Scoop Studios Contemporary Art is a new gallery venue in Charleston, South Carolina that focuses on providing exhibition opportunities for emerging Southeastern artists. Currently on view at Scoop is new works by Scott Debus in an exhibition simply titled UP. For the exhibition, Debus has created a new series of paintings that contain anthropomorphic forms which shift in between recognizable figures and pure abstraction. In the works, the artist often references super heros and religious icons, superimposing them with figures from his own life.

Debus is a co-creator of the bi-annual multi-disiplinary contemporary art event Kulture Klash and is the founder of the Bogard St. Gallery.

Come Hither Noise at Fremantle Art Centre in Perth, Australia is an exhibition of sound-based works, which aims to highlight connections between aural, spatial and visual perception. Curator Jasmin Stephens argues that media and even sensory distinctions are growing increasingly arbitrary in contemporary art. In this exhibition she presents a selection of works which are both noisy and resolutely visual, designed to heighten the audience’s experience of both senses. Come Hither Noise features visual artists working alongside composers, producing aural environments which encroach on the musical, but this is not easy listening.

Composer Thomas Meadowcroft‘s Monaro Eden references two icons of Australian culture: the Holden Monaro, an engine-heavy muscle car that subjugated the roadways from 1969 to 1982, and twentieth century artist Rosalie Gascoigne, specifically her 1989 work Monaro. Meadowcroft’s installation alludes to Gascoigne’s process of assemblage by sampling the revving engine of a Monaro and layering it with Sine tones, producing a humming aural landscape which the audience can navigate, when seated, by pressing foot pedals which alter the volume of the tones. The artist likens this process to “a Sunday drive” there is no great logic to it: some key musical destinations are dictated by the arrangement of the engine sounds but otherwise listeners are free to hear their own ways through the installation.

Richard Crow’s Imaginary Hospital Radio plays upon the ostensibly therapeutic role of the hospital radio station by injecting bloodless muzak with a form of medical waste the incidental soundscape of the body subjected to surgical technology. The accompanying image is from the archives of the Moorfields Eye Hospital where Crow was treated as a child. Imaginary Hospital Radio was broadcast on ABC Classic FM’s New Music Up Late on Saturday 29 August.

The exhibition also includes Mark Brown (Aus),John Conomos (Aus), Ross Manning (Aus), (Aus/GER), Elvis Richardson (Aus), Sam Smith (Aus), Sriwhana Spong (NZ).

Come Hither Noise is presented as part of the 9th Totally Huge New Music Festival in association with Tura New Music, 10-20 September 2009.

Puerto Rico-based artist Jason Mena appropriates popular marketing tools, such as billboard and aerial advertising, to influence the way we perceive our surroundings. Mena uses these communication platforms to promote new ideas and provoke critical thought by inserting carefully chosen text where a company’s logo or catch phrase is typically seen. In doing this, the artist draws our attention to our passive consumption of visual imagery generated by branding, and subverts this persuasion to consume.

During the 2008 Bacardi Artisan Fair, Mena arranged to have an airplane flying overhead and trailing a banner with the powerful text TODO ES MENTIRA, which translates to “it’s all lies.” The flight lasted approximately thirty minutes and took place over the Castano distillery in Puerto Rico where it was seen by a crowd of over 117,000 people. The somber tone of the banner is coupled with a certain ambiguity, allowing the viewer to attribute his/her own meaning. The artist has also used this phrase on billboards, thus challenging advertising’s imposition on our subconscious.

Mena was born in New York in 1974 and received his B.F.A. from the Escuela De Artes Plasticas De San Juan in Puerto Rico, where he currently lives and works. The artist has had a solo show at Sagrado Corazon University’s Salon de las Artes in Puerto Rico and was nominated for the Emerging Artists Brugal ARCO Madrid 09 Acquisition Award.

Curated by Filippo Trevisani, Stefano Arienti’s exhibition “Arte In-Percettibile” at the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (Septemebr 9, 2009 – January 6, 2010) is a survey of around 15 installation works, some of which were conceived specifically for this show. Arranged to establish a close relationship, and interaction between works and viewers, the exhibition mirrors the challenging process of research and experimentation that is typical of Arienti’s eclectic production. The artist’s work is characterized by the use of everyday materials found in our surroundings. In fact, wandering through the show, it is inevitable to detect the unexpected energy and charm of apparently simple and ordinary found objects. He certainly owes a lot to arte povera and its fascination with materials that are humble, impoverished, and often organic such as natural stone pebbles, glass pebbles, old magazines and newspapers. Placing a large emphasis on paper, Arieti transforms it, recycles it, plays with its texture, and analyzes its properties. Ignoring formal limitations, he takes paper, he cuts it, bends it, de-constructs it.

Through his meticulous manipulation of a variety of materials, Arienti confers the most common resources a poetic dimension, as well as exploring and questioning the art-making process and the manner in which art is intended and perceived. Arienti’s passion and obsession is to collect the most diverse materials and objects and create subtle and seductive treasures, deliberately investigating the relationship between art and life.

Stefano Arienti was born in Asola (Mantua) in 1961 and lives and works in Milan. He has been working with the contemporary art gallery Studio Guenzani in Milan since the end of the 1980s. Since then, he has shown his works extensively in Italy and internationally, in both group and solo shows. In 2005, a major retrospective of Arienti’s work was held at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. He has also been featured in the Milano Europa 2000 exhibition in 2000, the XLIV Venice Biennale in 1990, the Instanbul Biennale in 1992, and the Rome Quadrenniale in 1996.

Daniel Benayun‘s collages are like peculiar and whimsical, outsider-art, inside jokes. Layered atop obscure maps or vague and crinkled book pages, these postcards introduce a cast of mythical, and otherwise, characters along with an impressive postage stamp collection, through illustration and craft. The pieces are steeped with an endearing dose of what seems to be the recollection of a boyhood fascination with knights, sea life and European and early American history. Benayun’s work is currently on view in the group show, Artigeddon, at The Distillery Gallery in Boston. The exhibition consciously features the work of over twenty artists from Boston and elsewhere, all of whom are currently without gallery representation. Along with Benayun, the show will exhibit the work of Vanessa Irzyk, Kristen Mills, Josh Falk and Fish McGill, among many others.

Daniel Benayun is currently a student at the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. His work has been exhibited recently in a solo presentation at Sowa Gallery in Boston and at several other venues in Boston, MA and New Hampshire. As an illustrator, he has recently been commissioned by the New Hampshire Institute of Art and musician Shai Erlichman.

Currently on view at the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco is a new exhibition titled Terrestrial Syndrome, with new paintings by artists Kevin E. Taylor and Erik Otto. Taylor’s work features several different creatures engaging one another within a surrealistic landscape. While the work remains shrouded in mystery and coded with visual symbols, it is clear that the actions of the creatures are a metaphor for the uncertainty of our time. The creatures embody both human and animal characteristics, each empowered with a conscious and the ability to struggle both physically and intellectually with their surroundings.

Taylor is originally from Charleston, South Carolina and received his BFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design. His recent solo exhibition exhibitions include Posture at Swarm Gallery in Oakland, Animalitia at Anno Domini in San Jose and the artist has a forth coming exhibition with Cerasoli Gallery in Los Angeles.

Photo caption: Back to Black, 2008 HK Zamani

Opening September 11th is the inaugural exhibition, entitled On the Shoulders of Davids, at JAUS (pronounced “house”), a new gallery in West Los Angeles, run by artists Chris Tallon, Helen Geisler and Ichiro Irie. From the onset JAUS’ mission seems clear, albeit divergent from that of many new commercial spaces: to promote the work and so-called DIY culture of artists who have, or currently run, art spaces. In essence, JAUS seeks to celebrate the unique moment when “dealer” isn’t a singular role, but the dealer is also a working artist, showing his own work at various other spaces with artist’s vigor, and at the same time promoting the work of his art colleagues at his own space. JAUS also seems to have a hopeful streak in its mission, as it’s opening shop at a time when news of gallery closings is almost so prevalent that it isn’t really news in LA. As JAUS puts it, “Based on the assumption that art thrives in times of trouble [citing elsewhere the landmark opening and history-making of CBGB in New York City during the 1973 OPEC petroleum embargo], JAUS opens its doors to the public with an exhibition that celebrates artist run culture and the DIY ethos. The title of the show is a reference to the story of ‘David and Goliath'; that JAUS stands not on the shoulders of giants, but on the shoulders of artists who are/were willing to take on the big bad world [of art].”

The over thirty artists exhibited in On the Shoulders of Davids include: Mexico City-based Yoshua Okon, of La Panaderia; Matthew Furmanski and Monica Furmanksi, of 643 Project Space; the Los Angeles-based collective, Slanguage; Ronald Lopez, of Aden Art Center in Istanbul and many others.