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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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Holly Andres is showing her second major body of work, Sparrow Lane, at Quality Pictures Contemporary Art in Portland until August 2, 2008. Her first series, Stories from a Short Street, was exhibited at galleries in New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C. as well as the Missoula Arts Museum. Her video work was included in the 2006 Oregon Biennial at the Portland Art Museum.

Sparrow Lane illustrates adolescent girls on the cusp of acquiring some forbidden knowledge, a metaphor for the transition from girl to woman. The photographic series is playful and mischievous, as the artist incorporates familiar and suggestive elements for their iconographic value, such as scissors, chrome flashlights, bird cages, and open drawers, doors, and windows. Andres often includes identical twins, a compelling conceptual tool suggesting counterparts and accomplices on this mutual path to discovery. The air of suspicion caused by the incomplete narratives encourages the viewers to come to their own conclusions surrounding the event taking place.

The eleven photographs in the series were shot using an 8x10 large format camera, emphasizing the artist's use of rich color, texture, pattern, and chiaroscuro-like lighting. Andres is influenced by the legendary work of Alfred Hitchcock, and his use of certain cinematic and thematic conventions, such as highly theatrical lighting and the employment of several female protagonists. The artist also revisited Nancy Drew book covers to look at the body language of the characters, in particular their hand gestures. Andres observed how the girls' hands frame the scene, the delicate separation of their fingers, and how their silky hair frames their lovely, startled faces.

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Michael T. Rea crafts large scale wooden sculptures of various objects used in space, war, under the water, or to make music. Constantly incorporating ideas from motion pictures, television, time travel, and music, Rea likes to add a sense of humor to his craft as well. The artist told fecalface.com in a recent interview that his current interests included MIA, Soft Pretzels, Lost, thongs, Folkert de Jong, and Fergie, among several others.

The items he chooses to represent, which include scuba tanks, space suits, fish tanks, guns, and tools, are often seen in other media such as glass or metal. Instead of the expected media, Rea uses the inexpensive materials of pine, mahogany-luan, rope, burlap, and pink foam to create his objects and characters. This paradoxical presence, as seen in the above instruments that will never be played, adds a puzzling yet intriguing quality to each sculpture. The artist states, "My work offers a sense of what could be and what could never be simultaneously."

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Philip-Lorca diCorcia's surreal photographs of people and places have been part of the art world's vocabulary for over 20 years now. He's used the photograph gaze to turn observable reality into stinging fictions and his current exhibition at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, A Thousand Polaroids, takes a look at some of his most influential series. The exhibition, curated by Charlotte Cotton, includes images from Hustlers, Streetwork, Heads, and Lucky 13 but it also features a staggering installation of 1,000 Polaroid photographs. DiCorcia has been accumulating these Polaroid images for two decades and, in this video, he discusses his decision to combine these images in a single project. He decided to "intentionally create chance," letting the images relate to each other intuitively and illogically, creating an ebb and flow between ideas that emerged over the course of his career.

DiCorcia studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Art Boston before receiving an MFA from Yale University. His received his first solo show in 1985 and has since exhibited at MoMA, the Centre National de la Photographie in Paris, and Whitechapel Gallery in London. He also participated in the 1997 Whitney Biennial. A Thousand Polaroids will be on view through September 14th.

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What Do You See is an appropriately titled exhibition of photographs depicting the human body by Hong Kong born author, activist and artist Irene Kai. Now on view at Found Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist's work explores multiple aspects of the human body, which challenge the viewer's perception and ideas of sexuality. The artist achieves this through her series of ambiguous though sexually suggestive photographs. The series was originally created while the artist was a student, and was exhibited by the Royal College of Art in London in 1976. Princess Margaret was said to be shuffled past the exhibition as it was deemed too provocative at that time. The exhibition caused significant conflict within the institution and eventually lead to changes in the Royal College's hiring policy.

Kai's artistic practice is varied and includes photography, graphic design, authoring, and activism. The artist attended both the School of the Visual Arts in New York City and the Royal College of Art in London. Kai has also published a book of the exhibited images under the same titled of the show, and will have a book signing at Found Gallery two days before the exhibition closing on June 30th.

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Randall Scott Gallery in Washington, D.C. is currently showing new photographs by one of PDN Magazine's "30 Under 30 To Watch" (2007), Sarah Wilmer. Influenced by 16th and 17th century Dutch painting as well as the more modern medium of film, Wilmer's photographs evoke a sense of mystery and other worldliness. Her settings provide a vague framework for the imaginary story which she is documenting.

Wilmer begins with a general sense of imagery, subject, and cast of characters, but responds to her photographic surroundings upon arriving to each shoot. She uses props to create loose narratives of enchanted settings and transcendent realms. After processing the film, she employs saturation of color and printing techniques to create emotional presence and a sense of heightened reality. Her technical skills are crisply apparent, producing a presentational polish in each still.

Wilmer currently lives and works in Brooklyn and her work has been featured in various publications including V Magazine, Nomenus Quarterly, and Surface. Her work will remain at Randall Scott Gallery until July 5, 2008.

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Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, South Carolina is presenting a new solo exhibition titled Together by sculptor/installation artist, Susan Meyer. The exhibition, which opens this evening, is part of the 2008 Redux Artist-in-Residence program.

Meyer makes environments for us, and for the tiny people that inhabit her structures of undulating platforms. Her work might resemble the interior of a cave, strands of DNA, futuristic buildings, a space colony, or a shopping mall, but its inability to be classified as any real object sets it apart from this literal representation. Her work seems to be a social structure we can view, a conceptual model addressing our world, but making its own world in isolation. Read below for the full article by Celi Dailey.

Continue reading "Susan Meyer: Together" »

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Ryan Trecartin casts, directs, films, edits, and often stars in full-length videos that are based on the proliferation of video documentation of today's youth culture, primarily through the channel of YouTube. The artist has recently been acclaimed by Artnews as "the Matthew Barney of the digital generation," referencing his surrealistic and sometimes disorienting use of scenery, costume, makeup, and characters. The artist successfully captures the way of life under the cultural aegis of the Internet, incorporating rapid scene changes that mimic the speed at which we click from site to site. Trecartin targets blogs, MySpace, match.com, and camera phones in his latest full-length video I-Be Area, which takes aim at the poseurs, self-promoters, and fictional characters that populate the world wide web today (watch clip). Trecartin has previously been featured on DailyServing for his sculptural and installation work.

Trecartin was a video major at RISD and upon graduation in 2004, moved to New Orleans where he created his first major work, A Family Finds Entertainment, on a budget of $1,000. He relocated to Ohio due to Hurricane Katrina, and later moved to Los Angeles. Despite these setbacks, his videos were already circulating the Internet and were seen by video artist Sue De Beer at a party in Cleveland. She brought his work to the attention of the Whitney Museum curators which led to his inclusion in the 2006 Whitney Biennial as the youngest artist ever to exhibit. He has since shown at New York's Underground Film Festival as well as the Walker Art Center and Miami's Moore Space. He is represented by Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York and has an upcoming solo show at UCLA's Hammer Museum. His videos now sell for more than $30,000, but he continues to distribute clips through the Internet.

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Craig Norton began his career in art by selling decorated flowerpots in front of nightclubs while working as a bouncer. This self taught artist now utilizes drawing, photography, and collage in his exploration of controversial issues in history, politics, and religion. Lacking any formal artistic training, Norton's work has a sincerity that shuns conceptuality in favor of a more honest and direct approach.

Norton's exhibition, Bitter Crop, investigates social injustices that took place throughout the American Civil Rights Movement and is now on display at OKOK Gallery in Seattle. This mixed media installation confronts historical acts of inhumanity such as lynchings, segregationist rallies, and Ku Klux Klan activities. The main wall of the gallery is covered with a collage of over fifty individuals in the midst of protest, complete with familiar scenes of police brutality and civil unrest. The artist draws the faces of the figures, often in the midst of screams, with a cheap Bic pen. He then attaches these photorealistic portraits to bodies composed of wallpaper samples. The unconventional mix of materials creates a palpable tension that mimics our emotional guilt and unease surrounding those circumstances, which is now intensified given the advantage of our historical perspective.

Norton cites the text Without Sanctuary: Lynching Photography in America as one of his main research sources. His previous work includes a large series based on the genocide in Rwanda and the Holocaust. Norton has exhibited at outsider art fairs in New York and Chicago. Portions of this body of work were first exhibited at White Flag Projects, a non-profit art space in St. Louis, Missouri where the artist currently lives and works.

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Ceramic artist, Vipoo Srivilasa's latest exhibition, Roop-Rote-Ruang is currently on display at Gallery 4A: Asia-Australia Arts Centre. Translating as Taste-Touch-Tell, the exhibition coincides with several dinner parties the artist will host within private Sydney residencies throughout the exhibition's duration. Srivilasa created ceramic dinner sets especially for this project, which the guests will eat from. He will prepare a four course meal and get the audience to engage in a range of activities that reflect his Thai heritage. The exhibition is also interactive in nature, focusing on issues regarding environmental damage. Tickets to the artist's dinner parties are able to be bought for $150 a head.

Srivilasa was born in Thailand, before migrating to Australia as an adult, where he currently lives and works. He has studied at various institutions including Rangsit University, Bangkok, Monash University, Melbourne and the University of Tasmania, Hobart. His work has appeared within numerous group exhibitions on an international scale, including at SOFA, Chicago, Gallery Twenty Five, New Delhi and Brisbane City Gallery, Queensland. He has also had several solo exhibitions within Australia and Thailand. He received first prize at the Golden Teapot Awards in 2003, and an honourable mention at the 4th World Ceramic Biennale, Korea.

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A conceptual video work by acclaimed artist, Bill Viola is currently on display at The Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney. Entitled The Tristan Project: Fall into Paradise, the work was created in response to the Celtic tale of Tristan and Isolde. Viola created four hours of video footage to accompany an operatic production of the legend that was directed by Peter Sellars. From 2004-2005 it was performed at institutions including the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles and Opera Bastille, Paris. Incorporating the use of water, many of the scenes involved underwater filming techniques.

Viola lives and works in Long Beach, California. He studied at Syracuse University, New York where he earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in experimental studios. His work has been exhibited widely on an international scale at institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, The Wien Modern, Vienna and the Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. He has received numerous awards for his art practice including a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, and a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters, as awarded by the French Government.

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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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Black & White Gallery in Chelsea is currently showing one of Julian Montague's recent art projects, To Know The Spiders, until July 12, 2008. Montague is intrigued by the often neglected common presences and occurrences of everyday life. The book version of a previous project, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, was published in 2006 by Harry Abrams. The book details his highly methodical research and classification project of the stray shopping cart phenomenon, which took place over the course of six years. The book met wide acclaim and received the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of 2006.

For To Know the Spiders, the artist has conducted a visual exploration and analysis of a seemingly mundane creature- the household spider. The exhibition includes photographic evidence of the artist's somewhat scientific process. First, this overlooked occupant of our shared interiors is put to rest at the exact location it was found. The artist then collects the specimen and studies the face of the spider below a microscope, creating several drawings during this stage. From these drawings, a fabric banner is assembled with a stark black and white portrait of the little victim. This banner is then placed and photographed in the exact location of collection, thereby recognizing the presence of this innocuous invertebrate and serving as a fibrous farewell to the spider who had to die for this understanding to be gained.

This exhibition concludes Black & White Gallery's three-part season long multi-disciplinary program entitled The Proper Animal. All artists included in the program
utilized highly original animal iconography, inevitably bringing ethical questions into play. Montague received his B.A in Media Studies from Hampshire College in 1996 and has exhibited widely in the US, including shows at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, Art in General in New York City, and Light Factory in Charlotte.

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This Friday, June 13th, Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C. will host a gallery talk and closing reception for Jason Zimmerman's solo exhibition Feel Better, Longer. Zimmerman graduated from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2003 and is moving to Oregon later this year to pursue his M.F.A. in Contemporary Arts with Harrell Fletcher in his new Social Practice program at Portland State University. This exhibition at Civilian includes several independent projects that explore the themes of containment, growth, and creation through a variety of media, including video, photography, drawing, and site-specific installation.

This exhibition is based on the belief that there is no distinction between what is considered to be natural and unnatural and that any activity of the human animal is indeed a part of nature. The artist includes both living things and inanimate objects in his projects, always emphasizing the importance of process, such as in the choreographed, collaborative video in which Zimmerman surrounds a young man with artificial flowers. In this same video there is a table supporting several terrariums, small self-contained ecosystems created in commonly discarded plastic items that the artist has found and cleaned. In a separate project, the artist displays several specimens, objects he has collected over time from places of meaning, and shares them with the viewers. Zimmerman's environments explore the boundaries between the artificial, the real, and the remembered.

Miami-based artist Jen Stark's exhibition "Much-Much" will be on view as well in the Project Space of Civilian Art Projects until this Saturday.

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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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We Want a New Object, California Institute of the Arts' 2008 MFA show, recently opened in an L.A. art scene hot spot. A hefty handful of Chinatown galleries and venues are hosting the exhibition, which features work by 34 students. A sea of multi-media work, the exhibition is heady, youthful and vibrant, just like CalArts' reputation. A sizable number of students - including Carlin Wing, Betsy Hunt, and Mike H.J. Chang - are working in video and performance mediums. On June 7th, 6 artists will project videos at The Mountain Bar and performances occur throughout the exhibition's duration.

Students selected writer Malik Gaines as the curator and Christine Y. Kim, a New York based curator, also lent a hand in organizing the exhibition. The location - Chinatown is much nearer the pulse of LA's art scene than CalArts' more rural location in Valencia, CA - makes We Want a New Object seem like a coming-out party in the old-fashioned sense. These MFA candidates are emerging and hitting the art scene with a splash.

We Want a New Object is on display at Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Black Dragon Society, David Salow Gallery, Fifth Floor Gallery, Kontainer, Peres Projects, Telic Arts Exchange, Betalevel, and The Mountain Bar.

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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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The Whitney Museum's current exhibition offers a telling glimpse into photographer Robert Mapplethorpe's artistic development. Mapplethorpe, who became controversial because of his S&M inspired photographs in the 80s, helped bring beauty back into the art dialogue. Influenced by Andy Warhol's cultural connoisseurship and classical perceptions of beauty, his sleekly formal images were at once traditional and culturally relevant.

When his lover, collector and curator Sam Wagstaff, gave him a Polaroid camera in 1975, Mapplethorpe's photographic eye began to flourish. The polaroids that Mapplethorpe took in the later 1970s have the haunting, composed quality that came to characterize his work. But they are also clearly experimental. The nearly 100 photographs in the Whitney exhibition represent an array of technical and compositional explorations. Mapplethorpe's romanticized images of Patti Smith differ from his portraits of celebrities with whom he had a more distant relationship and his own self-portraits experiment with riskier subject-camera relationships.

Mapplethorpe received a BFA from Pratt Institute in the early 1970s and spent most of his career in New York City. In 1987, he established the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation to help fund photographers and fight aids. He died in 1989, from complications related to AIDS. Mapplethorpe: Polaroids at the Whitney Museum continues through September 7, 2008.

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Currently showing at Blender Gallery, Paddington is a recent collection of works by acclaimed photographer, Toby Burrows. Entitled Footprint, the exhibition documents the artist's journey to Broken Hill, a regional mining suburb located in the far west of outback New South Wales. Images of picturesque scenery and vast landscapes present the beauty within the isolated town, and are cleverly juxtaposed with close ups of bird droppings smeared on windscreens and bugs splattered on the front of cars.

Burrows studied at Sydney College of the Arts, Rozelle before later moving to London. There he became the manager of Holborn Studios, Europe's largest photographic studio complex. Since his return to Sydney, Burrows has created advertising imagery for international corporations including Virgin mobile, Slazenger, Guinness and Epsom. He was commissioned by National Geographic to photograph deserted areas and remote communities within Australia, including Wilcannia, an outback region with a large indigenous population. Burrows has won several awards for his art practice including gold at the New York Festival, numerous finalist positions at the Cannes Film Festival and a World Press award.

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For the Balelatina HOT ART FAIR 2008, Michael Scoggins is presenting a new series of his signature drawings on large blue-lined spiral bound notebook paper. Scoggins uses simple materials used in childhood such as graphite, crayon, and marker to illustrate more complex issues concerning American politics as well as the artist's own personal and emotional life. This Savannah College of Art and Design alumnus (and member of MoMA's permanent collection) has met universal acclaim due to his clever ability to present adult issues through a child's perspective and medium, thus making these issues less taboo and forcing the viewers to examine and reflect upon their own experiences.

Scoggins addresses war, romantic break-ups and crushes, mood swings, and mental disturbances in an incredibly appealing and accessible manner. The enlarged notebook paper (67" x 51") provides the canvas for his sketches, with their size lending importance to the work. Some of the artist's works replicate school day ephemera (graded math tests, notes to friends, doodles), most deal with more adult topics, all while placing the viewer in the sometimes uncomfortable position of voyeur. The tattered ends and crumpled up appearance of the paper make us feel as if we have come across something we are not supposed to be reading, but the immersive nature of the piece immediately contradicts this notion. All of the works are emotionally charged, presenting the viewer with anger, humiliation, and of course, nostalgia.

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Over the last fortnight Sydney's Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery was scheduled to host an exhibition showcasing the work of acclaimed Australian photographer, Bill Henson. However, just hours prior to its programmed debut, the gallery was stormed by police confiscating 12 works on display and another 20 from the storeroom, while the gallery website was also forced to remove the offending imagery from its server. Such censorship was in play due to the depiction of naked adolescents within many of Henson's prints.

This story has dominated Australian tabloids and news broadcasts since its occurrence, with sensationalist headlines such as "Gallery raided as Bill Henson child porn art removed" appearing in leading newspapers, while news bulletins slander Henson a pedophile. The artist and gallery owners are now facing possible child pornography charges, causing debate to erupt over the distinction between art and pornography.

With Australia's own prime minister, Kevin Rudd declaring the images as "absolutely revolting," it's no wonder so many people have such an ignorant and philistine view on the topic. Boorish online groups entitled "Bill Henson is disgusting, perverted and a creator of child pornography," are being created while gallery owners Roslyn and Tony Oxley have even received anonymous phone messages from people threatening to burn down the gallery.

Yet much vocal support is also being shown in favour of the artist, aided with the defense of former child models who appear in Henson's earlier works, declaring they never felt violated when posing for the artist. Numerous high profile people have also voiced their support for Henson, including fellow artist Callum Morton, playwright Michael Gow and acclaimed actress Cate Blanchett.

Part of the current mass hysteria can be attributed to the way these images are being shown cropped, censored or out of context within the media. Close ups of adolescent girls' breasts or figures with blurred genitalia certainly demean the artist's broader body of work and have absolutely nothing to do with the way these images were intended to appear within a gallery environment.

One of the most shocking elements regarding the incident is Henson's global reputation as a respected artist. His work has been displayed within many major institutions around the world including the Guggenheim, New York, the Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna and the Victoria and Albert Museum, London- all without vilification. Within Australia his photographs are even studied as part of high school visual arts curriculum.

The current controversy in accordance with the Australian police force has required several other galleries, who have been displaying Henson's prints for years to also remove his photographs from their walls. In 2005 the Art Gallery of New South Wales (a somewhat "conservative" art institution), hosted a large scale retrospective of Henson's photography, which received no public objection whatsoever. Images within the exhibition contained the same form of adolescent nudity as present within the artworks at Roslyn Oxley9. The retrospective contained hundreds, possibly close to a thousand of Henson's prints and nobody seemed to say a word. So why now?

As a fellow Sydney-sider and art lover, my deepest condolences are with Henson and those affiliated with Roslyn Oxley9. These are certainly very dark days for the Australian art world.

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The work of Spanish artist Jaime Pitarch uses photography, video, sculpture, drawing and installation. The artist often focuses his attention on the altercation of everyday objects such as guitars, tables, glasses and hardware, which render the original function of the object useless. Pitarch's work is steeped in parody and humor and challenges the viewer's perception of items that are constantly used, though rarely considered. Pitarch's works are humble, yet are consistently presented with fierce craftsmanship and wit. The artist currently lives and works in Barcelona. He received his degree from Chelsea College of Art and his Master's from the Royal College of Art in London.

Pitarch has exhibited internationally with shows at Spencer Brownstone Gallery in New York City, Mjellby Konstmuseum in Halmstad, Sweden, and Galeria Fucares in Madrid.

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Commissary Arts is currently showing Hive Moments, an exhibition featuring the prints and mixed media works on paper of Los Angeles-based artist Nancy Macko. Macko explores the themes of society, art, science, and technology through the matriarchal culture of the honey bee. In honey bee society, a queen bee reigns over the hive and controls the activity of other bees. This matriarchal society inspires Macko, who grew up in a household of only women after her father died at age six. The interactive and organized realm of school became her world and separated her from the chaos at home. The hive, with its highly controlled chaos, combined both of these realms for the artist.

Macko is presenting recent etchings and lithographs in two parts, In the Garden of the Bee Priestess and The First Ten Prime Numbers. In addition, that artist will present mixed media works on paper from her series Conversations. Macko incorporates the intrinsic shapes of both a plumb bob and circular reinforcements used for paper into her compositions. The rotundity of the plumb bob evokes the female shape and the body of a bee. The artist scans, photocopies and layers images of these shapes to create one compelling image. The small circular reinforcements represent unity and float freely and in clusters through her carefully constructed worlds.
Using repetition with this unique visual language, Macko creates abstract scenes of a feminist-inspired universe, which is at once conceptually compelling and visually beautiful.

Macko cites Nancy Azara, Nancy Spero, and Ana Mendieta as influential and inspirational female artists. Macko participated in the making of The Dinner Party in 1979 and has studied feminist utopian societies in science fiction novels.

Macko is originally from New York and attended University of Wisconsin, River Falls. She received her M.F.A. in Studio Art from the University of California at Berkeley and an M.A. in Education. Macko is currently the Chair of the Department of Gender and Women's Studies at Scripps College. She has had over 20 solo exhibitions, participated in over 140 group shows, and received over 30 research and achievement awards for her work. Hive Moments is the artist's first solo exhibition since her mid-career survey show in 2007 and will be on view at Commissary Arts until June 14th.

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