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 The latest exhibition by acclaimed Melbourne artist, Darren Sylvester is currently showing at Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art, Paddington. The artist is primarily known for his ultra sleek photography, often depicting popular culture and people in seemingly ordinary situations, accompanied by lengthy, ambiguous, narrative titles. This current display, while including his signature style photography, also includes wooden masks that are almost tribal in appearance, making reference to human vanity and the fears of aging. A large scale acrylic painting resembling the many colors available in a make-up pallet has also been included within the exhibition, while each of its hues have been modeled from actual Clinique products. Sylvester earned a Bachelor of Fine Art Photography/ Graphic Design from Charles Sturt University, NSW, and is currently completing a Masters of Fine Art at Monash University, Melbourne. His work has been displayed on an international scale, having exhibited at venues including the The Roving Eye Gallery, Washington DC, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the National Galley of Thailand, Bankok. | |||||
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 Greatly inspired by Germaine Greer's infamous publication The Female Eunuch, Melbourne artist Emily Floyd has created a 100 piece sculptural installation devoted to the book. Now showing at Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne, the wooden fragments include pieces which have been shaped to resemble the female form, referencing not only the book's feminist contents but its notorious cover image designed by surrealist painter, John Holmes. Entitled The Temple of the Female Eunuch,the exhibition includes carvings containing text exerts from the book, often in vibrant, psychedelic colors,reflecting the period in which the book was written. Emily Floyd earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts, majoring in sculpture from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. She has been granted several awards and artist residencies, including the 2000 Cinemedia Digital Arts Fund and The University of Melbourne Asia link Residency, which sent her to work in New Delhi.She has had various solo exhibitions within Australia at institutions including The John Curtain Gallery, Perth, The Institute of Modern Art,Brisbane and Studio 12 at Gertrude Contemporary Art Spaces, Melbourne. | |||||
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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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 Pakistani artist Bani Abidi will be exhibiting a collection of video and photographic works with Green Cardamon for her first UK solo exhibition. Standing Still Standing Still Standing... will feature the artist's documentary style short films and photographs that examine the collective political culture held in Pakistan, but only to serve as a universal metaphor for oppression and political dominance. For the exhibition, two new works Reserved, a video produced for the 2006 Singapore Biennial, and The Address, a series of prints and video stills will be shown. Both works will be linked by a new series of digital drawings. Abidi received her BFA from the National College of Arts in Lahore, Pakistan in 1994 and her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999. In 2000, Abidi attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Last year, the artist exhibited in Art Miami with Gallery Haines, Simulasian: Refiguring "Asia" for the Twenty First Century at the Asian Contemporary Art Fair in NY. | |||||
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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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 Monika Behrens 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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 Ramak Fazel was born in Iran in 1965, but moved to Indiana when he was 2 months old. He graduated from Purdue University and later moved to New York to study graphic design and photography, assisting with notable photographers such as Mark Seliger and Bruce Davidson. In the summer of 2006, Fazel embarked on a 17,345-mile odyssey to every United States capitol. His mission was to photograph each state capitol and to construct a 10"x14" postcard in each city using stamps from his childhood collection. He mailed these cards to himself at his next destination, the postage providing his medium as well as payment. The postcard from New York to Pennsylvania had 11-cent stamps arranged in the shape of twin towers, one toppling over as a commercial aviation stamp pierced the other. Fazel faced obstacles along the way, being mirandized and detained at one point. He believes he was placed on a "list" after telling an airline passenger about his artistic endeavor. Recalling he had a beard at the time, Fazel believes the passenger photographed him asleep and gave his image to TSA. After being questioned by a member of Maryland Joint Terrorism Task Force with the F.B.I., Fazel consulted his lawyer before moving on. Facing increased security at each capitol entrance, Fazel included this element of post-9/11 anxiety in his photographs, showing yellow caution lines and police security. "49 State Capitols" is currently showing at the Storefront for Art and Architecture in SoHo until March 8th. (Entirely self-funded, Fazel ran out of money before Alaska). The exhibition includes the postcards, photographs, and ephemera from his 78- day trip. Having only wanted to "see up close the country you call home," Fazel's patriotic road trip recalls the interstate culture of post-Eisenhower America, but his journey unfolded in a way that could only have taken place in the contemporary atmosphere of "Homeland Security". | |||||
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The Stenersen Museum in Oslo, Norway is currently exhibiting Jan Christensen's "All Those Moments Will Be Lost" until March 9th. Christensen has explored different aspects of contemporary art and its markets in his previous works. His 2007 piece, Relative Value, which consisted of 100,000 krone (roughly $16,000) affixed to a 4 x 2 meter canvas, was stolen from it's exhibition, generating international media attention for Christensen. Christensen's aggressive attitude in his art comes from his background in graffiti, and can be seen in large-scale works such as his series, Painting Myself into a Corner, in which the artist uses thick painterly gestures to saturate a corner of the gallery in solid color. Christensen is restlessly creative, not content to be confined to a single medium. He segues between two and three-dimensional works, incorporating abstract images, video stills, text, and graffiti-based works. Christensen has previously exhibited across Europe and in the United States, both at the Galleri MGM in Oslo and at the Buia Gallery in New York. For the Stenersen exhibition, Christensen ventures into the realm of light and sound, orchestrating an eclectic experience for the viewer by incorporating designs of the past and music of today. He has displayed over 80 lamps, dating from the Bauhaus period to the present, which he collected around Germany, where he currently lives and works. The artist has appropriated these "established design classics" and accompanied them with a contemporary soundtrack composed and produced by Rolf-Yngve Uggen and Johnny Skalleberg. The installation consists of the colorful lamps hung at various heights from 15 platforms suspended below the ceiling. The emanative qualities of the music and the luminosity of the lamps envelop the viewer and take the sensory experience a step beyond his previous, more visually exciting works. | |||||
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 Currently on display through March 16th at Brooklyn gallery Jack the Pelican Presents are painters Robin Williams and Nathan Lewis in two separate solo shows within the same complex. Williams paints haunting young children stuck in the midst of play, while Lewis is a history painter. 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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 Being a Palestinian born in Lebanon, Mona Hatoum, who currently shuttles between London and Berlin, is in a good position to make commentary on the difficulties a foreigner faces when trying to find a place to call home. This subject has been a reoccurring theme in her work for many years. She continues to investigate this idea in her newest exhibition currently on view at Galerie Chantal Crousel in Paris. While her work can be viewed with humor, it is also not afraid to address the darker challenges that face every one of us in our deeply troubled world. Works on view here include a barricade that also serves as a place for growth for that most sought after item, grass. Grenades that have been lovingly hand crafted are displayed on a table, ready to be wheeled into action. And the warmest of all household items, a carpet that seems to have been picked at, revels an "area-correct" map of the world without its arbitrary political divisions. Hatoum work is most impressive when presented on a large scale, such as "Mobile Home". This work shows an assortment of household items that move gently along a pulley system that is confined between two barriers. This piece suggests that we must remain prepared to move as society is always in a perpetual state of flux. While large scale work can be stunning, an artist must realize that resources can dry up at anytime, and they need to be able to work with much humbler means, while remaining creative. Hatoum demonstrates her awareness to this creativity, with her small scale drawings on cardboard trays and paper cutouts. The cardboard trays are named after clouds, (think of lying in the grass dreaming), but they also suggest continents, what was or what could be. The paper cutouts remind us of the simple fun we had as children, and the cozy loving warmth that is perhaps the most important commodity of all. The well traveled Hatoum has previously shown at the Venice Biennial, Sao Paulo Biennial, Documenta, SITE Santa Fe, Kwangju Biennial, as well as most major museums in the world. Besides Gallerie Crousel she is also represented by Gallerie Max Hetzler Berlin, White Cube London, Alexander and Bonin, New York. | |||||
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 Is it possible to make sculptures out of sound? The Belgian artist Leo Reijnders believes so. In his on going series "Wolkenbreiers", Reijnders invites visitors to his radio program to create their own self portraits. His list of guests runs the gamut of cultural thinkers, from renowned local artists, such as Guillaume Bijl, Ria Paquee, Danny De Vos, and Koen Van Den Broek, to international visitors from all fields of the creative arts. These have included the Austrian curator Ulrike Lindmayr, Norwegian fashion designer Siv Stoldal, Ethiopian painter Mulugeta Tafesse, Gert Segers editor of "Revolver" magazine and "Echo Base", an experimental sound studio based in Brussels. Reijnders only ask questions when necessary, allowing the artists space to create their own "self portraits on air" about their activities. This idea of letting artists present themselves has historical precedents. The Los Angeles artists Paul McCarthy utilized a similar strategy in the early 70's when he invited artists that were relatively unknown at the time to his radio show. Unfortunately his program was canceled when the young performance artist Chris Burden broke FCC rules by begging listeners to send him a dollar. The historical importance of McCarthy's project was acknowledged last year when the archives of around 100 reel to reel tapes were acquired by the Getty Museum. Still to come on "Wolkenbreiers" in the near future are, museum director Jan Hoet, cultural TV presenters Chantal Pattyn, photographer/critic Bert Danckaert, theater maker Jan Fabre, painter Luc Tuymans, gallery holder Geoffrey De Beer, as well as many more. The program is available "on line" so that international listeners can follow the creative ideas circulating through Belgium. "Wolkenbreiers" is broadcast live, every other Monday from 4 - 6pm on Radio Central at 106.7 FM on your radio dial. | |||||
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 Christof Mascher's show at The Happy Lion Gallery in Los Angeles features a whimsically insidious array of paintings and drawings. Titled 'Fake Empire,' the exhibition is the artist's first U.S. solo show. Mascher's work eerily merges the expressionistic mark-making with illustrative, though far from literal, imagery and his paintings call to mind scenes from dark fantasy novels. While exhibition titles often seem removed from the work included, Mascher certainly seems to be masterminding a 'Fake Empire' in which murky expanses of water connect icy fortresses. Mascher, a German artist who lives and works in Braunschweig, attended the Braunschweig University of Art and the University for Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. His recent exhibition at Galerie Michael Janssen in Cologne, titled 'The Ghost Yard,' featured paintings on wood that were as dark and fantastic as the work at Happy Lion. However, the paintings and drawings currently on view in Los Angeles have significantly more perspectival depth to them, making it seem as though Mascher has created his own dimensional world. Mascher, who is new to the international art world, has also shown at Kunstverein Hannover and Figge Von Rosen Galerie, where he participated in 2006 show 'Cropped: Young Artists from European Academies.' 'Fake Empire' runs through March 1st. | |||||
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 The Broad Contemporary Art Museum officially opened to the public on February 16th. The museum is the ambitious new incarnation of the Broad Foundation's mission to improve public education. Its opening on the campus of the Los Angeles Museum of Art is part of LACMA's plan to expand and transform its facilities and programming. Now, with the addition of the Broad Museum, LACMA has vastly improved its contemporary art offering. Eli and Edythe Broad began the Broad Foundation, an organization bent on bettering education, in 1984. The Foundation aimed to keep the Broad's expansive collection of contemporary art in the public domain. Now, with the opening of BCAM, they have found a way to permanently exhibit their Warhols, Koons, and Hirsts. Designed by Renzo Piano, BCAM is an angular and flamboyant building distinguished from the rest of the LACMA campus by its rows of red pillars and its three-story escalator. It houses work that has rarely, if ever, been available to the public outside of the gallery setting. With few exceptions, each featured artist gets his or her own room. When entering the third floor galleries, a viewer first encounters a room full of some of Jasper Johns' most intriguing paintings, followed by room of gutsy Rauschenberg work, and then a room of clean-cut Elsworth Kelly paintings. Cindy Sherman has a vast room in which her more gory images are hung salon style and her untitled film stills occupy glass cases in the middle of the space. Damien Hirst has two galleries all to himself in which include work from his recent 'Superstitions' series, and Richard Serra's winding steel sculpture dominate the first floor. BCAM present an incredible array of contemporary art, giving more space to 20th and 21st century art at one time than many museums ever give. | |||||
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 "Supernova" is the latest exhibition by husband and wife collaborative duo Eleanor and James Avery. Currently showing at Grantpirrie, Redfern, the display showcases a selection of large scale sculptural works created by the pair. Appearing almost like over sized Christmas decorations, the angular structures are an exploration of contemporary culture and the interplay between reality and fiction. Both artists were born and educated in England, with James earning a Masters of Art and Design Education from the University of Warwick, Coventry and Eleanor completing a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Central England, Birmingham. They were recently commissioned by the Queensland Government to create a series of sculptural works for Brisbane Cycle Centre. Both artists also have fruitful solo careers, with Eleanor set to participate in a group show at Gitte Weise Gallery, Berlin later this year while James has had his work displayed at various institutions including Leicester City Gallery, UK, West Space, Melbourne and Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland. | |||||
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 Artist Taylor McKimens is currently presenting a new group of paintings featuring his signature illustrated grotesque figures and objects in an exhibition titled "Sweet Dreams of Phoenix" with Gallery Loyal in Stockholm Sweden. The artist renders the mildly monstrous images with color and compassion, drawing influence from sources like MAD Magazine and Garbage Pail Kids. In addition to his paintings, McKimens also created large graphic cutouts that serve to bring his paintings into real space. McKimens began to reach national attention shortly after his graduation from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA when the artist began to exhibit with New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles. Since, the artist has exhibited with Deitch Projects and Clementine Gallery in NYC, as well as Annet Gelink in Amsterdam and Perugi Arte Contemporanea in Padova, Italy. Mckimens has been previously featured on DailyServing. | |||||
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 Currently exhibiting at Pitzer College Art Galleries in Claremont, California until March 22nd is alumna Lizabeth Eva Rossof '95. The artist is most well known for her bold series,"1,000 Words For Bush", in which Rossof imitates Apple's infectious advertising campaign consisting of candy colored posters with dancing silhouettes. Instead of dancers with iPods, she injects silhouettes of the President accompanied by one-word public reactions to his image such as "iTerrorist", "iUh-Oh", and "iFear". Rossof has placed these posters in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, revealing an interest in using the machinery of the media to question identity and personal perceptions of others. As a traveling artist who does not own a home, the concept of domesticity is also of interest in her work. In Grassification, Rossof comically attempts to merge two American obsessions, the road trip (a symbol of freedom) and the perfect lawn (a symbol of domesticity), by caring for a 2'x4' plot of portable grass on her travels. The grass is photographed sun-bathing with Rossof, having coffee with her friends, and window-shopping. The artist has previously exhibited at the UC Santa Cruz's Sesnon Gallery, West Space Gallery in Melbourne, and the Pulse Miami Contemporary Art Fair 2007. | |||||
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 Artist and filmmaker Michel Gondry will open a new exhibition this week at Deitch Projects in NYC to correspond with his new film; both titled "Be Kind Rewind." After one of the characters in the film accidentally gets his brain magnetized by a local power plant, he visits the video store of his friend and unknowingly erases all of the videotapes in the store's inventory. The characters then decide to make their own homemade versions of popular films in a junkyard behind the store. For the exhibition, Gondry will recreate the video store in the gallery, complete with a variety of movie sets for viewers to participate with and actually recreate the films themselves. Each video is recorded and screened in the gallery. This exhibition is the artist's second with Deitch and precedes the exhibition "Science of Sleep" which premiered with his film of the same title. Gondry began to gain attention as a student of graphics in France while creating short videos for his band. In 1993, the artist directed the singer/songwriter Bjork's music video "Human Behavior," which won him countless music video awards. Since, Gondry has directed videos for artists including The White Stripes, Beck and Daft Punk and has directed three major motion pictures including, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind" and "Science of Sleep." | |||||
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 Italian artist Blu has developed an international reputation for his signature public wall paintings. His work stems from a strong interest in drawing, which has been influenced by graffiti and street art. Recently, Blu has created a series of wall drawing/animations through stop motion photography that allow his characters to come to life and interact with themselves. Just a few months ago the artist traveled to Bethlehem with fellow artists including Banksy, Sam3, and Paul Insect to work on an the exhibition titled "Santa's Ghetto." For the show, the artists rented an old fast-food restaurant and presented and sold a mix of western and Palestinian artist's works to raise more than a million dollars for local charities. Blu has painted walls in almost every continent in the world and is currently represented by the Jonathan LeVine Gallery in the U.S. and Lazarides Gallery in London. Swindle Magazine featured the artist in their final issue of 2007. | |||||
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 Abstraction and it's placement in the contemporary situation is clearly addressed in the current installation at Galerie Michelen Szwajcer, exhibiting the Austrian artist Heimo Zobernig. Here he confronts these issues head on, in his first solo exhibition in Belgium. The first room of the exhibition presents a tame presentation of an abstracted domestic setting. It's a radial remuneration, you can see beds, heads, chairs, and stairs, but clearly no one lives here, this allows us the space necessary to ponder arts placement in the home. Proceeding to the back room one is confronted with the mind numbing wow of geometric abstraction. While stunning, they question the placement of art objects in a tranquil environment, while radically altering the sense of ease. Using tape as an art material, they reference the work of artists such as John Franklin, (time clock and type writer ribbon), or Chris Wilder, (duct tape on canvas), in their use of an easily available substance for the construction of new meaning. What at first seems to be geometric abstraction is really process painting. Sometimes it's tape, sometimes just paint, either way these objects suck you in, inviting the viewer to revel in their constructed beauty. In flipping the canvas to a diamond form, these jewel like objects are fractured, polished and refined to perfection. Having no subject allows us to luxuriate in their beauty. Zobernig has previously exhibited at Galerie Anslem Dreher, Berlin and Galeria Juana De Aizpuru, Madrid. | |||||
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Restricting oneself to the exploration of "Interiors" could seem a bit stifling. But the current exhibition at gallery "Fifty One" demonstrates how much room one can force into a confined idea. It can certainly help when you bring together a group of internationally acclaimed artists. The limitless expansiveness of Interiors is clearly addressed in the work of Claudia Hoffer, Andreas Gursky, and Karl Hugo Schmolz. Interiors can be cleaned up, sterilized and sanitized as evidenced in the work of Kate Schermerhorn, or you can use the interior to reflect what's outside, witnessed by the inverted camera obscura of Abelardo Morell. But things get most interesting when we focus on the inner light, as in the work of Matthew Pillsbury. While the world outside is bright and light, it's the inner glow that focuses our attention. It's that same inner warmth that James Casebere focuses on, having pioneered the field of the constructed photograph. Casebere who graduated from California Institute of the Arts in 1979, here presents us with a zen like prison. Clearly illustrating that before we can venture out we must build an inner peace, only then are we able to explore the potential that lies before us. "Interiors" 24 January - March 8 | |||||
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 No Wonderland in Winter at A.M. Richard Fine Art is a multi-media group exhibition with work by Joel Adas, Vanina Feldsztein, Andrew Garn, Jillian Mcdonald, Sacha Mallon, Stephen Mallon, Michelle Sholtis and Jessica Weiss. The theme of the exhibition, landscape and snow, was conceived on the conviction that winter is a time of desolation, decay, isolation. The eight artists presented all work in distinct mediums - be it paint, computer animation, line drawing, and photography. Small and intimate, Joel Adas' paintings offer glimpses of a hinted larger expanse of scenery, while Vanina Feldsztein eerily captures man-made, artificial winterscape sets and maquettes in her photographs. "Night Snow Flake and Tree," Andrew Garn's quasi scientific slide view of magnified snowflakes, morphs the familiar into an otherworldly abstract rendering, and conceptual situations in an artic landscape are communicated through the inter-active electronic language of Jillian Mcdonald's "Snow Stories." The artist uses appropriated and original film clips, images, animation, and sound to translate the viewer's written story into a visual narrative. No Wonderland in Winter is on display at A.M.Richard Fine Art until February 17th. | |||||
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The works in "Nina in Position", the current group exhibition at Artists Space in SoHo, employ Walter Benjamin's contention that "To live is to leave traces," as a platform from which to examine the body and its environs. Curated by Jeffrey Uslip, the exhibition is made up of work that takes into consideration the ways in which artistic rituals, histories, and narratives are re-signified within contemporary visual culture. Artists in the exhibition include: Kelly Barrie, Justin Beal, Huma Bhabha, Anya Gallaccio, Wade Guyton, Barkley Hendricks, Roni Horn, Igloolik Isuma Productions, Mary Kelly, Charles Long, Michelle Lopez, Andrew Lord, Robert Mapplethorpe, Daniel Joseph Martinez, Jack Pierson, Michael Queenland, Marco Rios, Amanda Ross- Ho, Julia Scher, Haim Steinbach, Lisa Tan, Josh Tonsfeldt. Although striving to challenge the parameters of genre, most of the work can be described as sculptural, or a hybrid of artistic disciplines that creates a "sculptural gesture." Many of the artists like Michelle Lopez and Huma Bhabha have been recognized as "sculptors" in the past, and the artworks illustrate sculpture's mercurial qualities by examining materiality, trantransience, and the process of making. Intergenerational and interracial, Nina in Position curatorial matrix places artworks in dialogue in order to identify how social, cultural, and geopolitical change occurs on a local level, as well as to articulate how methodologies, practices, and tolerance shape-shift over decades. | |||||
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 Rooted in stenciling and street art, Christofer (Tofer) Chin's paintings depict abstracted landscapes and fantasy environments. Blurring the line between nature and architecture, Chin's rendering of the landscape is represented by geometric abstraction that references architectural elements. These reductive paintings make use of unnatural vibrant colors and geometrical devices which cause a psychedelic dream-like quality where abstract shapes become mountains, roller coast tracks, or large zig-zag lines. 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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Rocky Schenck's first solo exhibition at M+B Gallery in Beverly Hills features eerie Los Angeles inspired photographs. Schenck's highly composed and manipulated images evoke the haziness of blurred vision. His photographs of Hollywood interior and palm trees have the feeling of films stills that have been intentionally distorted, evidencing the interactions between his dual interests in film and still photography. A self-taught artist, Schenk withdrew from college as a young man in order to move from Texas to Los Angeles, where he hoped to become involved in the filmmaking world. His venture eventually paid off, as he now has a thriving career as an artist. In addition to M+B Gallery, Schenck has also shown at Catherine Edelman Gallery in Chicago, Stephen Clark Gallery in Austin and Jackson Fine Art in Atlanta. His monograph, Rocky Schenck: Photographs was published by University of Texas Press in 2003. John Berendt, who wrote the foreword, is the novelist who authored The City of Falling Angels and Midnight in the Garden of Food and Evil: A Savannah Story. Schenck's work has also been featured in Artweek, Aperture, and Art in America. This current show at M+B Gallery will continue through March 1st. | |||||
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 Daniel Richter's current show at Regen Projects in Los Angeles couples expressionistic painting with pop-culture imagery. Loud colors and kinetic brushwork characterize Richter's work and enhance the rockstar warfare that occurs when the subjects in his paintings clash with the vibrant surroundings. The show at Regen Projects also features a series of drawings that give a different picture of Richter's practice. Less confrontational than the oil paintings, the drawings give a clearer glimpse into the loose narrative thinking that is part of Richter's oeuvre. Richter, who lives and works in Berlin, studied at Hochschule der Bildenden Kunste in Hamburg, Germany. He has shown at David Zwirner Gallery in New York, Contemporary Fine Art in Berlin, and the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa. A survey of his work, curated by the Denver Art Museum’s Modern and Contemporary Art curator Dr. Christopher Heinrich, recently graced the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Richter, who once worked as an assistant to famed painter and Sigmar Polke protege Albert Oehlen, has taught at the Akademie der Bildenen Kunste in Wien and at the Universitat der Kunste in Berlin. His show at Regen Projects runs through March 1st. | |||||
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 Rachel Mason's solo show at Circus Gallery is certainly timely. The Candidate includes a slew of dumb-fisted charcoal, ink and pastel renderings of politicians. The drawings span the gallery walls and Mason has installed mock podiums around the space. Arms protrude from the podiums, grasping microphones and suggesting the podiums might double for politician's bodies. Circus Gallery is appropriately taking advantage of The Candidate's timeliness, hosting a February 2nd speech by candidate Mike Gravel and a February 5th viewing of the media's primary coverage. Rachel Mason received her MFA from Yale School of Art in 2004 and her BFA from University of California Los Angeles in 2001. It's only taken her three years to become an internationally known artist and she showed or performed extensively in 2007, exhibiting at Newman-Popiashvili Gallery in New York and The Henry Art Gallery in Seattle among other venues. Mason's projects tend to have an interactively political overtone, and she is currently maintaining a campaign journal that tracks the 2007/2008 primaries. Presented in a news-like page format, Mason's journal is no where near as dry as it appears. Instead, she makes colorful, biting observations that call into question the behind-the-scenes aspect of politics. The Candidate runs through February 16th. | |||||
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 Currently showing at Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest, Emu Plains is an exploration of the supernatural in "The Visitors: The Australian Response to UFOs and Aliens". Showcasing the work of 15 different artists, the display incorporates various mediums including painting, installation, sculpture and light work. Catering to UFO enthusiasts, the exhibition additionally features an "evidence room" complete with detailed case files of those who claim to have come face to face with extraterrestrial beings. The catalogue essay was written by Bill Chalker, a prominent UFO researcher who has written numerous publications on the topic, including his most recent "Hair of the Alien: DNA and other Forensic Evidence for Alien Abductions". Indigenous Australian, Tony Albert is one of the artists included within the exhibition. Several of his featured works deal with the alien as a symbol for the displacement often felt by the Indigenous community. Luke Roberts dressed as his sci-fi alter ego Pope Alice Xorporation also features within the exhibition. Roberts created Pope Alice a few years ago as a rebellious response to what he views as the "orthodoxy of Australian modernism." Other artists which feature within the exhibition include Claire Conroy, Simon Champ, Adam Norton and collaborative duo Soda Jerk. | |||||
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 Kicking off this February at the Australian Centre for Photography Paddington, will be the exhibition "William Yang: Claiming China". Held in conjunction with the City of Sydney's Chinese New Year Festival and the 2008 Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras, the display celebrates the work of acclaimed Chinese-Australian artist William Yang. While open about his homosexuality, Yang's work often controversially touches on issues regarding both his heritage and sexual preference. Within this exhibition Yang's photos explore his forced assimilation into Australian culture and the repossession of his Chinese background. Yang was born in Queensland as a third generation Australian. He is a multitalented individual, having worked as a playwright, a photographer and performance artist. He has been awarded several prizes including the 1993 International Photographer of the Year Award at The Higashigawacho International Photographic Festival, Japan as well as numerous awards, nominations and special mentions for his poignant documentary "Sadness". He earned a Bachelor of Arts - Architecture and an Honorary Doctorate of Letters both from the University of Queensland, and has widely exhibited both locally and internationally at institutions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Torch Gallery, Amsterdam and the San Diego Museum of Art. | |||||
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