart has a forth coming exhibition scheduled in 2008 with Leslie's Art Gallery in Luxembourg and will be represented in Miami this month at Aqua Wynwood, Art Now Fair and Gen Art. The artist recently spoke with DailyServing about his current body of work featuring tinkling tanks, rockets and portraits in multi-colored leotards.

Continue reading "Grant Barnhart" »

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"Surface Works" is a new series of paintings and wall sculptures by the artist Eliza Geddes opening this weekend. Found Gallery in Los Angeles will present Geddes' new works in her first exhibition in L. A. which will continue through the New Year. Geddes is interested in the formal qualities of painting, investigating surface, texture, balance, speed and shape as she creates both two and three dimensional work. The artist uses the manipulation of formal qualities to entice the viewer with the repetition of marks such as circles and X forms. Geddes three-dimensional works continue her formal concerns while also challenging the boundaries of painting and sculpture. A graduate of New York University and Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, Geddes has exhibited with 33 Bond Gallery in NYC, 440 Gallery in Brooklyn and Mulry Fine Art in West Palm Beach, Flordia.

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Kauper had work included in the 2000 Whitney Biennial and in an exhibition titled "Dear Painter" at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, Kunsthalle Wien and Schirn Kunsthalle in Frankfurt. Kauper has taught at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Yale University School of Art in New Haven, and is currently a Professor at Queens College in NY.

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