 Currently at OKOK Gallery until May 4th is "While," a two person show with works by Mauro Altamura and Anna Von Mertens concerning the passage of time. Both artists examine political and historical occurrences from various perspectives. Altamura is exhibiting 144 (out of 1000) photographs from his series, "Anonymous," which he began during the presidential elections of 2000. Altamura collected images of anonymous people in the background of published pictures in the Friday New York Times. The artist then re-photographed and enlarged these faces, displaying them in a grid-like pattern, reminiscent of institutional methods of photographic indexing. Together they become a shrine of anonymity and obscurity, with the enlargement of the faces causing the original image to dissolve into a dot pattern. This partial portraiture creates a sense of loss and powerlessness, familiar feelings in our current political atmosphere. Von Mertens will be exhibiting three works from "As Stars Go By," a project that displays the star rotation patterns above violent and dramatic events in American history. The artist hand stitches the patterns into quilts, with each stitch becoming a marker of time and a silent reminder of past and future. Events depicted include the Civil War Battle of Antietam, Hiroshima, and the morning of September 11th. All took place during the daytime hours, thus concealing the star patterns above from those affected below. The stars serve as passive spectators and suggest nature's transcendence above human interactions and indiscretions. Altamura received an M.F.A. from the Visual Studies Workshop/SUNY Buffalo and a B.A. from Ramapo College of New Jersey. He has received several grants, including those from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New Jersey State Council on the Arts. Von Mertens received a B.A. from Brown University in 1995 and her M.F.A. from the California College of the Arts. She has displayed her work at Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco, the Berkeley Art Museum, and White Box in New York. | |||||
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 There is a long history of art being presented along side fashion. These exhibitions have left one with the feeling that the art is being used to lend conceptual weight to the clothes. But the rigorous exhibitions mounted at Antwerp's Fashion Museum makes it clear that fashion designers can be as conceptually strong as visual artists. Their current exhibition is an overview of fashion designer Veronique Branquinho. She graduated from Flanders Fashion Institute in 1995. Since 1998, she has shown her collections on the world's fashion runways, but this is the first museum presentation of her creative output. | |||||
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 Matt Mullican has been busy creating his own world in a multitude of different media since graduating from Cal Arts in 1974. His current exhibition at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer continues this constructive process. The front room is filled with banners and scale models done under hypnosis, that investigate the workings of the subconscious. The short lived Abstract Expressionist movement pursued a similar process, but, theirs was an unquestioned outpouring of the inner spirit. Mullican and his dreamscape contemporaries such as Johnathan Borofsky, Jim Shaw, and Mike Kelley reject this notion. Instead, they continually question, trying to come to an understanding of our motivation. In his black and white banners, Mullican tries to make metric conversions that just don't seem to make sense. But, at least he's trying. Being a concerned citizen, he outlines a path to follow should an emergency develop. This too sputters and spurts along with wry humor. And, in the end, suggests it's probably best to call 911 for help. Matt Mullican at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer through May 3, 2008 | |||||
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 Curator's Office and Civilian Art Projects have collaborated on the exhibition craigslist at Civilian Art Projects in Washington, DC. On craigslist, users can search for essentially anything, from jobs and jewelry to casual encounters. Each month, the site receives more than 9 billion page views and more than 10 million new images are uploaded. Artists Joseph Dumbacher, John Dumbacher, Jason Horowitz, and Jason Zimmerman use the popular online community as a conceptual catalyst in their investigation of the identity phenomenon in the age of the Internet and how our online personalities generate a new type of portraiture. The Dumbacher artist team solicits models on the website to meet them and pose for photographic portraits by offering to purchase a movie ticket to a film of the model's choice. The Dumbachers meet them at the theater and photograph them in the low lighting, leaving their faces largely obscured. This allows the viewers to project their own identity onto the sitter. These haunting and shadowy portraits reflect the anonymity of the internet posting and our ability to manipulate our own images and personalities to the point of obscurity. Jason Horowitz solicits models on the site to come to his studio where they sign a social contract based on physical and emotional comfort levels. He then shoots extreme close-ups of the terrain of the body, creating his own type of anonymous portraiture. With the invasive zoom lens view, Horowitz awakens our own biases about beauty, race, sexuality, body image, and exhibitionism. Zimmerman uses images obtained from craigslist as his found raw material. He looks for images posted by people who are actively seeking sexual partners or indulging in blatant exposure and exhibitionism. He published an artist book, "The Willing", containing images of people who posted their rape fantasies on the Internet. An essay by Andrea Pollan, Director of Curator's Office, accompanies the exhibition that will remain at Civilian Art Projects until April 26th. | |||||
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 The objects of sculptor Peter Iannarelli are seemingly commonplace in nature, yet the artist cleverly liberates the forms through the tinkering of their materiality. By utilizing both logic and abstraction, Iannarelli reduces the forms to a common denominator linking and balancing concept with form. The work, which is seemingly accessible to a wide audience, offers depth beyond its initial appearance. Using the familiar materials, the artist draws the viewer into the work and then flips the meaning in a way that re-contextualizes both the physicality and the meaning of the object. Also, the work is often summed up by a clever title which neatly puts together any conceptual loose-ends. Peter Iannarelli received his BFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. He has attended the DIA Center as a visiting artist and has a grant recipient of the Vermont Studio Center. The artist has a forth coming exhibition at Van Brunt Gallery in Beacon, NY and recently exhibited at the Dorsky Museum in New Paltz, NY and the Albany Center Gallery in Albany, NY. | |||||
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And Larry makes three. Over the last month London has had the privilege of hosting new work from three of the father figures of contemporary art. Besides Ed Ruscha and Larry Clark, there was also Lawrence Weiner. Weiner's exhibition took place at Lisson Gallery, and just ended last week. These guys have inspired generations of younger artists, by continually producing challenging new work over a 30 year career. Weiner's exhibition came on the heels of his first American retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art. This time Weiner focuses on emphasizing his command of the formal concerns of artistic presentation. Visually stunning in the use of vibrant hues, this exhibition also sharpens the sociological implications that have always been present in Weiner's work. "FIRST MOVE, SECOND MOVE, THIRD MOVE", suggests that the first move should be to circle the wagons, establishing a protected personal space. Only then, will we be prepared to go out and deal with societal structures. "OFFSIDES", uses two vertical lines as a formal devise to bracket the text, while not confining it. Thought of in a social context, it establishes opposition. It can refer to expanding to new territories or taken negatively, being on the wrong side. "FOUND BY CHANCE AFTER ANY GIVEN TIME FOUND ALONE AFTER ANY GIVEN TIME" The operative words here are, "Found" and "Alone". Found refers to others, while alone stresses the individual. This highlighting of the personal should not be taken in the, "Me Generation", sense of the word. Larry's too much of an old hippie for that. Rather, he's asking us to consider how our personal choices affect society. Weiner began his career with the pioneering conceptual art dealer, Seth Siegelaub, later he worked for years with Leo Castelli. Currently he works in whatever contexts he finds interesting, while remaining fiercely loyal to those he respects. Demonstrating continuing curiosity, Weiner also has a super cool website, "HOMEPORT", and all this at 66. Lawerence Weiner, "OFFSIDES" Lisson Gallery, February 6, - March 15. | |||||
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 Roni Horn is currently exhibiting her photographic series of taxidermied Icelandic wildfowl at Hauser and Wirth Colnaghi in London. The artist attended the Rhode Island School of Design and received her M.F.A. from Yale University School of Art in 1978. After completing graduate school, Horn journeyed to Iceland to explore the geological activity that takes place in a location virtually untouched by globalization forces. She has since made several Icelandic adventures, and continued to photograph the wildfowl for this long-running series. The artist has had several solo exhibitions, including those at Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles and Kunstmuseum Winterthur in Winterthur, Switzerland. The manifestation of Horn's work takes various forms, including works on paper, installations, books with her own images and text, and photographs. She has openly attributed her lack of media specificity to "growing up androgynous," which prevented her from associating with any singular gender identity. For the exhibition, Horn photographed the backs of wildfowl at close range against a monochromatic background, in the style of a conventional studio portrait. She presented these in doubles, a powerful conceptual and aesthetic tactic. The images of the bird's melanistic markings are curious, much like the stuffed birds they represent, questioning the strange art of preparing and preserving the skins of dead animals. The accurate imaging of the bird's fascinatingly mundane physiognomies points to our rather limited knowledge of life. The quizzical nature surrounding her work is an attempt to make the viewer responsible for their presence, and to create a more direct experience. As the artist herself states, "I want to make sensible experience more present." | |||||
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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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 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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 Considering the continuing explosion of the art market, the current exhibition at Xavier Hufkens Gallery in Brussels, takes a much needed stance of opposition. Entitled, "I would prefer not", joins together three artists, Bernard Bazile, Pierre Huyghe, and John Knight, each having maintained a stance against the comodification of the artist's production. The Frenchman, Bernard Bazile, first rose to prominence in the 80's as one part of the artist team, Bustamante/Bazile. While his former partner went on to fame and fortune, Bazile instead focused on pursuing the work that he thought was needed, rather than what the market place wanted. Although he remains little known outside France, he is often cited by young French artists as a major influence on their work. This will be the first time his work is presented in Belgium since his 1987 exhibition at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer. Pierre Huyghe has remained very elusive through his rejection of objects, instead focusing on creating situations that ask us to question how we construct and translate our visual experiences. He also remains hard to define because he often works in collaboration with other artists, so one must wonder what part of the work is his. Huyghe has previously exhibited at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven. John Knight is one of the original conceptual artists and as such has always challenged the role art plays in society. Although remaining relatively unknown in the art world, Knight has long enjoyed the support of established conceptual theoreticians such as, Benjamin Buchloh, Anne Rorimer, John Welchman, and Luk Lambrecht. In grouping together these disparate artists, "I would prefer not", attempts to refocus our attention to what art is suppose to be about, the exchange of ideas. It's ok to say no. | |||||
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 For its first exhibition opening in 2008 gallery PPOW in New York City will present "Islands," its seventh exhibitions featuring the collaborative works of Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz. For their recent body of work the two artists have created a series of fictional wintry island landscapes which are inhabited by small communities of people. It appears in the works that most of the planet has been swallowed up and the remaining tops of mountains are the last place for civilization to go. Walter Martin and Paloma Munoz have been working collaboratively for the past 14 years, and have exhibited internationally with works in the collections of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid, La Caixa in Barcelona, Spain and the KIASMA Museum of Contemporary Art in Helsinki. In addition to the PPOW exhibition in NYC, the artists will also be exhibiting at Mario Mauroner Contemporary Art in Vienna, Austria and at Cerealart in Philadelphia, PA. | |||||
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 Brazilian artist Jorge Mendes has created a group of work titled "Tide" for the Dennis Anderson Gallery, Belgium. It took place on the Saint Annake Strand, on Antwerps Linkerover, where the tide rose so high that part of the work was blown across the Schelde and landed in the gallery. What's left of the work will be on view in the gallery until Jan 19. The title, "Tide", is a reference to the unstoppable flow of water around the world; it's also a play on words for the Flemish word for time, "Tijd". The work explores the difficulties an emigrant faces trying to find his place in a strange land and nature vs. civilization, ecological issues, and arts place in society. | |||||
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 Opening December 7 at Allston Skirt Gallery in Boston is a collaborative project by Joe Gibbons and Joe Zane simply titled "Joe". In a society infatuated with personal expressions, "Joe" explores the personal and shared effects of being known by only one, generic name. Gibbons, mainly known for his video work has exhibited with Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Centre Pompidou, and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia. Zane has exhibited at Allston Skirt Gallery in solo shows in 2004 and 2006, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Andrew Kreps Gallery, Kent Gallery and ArtSpace. Zane currently lives in Cambridge, MA where he works at the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. | |||||
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 Opening today at Victoria Miro in London, in her first solo exhibition in the UK, Wangechi Mutu will be making a departure from her earlier collages and installations with their highly critical, dark and confrontational themes and stepping into a renewed optimism and positive energy inherent in this new body of work. The exhibition's title Yo.n.I is derived from yoni, the Sanskrit word for "divine passage" or sacred space rooted in the worship of female creativity and sexual organ. With layers of visual metaphor, Mutu likes to force her viewers to question assumptions about race, gender, geography, history and beauty. Mutu received her BFA from Cooper Union, New York and her MFA from Yale University School of Art. The artist was born in Nairobi, Kenya and currently lives and works in New York City. | |||||
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 Stepping into the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York City is a little like stumbling upon a musical shipwreck. Diana Al-Hadid has used plaster, fiberglass, wood, polystyrene, and cardboard to create a romantically ramshackled and dilapidated sculpture, "Record of a Mortal Universe," which is based on the phenomenon of a hero's collapse. Sourcing religion, architecture, and physics, Al-Hadid's pointed and varied references unfold within the work, from a grand staircase that leads to a decomposing Greek temple to an upside-down vaulted arch and melted pipe-organ pedals. A gramophone extends through a ring of decrepit temple columns and crumbling gothic buttresses, making the sculpture seem as though it has appeared, tattered and torn, from the background of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch. "Record of a Mortal Universe" also explores gravitational collapse, or the phenomenon of a massive body collapsing under its own weight. The sculpture sets up an engaging dichotomy in that the foundation's materials, cardboard and melting resin, seem tenuous and unable to support such a gigantic mass. Yet the reference to Greek architecture and ruins suggest that this is somehow a solid structure that has been around for an untold number of years. Diana Al-Hadid is a Brooklyn-based, Syrian-born artist who graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. She participated in the Skowhegan residency this past summer, and her work will be at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery until the 24th of November. | |||||
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 Indigenous Australian artist, Destiny Deacon presents issues of fanatical patriotism within her current exhibition "Whacked," at Roslyn Oxley9 Gallery, Sydney. Within the confrontational series, Deacon addresses misconceptions and stereotypes associated with racial prejudice. While exploring her fascination with new media practices including photography and video, Deacon also utilizes more traditional art forms, creating carpets and cushion covers imprinted with the sinister faces of her disturbing characters. Reflecting on recent events such as the racially motivated 2005 Cronulla riots, Deacon through her use of black humor, reflects on the increased sense of xenophobia caused by the fear of terrorism. Deacon's contemporary art practice often deals with issues of social stigma faced by Indigenous Australians, while the inclusion of black dolls as kitsch representations of Aboriginal people symbolize the way in which they have been silenced and forced into submission. The dolls often act as substitutes for real people and are able to both depersonalize and globalize the issues projected in her art. She has showcased her works on an international scale, becoming the only Australian artist to be selected for Documeta II in Germany, 2002. | |||||
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 Artist Michael Scoggins is currently presenting a series of new text-based works in an exhibition titled "My Good, My Evil" at Freight and Volume in New York City. This will be the artist's second solo exhibition with the gallery. Scoggins signature hand-drawn notebook paper works are massive in scale, up to 67" x 51", and are carefully crafted to look as if they were simply ripped from a child's notebook. The artist's intentional sophomoric qualities offer a humor that is able to at once investigate social issues of race, American politics and childhood love. After a recent relocation from Savannah, GA, Scoggins now lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. The artist received an MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. This year Scoggins has exhibited with Adler & Co. in San Francisco and with D3 Projects in Bergamot Station in Santa Monica, CA. | |||||
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 Tracey Emin's first Los Angeles solo show, "You Left Me Breathing", opened at Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills on November 2nd. Emin, who was shortlisted for the Turner Prize in 1999, is one of the hyped Young British Artists whose work gained notoriety in the mid 1990s. She recently represented Britain at the 2007 Venice Biennale, installing large-scale neon signs and drawings on the walls of the British Pavilion. Emin openly uses her life as her subject matter and her work vacillates between virtuosity and one-liner candor. Paintings, like "Reincarnation III" (2005), explicitly play on the expressive style of Edvard Munch while neon works, like "Very Happy Girl" (1999), are gaudy and blunt. Emin's expansive oeuvre includes sculpture, drawing, video, photography, and needlework and "You Left Me Breathing" emphasizes her ambiguous, controversial breadth. At Gagosian, Emin's confessional drawings, including "Family Suite II" (1994), hang alongside her crude, tongue-in-cheek textile assemblages and her flashy neon signs contrast her large, expressionistic paintings. The Gagosian show also features a recent series of delicate jesmonite sculptures that incorporate bronze, bundled wood, cement, and glass. | |||||
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 Currently on view at David Zwirner Gallery in New York City is an exhibition of new work by English-born artist Chris Ofili titled, "Devil's Pie." This show will feature works in painting, sculpture, printmaking and drawing, uniting the artist's interest in the themes of birth, death, seduction, and salvation. Religious references are also found in these works as the artist repeats and reinforces his imagery through multiple manifestations. Ofili is a graduate of the Royal College of Art, and first drew international acclaim during the 1990's through exhibiting with the Saatchi Gallery in North London and the traveling exhibition Sensation (1997). Ofili's work was the cause of much controversy when the exhibition traveled to the Brooklyn Museum of Art for "The Holy Virgin Mary," a painting of a black African Mary surrounded by images of black exploitation and close-ups of female genitalia, and elephant dung. The painting resulted in a law suit between the Brooklyn Museum of Art and Mayor of NYC, Rudy Giuliani. Ofili developed as member of the Young British Artists, exhibiting with the Serpentine Gallery and wining the Turner Prize. The same year, the artist represented Britain at the Venice Biennale. In addition to David Zwirner, Ofili is represented by Victoria Miro Gallery. | |||||
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 Lawrence Weiner is mounting a new body of work, "As Far As The Eye Can See", at the Whitney Museum from November 2007 through February 2008. The artist uses words to serve as the raw material for his art. Words are spoken, sung, painted, printed, stamped on coins and manhole covers, put to film, just about anywhere. The text is intended to help people understand their relationship to the objects in their world. Weiner is one of the key figures associated with the emergence and foundations of Conceptual Art and has defined art as "the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings". Recent solo exhibitions of Weiner's work have been exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Weiner has produced various films and videos, including "Beached, Do You Believe in Water?", and "Plowman's Lunch". Weiner lives in New York and Amsterdam. | |||||
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 On view through this week at Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago is a new solo exhibition by Hans Hemmert titled, "this preparation of readiness for keeping oneself open to the arrival or absence of the god." Hemmert is an artist who has become known for his humor infused philosophical works that reside in ideas of space, physicality, religion and the state of being. The artist has also developed a signature use of the color yellow, which often appears as an amorphous blob in his work. For his current exhibition with Kavi Gupta, Hemmert presented several yellow fiberglass sculptures along side other light and text sculptures, video animations and drawings. The works mix religious references with that of pop-culture, such as the piece "I am the way, the truth and the life [14:6]. I am the vine and you are the branches [15:1]" which shows John the Evangelist morphing into a boom box. Hemmert currently lives and works in Berlin, and studied at the Hochschule der Künste Berlin and at St. Martins School of Art in London. This year, the artist exhibited with Stadtische Galerie Nordhorn in Germany, and last year exhibited "ego sum via" with Carlier/Gebauer in Berlin.
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 The Moti Hasson Gallery in New York City is currently presenting "Waking the Dead," a new body of work by Canadian-born, New York-based artist Jillian McDonald. The exhibition will include a special performance on Halloween night. Within the show, the artist has produced several videos and a series of photographs which feature images that are derivative from a variety of horror films. In the work above, "Horror Makeup (2006), McDonald films herself transforming into a zombie as viewers gaze upon the transformation on an otherwise 'normal' subway ride. In reference to placing herself in the work, Mcdonald states "My presence in the work is not autobiographical. I think it's clear that my image serves as a deliberate subject who enacts shared fantasies or fears." McDonald received funding the exhibition in part by a grant from Pace University, and created the work through residencies in New York at The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Workspace Program, The School of Visual Arts, and The Western Front in Vancouver, Canada. The artist received her MFA from Hunter College in NYC, and has complete exhibitions worldwide including works with Jack the Pelican Presents, NYC, Soap Factory, Minneapolis, and upcoming exhibitions with 1708 Gallery in Richmond, VA, and Bjornson Kajiwara Gallery in Vancouver. | |||||
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 On view at the Whitney Museum of American Art through Feb 2008, artist Kara Walker will be showing "My Complement, My Enemy, My Oppressor, My Love". The artist explores racism in the American psyche through large-scale silhouettes that tell a story as they spread from one end of a room to the other. Walker has created a repertoire of narratives in which she conflates fact and fiction to uncover the roots of racial and gender bias. Her imagery is haunted by sexuality, violence, and subjugation while depicting historical narratives of injury caused by the legacy of slavery. She's been featured in Art21 and was in Time Magazine's 100 Most Influential People in The World, Artists and Entertainers in 2007. Walker received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and an MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design. She now lives in New York and is on the faculty of the MFA program at Columbia University. | |||||
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 In a new body of work titled A Castle Dark (For Cathy), artist Hilary Wilder tells the story of Cathy Smith, a former groupie to The Band also known for her troubled relationship with singer Gordon Lightfoot and her implication in the drug-related death of John Belushi. The series of paintings are constructed from the visual details of her life while paying homage to Canadian landscape painter, Tom Thomson. Wilder received a B.A. in Studio Art from Bates College and an M.F.A. in painting at the University of Wisconsin. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in the Visual Arts. Wilder is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Painting and Printmaking at Virginia Commonwealth University. The artist is also taking part in a group show titled "The Sirens' Song" opening October 11 at Rubin Center in El Paso. | |||||
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 Parisian artist Prune Nourry's work investigates elements of many current social and scientific issues such as genetic modification, stem cell research, fetishes and the commodification of the human form. The artist conducted a project of celebrity led fetishes with dogs and other pets as well as pet-baby substitution piece. For her latest work "Adoption Day," the artist will conduct a performance piece scheduled for today in Regents Park / Central London presented by Jaguar Shoes. For this performance the artist has created five figurative silicone sculptures that are designed to be a hypothetical genetic hybrid baby. These sculptures will each be accompanied by a nanny and will travel from different parts of London, the performance will end with a series of family photo sessions including the newly created family addition. | |||||
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 Opening at P.P.O.W. in late October, Judy Fox will be showing "Snow White and the Seven Sins". Playing on the classic Disney storyline Fox uses Pride, Envy, Anger, Avarice, Sloth, Gluttony and Lust as surreal objects to surround a beautiful nude adolescent girl who is seemingly unconscious. Known for her sculptures of children rendered with refinement; exploration of the child's body in life-size naturalistically-painted clay, the artist explores contemporary sociological issues by creating vulnerable, naked and exposed individuals. Fox received her Masters from the Institute of Fine Arts, NYU and has received two NEA grants, and an award from the "Anonymous Was a Woman" foundation. She is a fellow of Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, and is a 2006 fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. The P.P.O.W gallery in NYC and Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Paris both currently represent Fox. | |||||
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 In an upcoming exhibition opening this Thursday at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, artist Katrina Moorhead will exhibit the work "on or about December 1981," a set of DeLorean car doors exquisitely crafted out of plywood. Moorhead explores ideas related to beauty, temporality, failure, and optimism, and through these doors is able to elevate the controversial car and production factory in Belfast to highlight its short life. In addition, the artist will also exhibit a series of drawings that also convey a sense of somberness. Born in Northern Ireland in 1971, Moorehead represented her country in the last Venice Biennale. In 2005 she received the International Artists in Residence Award at the Artpace Foundation in San Antonio, TX; she now lives and works in Houston, TX. The artist received an MFA from Edinburgh College of Art, Scotland in 1996, and has completed solo exhibitions at the Inman Gallery (2006) and Devin Borden Hiram Butler Gallery (2002). | |||||
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 Cuban-Dominican artist Quisqueya Henriquez opened his first major museum survey exhibition at the Bronx Museum of the Arts yesterday evening. "The World Outside: A Survey Exhibition 1991-2007," showcases the artist's sculptures, installations, drawings, photographs, videos and light/sound works created over the past two decades. In addition to the exhibition, Henriquez was featured in this month's ARTnews magazine. The artist's work investigates social environments through cultural cliches, invoking sensory experiences of urban life through his multi-disciplinary works. The artist, who is currently represented by David Castillo in New York City, studied at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA) in Havana, Cuba and the Universidad Autonoma De Santo Domingo (USAD) in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Henriquez has exhibited in the Centro de Fotografia de la Isla de Tenerife in the Islas Canarias, Spain and Proyecto de Arte Contemporaneo, Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico, among countless others. The artist is now in the collections of the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), North Miami, the Henry Buhl Foundation and the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
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 Opening today in Beverley Hills is the first exhibition by artist Tom Sachs presented by the Gagosian Gallery. Sachs, a previous DailyServing feature, has gained international acclaim for his technically meticulous sculptures of manufactured objects and structures. The artist crafts his sculptures with very basic materials often associated with model making such as foam core, chip-board and hot-glue. Over the last decade, Sachs has been engaged with the technical wonder and romance associated with the American Apollo space program. Through experimenting with individual models of various sizes, the artist has begun to develop his own fully operating conceptual space program. By working with high-style and production clothing companies such as Nike and Prada to develop items such as lab coats and space boots, Sachs has expanded his artistic vocabulary and inventory immensely. Sachs originally studied at the Architectural Association in London (1987), and later received a B.A. from Bennington College in Vermont (1989). Since the artist has exhibited globally and has work in the collections of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, and the Centre Georges Pomidou. | |||||
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 The paintings of Julie Heffernan are a constant dilemma of opposites between the gorgeous and the grotesque, attraction and repulsion, with a bounty of enormous amounts of wealth and waste of resources, energy and lives. Each one of Heffernan's figures are heavily draped with the carcasses of animals, strung with rose-webbing, bejeweled with medals and encircled by heads of state. As the artist's frantic imagery heightens to a climax, each woman gazes at the viewer with serene calm. Heffernan received her undergraduate degree in painting and printmaking from University of California and her graduate degree in painting from Yale University. She has received a Lila Acheson Wallace award, NY Foundation for the Arts award, a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright-Hayes Grant. Heffernan will be showing at P.P.O.W. Sept. 20-Oct. 20 in New York City. | |||||
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 Coming Sept. 5 at the Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York are the photographs of Chris Gentile. Presented as allegories of his studio practice, the artist constructs lightning bolts, surfboards and lifeguard chairs that are meticulously cast in small scale and mixed with a variety of functional studio objects, such as plywood, saw horses and a trashcan. The combination of the important being symbolic and the mundane being obvious is one that allows Gentile to explore the themes of hope and abandonment. The process is co-dependent in that even while these are photographs of sculptures, they are equally shaped by the fact that their sole representation and exhibition will be through photographs rather than a viewer's firsthand experience of the tangible object. The artist received his BFA from the Ringling School of Art and Design and his MFA from the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The artist has shown work at the Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco and the Second Street Gallery in Charlottesville, Va. | |||||
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 The anachronistic imagery found in much of the work of artist Bruno Peinado will be featured in an upcoming solo exhibition with Galerie Mitterrand + Sanz in Zurich called "Suicidal Tendencies." For this exhibition, the artist has continued his investigation into cult-based imagery found in elements of contemporary society that are at once loaded for some and otherwise void for others. Peinado's works are a contemplation of the spectacle of society and the history of imagery and symbolism as it relates to specific cultural movements. The artist has exhibited extensively with international venues, including "The Endless Winter" at Galleria Continua in Italy and "Me, Buy-Sellf and I" at the Galerie Loevenbruck in Paris, France. The artist has recently been featured in group shows "Notre Histoire" at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and "Bang-Bang!" at the Musee d'Art et d'Industrie de Saint-Etienne in France. | |||||
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 Brooklyn-based artist Peter Simensky's medium is money. By combining images from currency belonging to 50 failing world economies, he creates colorful collages that remain true to the scale of other notes. In 2005, Simensky partnered with the Swiss Institute to give his money/art buying power at the Armory Show in New York City where other galleries allowed pieces to be bought with what he calls "Neutral Capital." He himself uses his currency to buy work from an array of artists. He displays those pieces that he's bought in portable galleries that fold up into shipping crates. So far, his collection includes work from Yuh-Shioh Wong and Peter Coffin, among others. By assigning value to his mint, Simensky has found a way to participate in and critique the current art market. His solo exhibition "Cerca: Peter Simensky" will be at the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego through September. The artist received his MFA from CUNY Hunter College in NYC. | |||||
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 On Sept. 1, the Victoria Miro Gallery in London will present an exhibition of new works by New York-based artist Sarah Sze. As a continuation of the artist's sculptural aesthetic, Sze has created several new ephemeral installations that use throw-away materials such as water bottles, office lights, thread and scrap wood. The artist's sculptures are integrated into the gallery walls, floors and ceiling and are organized to represent a microcosm that is able to exist and function as part of a larger system. Sze is a graduate of Yale University and the School of Visual Arts in New York City. She has exhibited internationally with shows at Malmo Konsthall in Sweden, the Fondation Cartier in Paris and the Whitney Museum in NYC, and she was also the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship in 2003. | |||||
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 The artwork and writings of David Batchelor investigate the properties of color and how it operates outside of the functional realm, becoming a unique phenomenon all on its own. The artist is also interested in the symbolic meaning attached to color and how it affects those in its presence. Batchelor's work often takes form as sculpture, using brilliant colors with fluorescent light, neon and plastics shown through light boxes and shelving but is also known to exist in drawings, photographic series and even large-scale public works. The Scottland-born artist has exhibited recently with the Wilkinson Gallery, Gloucester Road Underground Station in London and Ikon Gallery in Birmingham, UK. Batchelor is listed as a Saatchi Gallery artist and has participated in group shows at Galerie Leme in Sao Paulo, curated by Jacopo Crivelli Visconti, and "Extreme Abstraction" at the Albright Knox in Buffalo, N.Y. | |||||
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 The paintings of Sarah Emerson use the violence and sadness of natural landscapes to provoke a sense of instability. Her muted paintings combine a variety of visual references, ranging from dead bucks and barren trees to abstract elements. Emerson's paintings embrace honesty and uncertainty in a time that she believes is hardened by the disintegration of real emotional and literal landscapes. Her reference to natural objects is used as a device to keep the paintings' feel as close to real as possible, without completely relying on literal interpretations of the surface or space. Emerson received her BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and her MFA from Goldsmiths College in London. The artist has exhibited at White Columns in New York, Cosmic Gallery in Paris and Real Art Ways in Hartford, Conn. | |||||
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Bay Area artist, entrepreneur and organizer Marc Horowitz gained national attention when he wrote "Dinner w/ Marc 510-872-7326," his actual name and cell number, on a dry-erase board, which was published in a Crate & Barrel catalog. Soon after, calls poured in, and Horowitz began "The National Dinner Tour," a traveling, dinner-eating, cross-country adventure. Since, the artist has produced several projects, including "The Errand Feasibility Study," featuring Horowitz riding a mule in downtown San Francisco while doing various tasks such as making a bank deposit. After a short stint at the San Francisco Art Institute, Horowitz and long-time collaborator, Jon Brumit founded Sliv & Dulet Enterprises, a conceptual company dedicated to solving problems by creating products such as the "office in a tent" and services such as the fog removal initiative for the Golden Gate Bridge. | |||||
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 The Gagosian Gallery's Madison Avenue space in New York City is currently presenting "With Full Consent," works dated 2004-2007 by artist Jill Magid. The exhibition continues Magid's investigation of the emotional and philosophical links between authority, protective institutions and the individual. The artist has staged and edited scenes that were captured by police using public CCTV surveillance cameras, using the footage to "seek the potential softness and intimacy of their (police) technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view ..." Magid is a graduate of science in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., and completed an artist-in-residence program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. The artist, who now lives and works in N.Y.C. and Amsterdam, has completed major solo exhibitions with the Tate Liverpool (2004) and the Centre D'Art Santa Monica in Barcelona (2007). | |||||
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 Outlining sidewalk stains, skid marks and graffiti on the streets on New York City, Los Angeles and Las Vages is just a portion of what goes into the work of L.A.-based artist Ingrid Calame. What may look like a Pollock-style painting at first glance is more a method of controlling shapes and outcomes than personal expression. After the painstaking process of tracing each found stain, Calame returns to the studio and begins to cut out the forms and arrange them in what she calls constellations. She then creates a final tracing of the pattern in order to transfer them onto an aluminum panel as the underdrawing for a final painting. For her first solo show at Deitch Projects in 2000, Calame included three elements of her project: colored pencil drawings, enamel on aluminum paintings and an excerpt of a large constellation. Calame received her BFA from Purchase College in New York and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. The artist will be showing at the James Cohan Gallery in September and the Indianapolis Museum of Art in November. She also has a show scheduled at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany, in 2008 and has served as a studio assistant for Harriet Schorr and Chuck Close. | |||||
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 Conceptual artist and designer Andrea Zittel will be speaking on cultural imperatives and market forces in a public discussion between artists/designers Bruce Tomb, Mike Kuniavsky and Donald Fortesue held at The Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif., this afternoon at 4 p.m. Zittel was the 2007 Headlands Artist in Residence, producing new work that further explores her interest in the intersection of sculpture, design, architecture and technology. The artist is known to address all levels of habitation in contemporary society, consistently evaluating the most effective and sustaining methods of creation and use. Zittel is influenced by modernist design, reducing all elements of her creations to necessity. As a result, the artist continuously changes her own home to suit her changing interests and needs. She founded A-Z Administrative Services, a one-woman organization that develops a variety of products such as clothing, furniture and even food, which has been called "an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature and the social construction of needs." Zittel received her BFA from the San Diego State University (1988) and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1990). The artist has shown her works internationally with exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. Her current traveling mid-career retrospective, "Andrea Zittel: Critical Space," has been featured in the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and several other major museums in North America. | |||||
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On March 22, artist Josiah McElheny presented a lecture at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City called "Artists and Models" to discuss his investigation of models and how they operate in relation to sculptural thought rather than direct function or information. McElheny is interested in the idea of a model as an "aesthetical utopia that could never be built." In a 1929 conversation between sculptor Isamu Noguchi and architect Buckminster Fuller, the idea of an experimental environment containing no shadows was determined feasible if a totally reflective form was constructed in a completely reflective space. While never completely realized by Fuller or Noguchi, McElheny, who is known for working with glass, used this reflective principle to create a series of sculptural models, both large and small, called "Extended Landscape Model for Total Reflective Abstraction," which contained a mirrored glass table with hand-blown mirrored glass objects placed directly onto the table. These works were eventually, over a period of about four years, extended into other works that illustrated the same principle through other environments and models. Many of these examples can be viewed currently at the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago in "Josiah McElheny: Cosmology, Design, and Landscape Part Two," while other projects and ideas are discussed in season three of the ART:21 series. | |||||
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 Dysfunctional Americana that uses familiar imagery to tell stories is how Michael Paige Glover describes his new body of work. Glover uses adults and children that are placed against backgrounds of anarchy, destruction and uncertain imagery that he relates to past memories and self-awareness. Pulling inspiration from '20s to '50s photos, films, magazines and personal photographs, the artist spends months combining, arranging and decoding metaphors that unravel a specific feeling contained within each piece. In the end, Glover creates personal symbols using iconic imagery that aid in the discovery of his process. After traveling to Vance, France, to apprenticeship alongside Nall Hollis at the N.A.L.L. Art Association and then to Florence, Italy, to study with Andrea Spinelli, Glover received his M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art. The artist also received a one-month fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and was recognized by the Queen Museum of Art for the Queen Artist Registry. | |||||
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 Gelitin, the Austrian-based group of four collaborative artists, is participating in the group show "Das Hamsterrad" (the hamster wheel) this year at the Venice Biennale. For the exhibition, Gelitin built a wooden construction of embracing arches that tower in the gallery space. A smaller and slightly less complicated version of the structure was also presented this year with a performance called "Bunter Abend" at Deitch Projects in New York City. These are just a few of the projects that the group has accomplished this year. Others include "The Dig Cunt," a multi-day performance produced by Creative Time held on Coney Island, and "Das Kakabet," an exhibition with Galerie Nicola von Senger in Zurich. The artists have been exhibiting together internationally since 1993 and are currently represented by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris and Miami and Gagosian Gallery in London, among others. Gelitin was a previous DailyServing feature, included for their 200-foot-long and 20-foot-high pink bunny sculpture constructed in the hills of Artesina, Italy. | |||||
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 Currently on view at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle is "Dark Matters," new works by Rashid Johnson. The artist creates work through a variety of different media such as photography, video, sculpture and painting, all centered on ideas of race, identity and sexuality found in contemporary culture. For "Dark Matters," the artist is exhibiting the large-scale photographs of a nude white woman that hangs opposite a photo of a famous African-American physicist. Both photographs examine notions of identity, race and the art historical roles of portraiture, the female nude and the male gaze. Johnson is currently preparing for solo projects with the 404 Arte Contemporanea in Naples, Italy, as well as the Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, in which he is currently featured in a group exhibition, "How do I Look." The artist is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College, both in Chicago. Recently, Johnson was featured in "The Production of Escapism" at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and in the LISTE, The Young Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland. | |||||
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 In a current exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, world-renowned conceptual artist Chris Burden is presenting the new show "Yin Yang," which explores ideas inherent in the complementary principles of duality. The artist, who has a longstanding obsession with machines, motor vehicles and ready-mades, has chosen a 1973 Lotus Europa sports car and an International T6 crawler Bulldozer from his private collection to illustrate his ideas. The Lotus represents the perfect race machine -- light weight, fast, but completely impractical -- while the Bulldozer is a solid, heavy and otherwise unstoppable machine of duty. Burden will exhibit a series of photographs documenting the vehicles along with the machines themselves. The artist received his B.F.A. from the Pomona College at Claremont, Calif., and is a M.F.A. graduate of the University of California at Irvine. Burden first received international attention for his controversial performance in 1971 titled "Shoot," in which the artist instructed a friend to shoot him in the arm in a gallery full of people. The artist has since created numerous performances and conceptual projects exhibited inter |
