On May 10th, Cerasoli Gallery will open separate exhibitions by two artists working in different media: Andy J. Simmons' photography exhibition Visions of Europe and collage artist Joshua Krause's Convince Me I'm on Fire will be shown in two gallery spaces.

In Gallery One will be the work of Andy J. Simmons. Born in South East London, Simmons grew up learning to take photographs and to skateboard. Both of these interests are reflected in his photographs as well as other subcultural rituals. He works with Polaroid film and plastic cameras to capture stills as equally simplistic as his machinery and presents the images in an honest and straight forward documentary style. Each photograph is uncluttered and exudes a clean sense of beauty. Simmons refers to Transworld Videos and Slap Magazine as his major influences.

In Gallery Two is the collage work of Joshua Krause who works with acrylic, enamel, and resin on natural or painted wood. Krause relies on dreams and the unconscious to guide him through his artistic production. In his works, the foreground is an ornate organic pattern composed of white dots from which partial faces emerge in patches. Krause is primarily self-taught and currently lives and works in San Diego, California. His extensive client list includes the New York Times, Option Snowboards, Escapist Skateboarding, and Loud + Clear Records.

Visions of Europe and Convince Me I'm on Fire will remain at Cerasoli Gallery in Los Angeles until June 7, 2008.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Galerie Michael Janssen is currently showing a three person exhibition titled Heaven, Hollywood, and Hitchcock until June 14th. Tom Allen, Kristian Burford, and Christoph Steinmeyer are all interested in mixing motifs and media culled from the history of film and European painting traditions.

Los Angeles-based artist Tom Allen references works from the German Romanticist and European Baroque traditions of painting and then transforms this imagery into fantastical worlds. He uses reproductions from the history of painting and obscures them into visual landscapes, maintaining some reference to the original imagery. Allen has previously exhibited at Richard Telles Fine Art in L.A. and Andrea Rosen Gallery in New York.

Los Angeles-based artist Kristian Burford, whose installation Christopher is seen above, mixes hyper-real sculpture and filmic backdrops to create compelling installations. Christopher depicts a naked man (made of wax) lying on a disheveled bed with his hand dangling over the edge as his fingers graze a glass of water, referencing the popular tale that if you fall asleep with your hand in tepid water, you will wet the bed. Burford has shown her work at I-20 Gallery in New York and at The Happy Lion in L.A.

Berlin-based artist Christoph Steinmeyer also combines motifs from European painting traditions with film qualities. After selecting his motifs, Steinmeyer uses a multiple transformation process to morph the image, thereby alienating the original motif. For example, Hitchcock's film The Paradine Case provided the the basis for his new large format painting Maddalena, which is included in this exhibition. He has previously shown at Galleri K in Oslo and Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York.

Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC is opening a new exhibition today titled The Constructed Image. The show features five contemporary photographers whose work challenges the very nature of truth as documented by the photograph. Through a variety of techniques, including digital and traditional photographic manipulation, set constructions, temporary sculpture, models and intricate dioramas, the artists create a very calculated visual experience. The exhibition includes works by artists Luis Gispert, Lori Nix, Daniel Gordon, Chris Scarborough and Nathan Baker, and will be on view through June 7th. Please read below for details on the exhibition and the artists.

Currently on view at Bellwether in New York City is a self-titled solo exhibition by the photographer, Anne Hardy. The British born photographer constructs elaborate sets inside her London studio and shoots them in a medium-format camera with a wide-angle lens. Hardy's installation process can take months to execute. She begins with simple objects and ideas, instigating and encouraging her process to take over the project. The ambiguous rooms that she creates oftentimes suggest the presence of her own hand or that of an abandoned human space or situation. Her use of man-made objects comment on the western world of commerce and humanity's impact on environment. At Bellwether, Hardy exhibits five recent photographs which reveal a caliginous palette of derelict spaces and circumstances. Hardy attended the Royal College of Art where she received an MA in Photography and has since exhibited widely, both internationally and domestically, including the 2008 Armory Show and the Saatchi Gallery. Her photograph, Outpost, is on view at the Martian Museum of Terrestrial Art at the Barbican Gallery in London.

Cathy Akers' current show at Honor Fraser Gallery in Los Angeles takes on a big issue: the history of the human race. Akers' dioramas depict Adam and Eve like figures in surroundings that resemble Eden. Yet the world depicted in Akers' exhibition, titled Hertopia: An Illustrated History of the New World, is more delinquent than it is idyllic.

This is Akers first solo exhibition since graduating from the MFA program at California Institute of the Arts in 2006. Prior to now, she's exhibited in group shows, like (Tender) Assembly at the Show Cave and a Juried Exhibition at the Torrance Art Museum. Interested in the large-scale dilemmas of evolution and human nature, Akers wants to push the envelope where ideas of utopia and "natural" human interactions are concerned. In 2007, she made a sculptural cake called "Natural Selection." Gallery visitors ate away at the cake, naturally selecting parts of the edible world Akers had created. In Hertopia, Akers' utopias are childishly hellish. She at once captures the jubilance associated with lush, green terrain and uninhibited nakedness and the brutality of human beings. The lack of inhibition in her sculptures leads to a disconcerting world in which characters pursue their desires both to their own benefit and detriment. Hertopia will be on exhibit through May 17th.

Recent MFA grad, Patrick Jackson has quickly made himself known in the LA art world. He initially studied at San Francisco Art Institute and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture before finishing up his graduate work in 2007 at the University of Southern California. He's a recipient of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship, an enviable honor for a young artist, and he also participated in the annual LA Weekly Track 16 exhibition in 2006 and has participated in residencies at the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation in New York.

The exhibition at Chung King Projects, titled City Unborn, gestures toward a sort of cityscape that has no actual semblance to reality. Jackson uses fiberboard, glass, cement, and car paint to create his unborn city, emphasizing the materiality, not the referentiality, of his installation. City Unborn opened with a May 3rd a reception in LA's Chinatown. It continues through June 7, 2008.

Polka dots aren't typically transcendental. They aren't autonomous and they aren't monumental. Yet in Evan Holloway's current exhibition, Project Series 35 at the Pomona College Museum of Art, polka dots take on some serious questions. Read below for the full article by Catherine Wagley.