 Opening this weekend at the Richard Goodall Gallery in Manchester, UK will be a selection of posters, prints, paintings, drawings and etchings by Chicago-based artists Jay Ryan and Diana Sudyka. The two screen-print artists have been working in this medium since 1995, and own their own printing company The Bird Machine, in the Chicago area. Sudyka received her MFA from Northwestern University and currently works as a freelance illustrator and printmaker. Ryan's work incorporates children's book illustrations with hand drawn lettering. His designs have been used by The Flaming Lips, Sonic Youth and Stereo Lab among many others. His most ambitious project to date is "100 Posters, 134 Squirrels" which documents his artistic career over the past ten years. In regards to his work, Ryan has stated "One of the most important lessons I learned in school, from a teacher, was to lower my expectations of my work and be receptive to silliness, chance, and the development of a drawing in the process. Also, I think animals are funny." | |||
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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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 Opening later this month in Los Angeles will be new work by Mark Mothersbaugh, one of the founding members of the band DEVO. "Rugs During Wartime and Peacetime," are a collection of works that are to be presented by the Scion Installation L.A. Gallery, which investigate how we interact with illustrative imagery in our home and how it can be used for comfort rather than conceptualism. Mothersbaugh has been creating illustrative works since the late 1960's, and as Devo rose to global success, the artist suddenly found himself with an immense audience that could be reached through the band's films, videos, costumes, LP covers, stage shows, and printed materials. Over the years, the artist has developed two major series of work, "The Postcard Diaries" and "Beautiful Mutants," both of which have toured the US extensively. The artist now creates musical scores for movies, TV, and computer games at Mutato Muzika Studios and he still tours with Devo worldwide.
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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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 Blowing up on the rock-poster scene, Leia Bell is bringing a new show of posters and original paintings titled "The Business of Ferrets" to the Richard Goodall Gallery in London Sept. 29 - Oct. 25. After only seven years Bell has created 250 limited edition hand-printed silk-screened music posters for bands such as Echo and The Bunnymen, The Darkness, My Chemical Romance, and The Decemberists. Bell uses a camera to document people she knows at parties and shows. She later uses the photos as references simplifying the scene to something universal that anyone can relate to. The artist was recently featured in Print magazine's "20 Best Under 30" annual issue and Art of Modern Rock. Bell received her BFA in Print Making from University of Utah. | |||
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 Galerie Adler in New York will present new drawings, animations and an installation in "Paradox Parade," opening this Friday, featuring Icelandic artist Sigga Bjorg Sigurdardottir. The artist produces several anthropomorphic creatures existing in stark white environments that seem to walk the line between playful and grotesque. The illustrated creatures have a strange humanistic quality, often becoming menacing while simultaneously offering comic relief in their awkward and laughable stance. When describing her work the artist has stated, "My work is about what happens when someone does something to somebody or something happens to someone but sometimes someone is simply doing something or thinking something else." Sigurdardottir was born in Reykjavik, Iceland and currently lives and works Reykjavik and Glasgow, Scotland. The artist is an MFA graduate of The Glasgow School of Art and received her BFA from The Icelandic Academy of Art and Design. Sigurdardottir has already began an international career with exhibitions "Wrong House," with Washington Garcia Gallery in Glasgow, "Paracide Park," with Centre d'art et de diffusion Clark in Montreal, Canada, and a forth coming exhibition at Kunstverein Uelzen in Uelzen, Germany. The artist has been featured in LIST Icelandic Art News and received an artist award from The Woollen Glove, from The Icelandic Art Academy in 2006. | |||
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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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 Chris Dent is a 22-year-old British illustrator and artist who explores the energy of urban street culture through densely informative drawings of cityscapes. Dent often captures his imagery with pen directly on paper, preventing any reworking and allowing the first mark-making instinct to dominate. The artist recently graduated from Camberwell College of Arts in London with a degree in illustration. Since his graduation, the young artist has been busy working on commissioned illustrations for Zoo York, Capitol Records and Swindle Magazine, among many others, and has also co-founded HYBRID BUNNY, a collective group of illustrators and designers. Dent has exhibited his work with the Subway Gallery and Notting Hill Arts Club, both in London. | |||
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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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 Artist, illustrator and designer John Malloy was born in rural Pennsylvania and began drawing cartoons, rock stars and other related material at a very young age. The artist's interest eventually developed into graphic novels, comics and the contemporary arts. Malloy continues the illustrative tradition of rendering the narrative through figuration and text. The artist currently lives and works in Baltimore. This month, Malloy will be exhibiting at the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art (MoCCA) in New York City. Malloy's illustrations and designs have appeared in several national publications, such as Dazed & Confused and BPM. | |||
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 Artist Chris Johanson's brightly colored, socially saturated works offer a humorous light to current cultural and societal feelings. With the background of the artist rooted in contemporary culture rather than formal art training, Johanson is able to rely solely on his personal experiences and the collective experience of all Americans to explore absurdity and humor in contemporary life. The artist is a prolific creator and clearly prefers a steady stream of ideas to be completed over tedious long-term works. Johanson is a Bay Area artist who is often included in the "Mission School," a group of suburban-influenced creators, including Barry Mcgee and Margaret Kilgallen. Johanson was launched into art stardom after receiving the SECA Art Award from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA) and being included in 2002 Whitney Biennial. The following year, the artist completed an exhibition with the Deitch Projects in New York City titled "Now is Now" and was included in an exhibition at SITE Santa Fe. This year, the artist will exhibit "Apex: Chris Johanson" at the Portland Art Museum, and, in 2008, Johanson will exhibit again with the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco. | |||
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 Opening this month at DreamBagsJaguarShoes (MySpace) in London is an exhibition by the influential Bristol-based artist Mudwig Dans. Dans has developed a reputation as an innovative yet elusive underground artist. Infusing an aesthetic rooted in 20th-century propaganda posters, illustrations and animation, Dans daringly juxtaposes found photographic imagery with experimental computer-based alterations. The subversive images contained in the work reference forms often found in Disney and Dr. Suess animations. The hybrid forms adorn media, ranging from computer animations and billboard subversions to canvases and wall paintings. The artist has previously exhibited "Talking Walls" at Bristol's Arnolfini and has been included in the group show "Hollywood Remix" at the Wooster Collective Arts Space in New York City. Additional images of Dan's work can be found on kuidoosh.com. | |||
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 Israeli artist Yehudit Sasportas creates large drawings and room-sized installations that investigate dreamlike, generic landscapes that are combined with dense, repetitive lines. The images reference intense spaces that are universally familiar, yet non-specific, creating a context that all viewers can recognize. The lines create a space that depicts modernism through a mathematic, systematic method that contrasts the organic qualities of the landscapes. After her graduation from Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem (1999), Sasportas exhibited with Galerie Eigen + Art in Berlin (2004), the Barbara Davis Gallery in Houston (2001), Deitch Projects in New York and the Berkley Museum of Art in San Francisco (2002). Sasportas was featured with the Valencia Biennial in 2001, and her work was reviewed in an article in ArtForum in 2003. | |||
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 Creator of the Space Monkey, artist Dalek has made a name for himself in both the street art and gallery worlds for his unique style and character invention. Little information is given about these graphic creatures that greet us with one eye open and mouths agape. The characters are expressed with black humor, often engaging in mischief, while occupying a flat abstracted ground composed on only one or two colors. Dalek is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Virginia Commonwealth University. The artist has created limited-edition toys for Kid Robot, and, in 2005, he exhibited "The Way That I Want You To Die" with the Jonathan Le Vine Gallery in New York City and "Blood Bath" with Merry Karnowski Gallery in Los Angeles. Dalek has been featured on the popular graffiti Web site Art Crimes and has appeared in numerous magazines, such as Mass Appeal and Juxtapoz. | |||
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 Austin-based artist Jonathan Marshall creates large paintings and drawings that rely heavily on wit, working through color and design. These graphic images explore nature and the landscape through illustrative imagery, showing destruction through absurdity and humor. His success began shortly after his graduation from University of Texas at Austin (2003), and, in 2005 alone, Marshall received the best-in-show award for the Texas Biennial and a feature in New American Paintings. In 2006, he showed with Lawndale Art Center in Houston, plus Art Palace and Okay Mountain in Austin. | |||
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 Yoshitomo Nara is one of Japan's most well-known artists. His cartoon-like paintings, drawings and sculptures are deceptively simple, depicting children in a variety of activities who wear expressions of contempt. Nara's influences are derived from eastern and western pop culture, and the artist attended the Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts in Japan and Kunstakademie Dusseldorf in Germany. Now, Nara's imagery and illustrations can be found internationally on a variety of commercial products and in prominent galleries. In 2006, the artist exhibited with Stephen Friedman Gallery in London and the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art in Kanawawa, Japan. Nara has also exhibited in the U.S. with the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City and Blum and Poe in Los Angeles. In addition, Nara has produced several custom toys and published numerous books, including "Lullaby Supermarket" and "Over the Rainbow", both released in 2005. | |||
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 Illustrators and fine artists James Jean and Kenichi Hoshine have created an artist collaboration entitled Polite Winter. Through this project these artists have brought to life a graphic narrative throughout a series of paintings and collages. James Jean has been an illustrator for clients like the NY Times, Fables, ESPN, and Nike, and has created his own online store called Process/Recess. Kenichi Hoshine has shown work with Compound Gallery in Portland and Meathaus online.
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 Tattooed Portraits are a recent series of paintings by Shawn Barber. Each portrait is of a fellow artist and their tattoos. Barber currently lives and works in San Francisco and teaches at California College of Art, and the Academy of Art University. Tattooed Portraits will be published as an art book with 9mm Books, and will be exhibited for the first time at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco next March. | |||
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 Death From Below is the title of a new show by Toronto based artist Nicholas Di Genova. Fredericks & Freiser in NYC will be exhibiting 23 new ink paintings on mylar through Oct. 14th. The artist creates hybrid creatures that seem to rely heavily on a language of graphics and graffiti. Nicholas Di Genova graduated from the Ontario College of Art and Design and you can read more directly from the artist in an interview with Susurrus Magazine. | |||
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 Dave Cooper is a cartoonist/illustrator turned fine artist. He recently had some of his images on Futurama and released two graphic novels Ripple, Crumple, and Suckle. He also created a line of deluxe toys with the firm Critterbox Toys. | |||
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