Recently on view at Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in in New York City were the photographs of artist Hannah Starkey. The artist’s photographs are created using actors shot on site within select locations. She reconstructs scenes from everyday life, investigating women engaged in routines of shopping, sitting in cafes, or simply conversing. The photographs reflect a detachment from emotions and a surge into inner contemplation as it renders the relatively insignificant moments of our lives. Through the carefully staging of each scene, the artist is also able to heighten and manipulate the sense of voyeurism in each photograph.

Starkey was born in Belfast and currently lives and works in London. She attended Napier University in Edinburgh and the Royal College of Art in London, receiving degrees in photography from both institutions. The artist has exhibited with Maureen Paley in London (2007), Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York (2006), Lisboa Photo (2005) and the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin (2000).

Minnesota-based artist Jennifer Davis paints a world of folkloric fantasy reminiscent of childhood reverie. Her storybook depictions of animal-like children, whimsical trees, and candy-colored creatures may at first glance seem sublimely playful, but a look beneath the beautifully delicate exterior unveils a narrative deeply seated in emotion. This tension between the illusory and reality hints at the darkness within Davis’s work, but her use of pastel colors mixed with peculiar imagery strikes a balance between sweet and melancholy.

Davis uses acrylic and graphite on panel or paper to create ethereal people, plants, and animals. She continually layers, strips, and reapplies her media. This process adds to the surreal quality of her work, as ghostly images subtly appear behind a smooth surface. The result is an imaginary world established through the combination of vivid descriptions and fanciful colors.

Jennifer Davis attended the University of Minnesota where she received her Bachelors of Fine Arts Degree in 1998. The Cerasoli Gallery in Los Angeles, CA and the Walker Contemporary in Boston, MA housed her two most recent solo exhibitions this past June.

After Color is a new exhibition which opened this week at Bose Pacia Gallery in New York City. The exhibition, which is curated by Amani Olu, examines artists that utilize black and white photography as a conceptual tool for an ongoing series of works.

In a time where large-scale color photography dominates both contemporary art and contemporary life, After Color takes a step back from the slickness that we are accustomed to in order to examine new meaning being developed in the arena of black and white photography. The result is a collection of surprisingly bold and graphic photographic imagery that makes use of the digital tools of today, while not neglecting the darkroom process from which the media was originally built.

The exhibitions artists include Michael Buhler-Rose, Talia Chetrit, Matthew Gamber, Stephen Gill, Adrien Missika, Pushpamala N, Arthur Ou, Noel Rodo-Vankeulen and Michael Vahrenwald, whose work is shown above.

After Color will be on view through August 21st, 2009.

Sharks, Lions and Ships is the title of a new exhibition by artist Jacob Dahlgren, currently on view at Steven Wolf Fine Arts in San Francisco, California. Dahlgren is a Swedish Artist that participated in the 2007 Venice Biennale, and is a 2009 artist in residence at the Headlands Center for the Arts. The work in Sharks, Lions and Ships is based on two previous performances that the artist conducted consisting of a demonstration march featuring around 30 people each carrying signs bearing abstract paintings by Swedish artist Olle Baertling. The performance first took place in Stockholm in 2007, and most recently in the hills of Marin County during the artist’s residency at the Headlands.

Exhibiting simultaneously in the project room of Steven Wolf Fine Arts is Tomorrow, a new curatorial project by San Francisco-based artist James Tantum. For this project, Tantum asked 40 artist to produce a single work based around the word Tomorrow, to be placed in an 11″ x 14″ box. Forty-five boxes were produced each containing a wide range of media and vast response to the word. Forty of the boxes will be given to each participating artist and 5 will be available for the purchase by the public.

Courtesy of Jennifer Nehrbass and Mark Moore Gallery

Opening this weekend at Mark Moore Gallery in Santa Monica is a solo presentation of Jennifer Nehrbass‘ new paintings. The exhibition, entitled Weep and Wonder, is Nehrbass’ second solo show at Mark Moore and will be on view in the gallery’s Project Room through August 15th. While Nehrbass maintains her tradition of painting portraits of women in reflection for this new body of work, which the gallery is calling “cameos”, she has diverged from her former style of including a context for the sitting women in their quiet moments. In her 2007 debut solo exhibition at Mark Moore, Nehrbass presented viewers with snapshots of women that seemed to be a part of a larger narrative, as if looking at each piece long enough might let you see the next scene play out. The seven new paintings that will make up Weep and Wonder, however, portray awkwardly cropped busts and profiles of women with nothing more to give the viewer a frame of reference than a block of sunset above a coiffure or a hazy patch of snowy landscape over a shoulder. In this way, the viewer will be confronted more abruptly with the lady on display and forced to reconcile the uncomfortable yawn-face or sorrowful gaze as seen in a particularly voyeuristic manner.

Jennifer Nehrbass lives and works in Albuquerque, New Mexico. She received her MA from New York University and her MFA from the University of New Mexico. She has exhibited her work extensively in her home state of New Mexico, as well as frequently showing in New York and Los Angeles. She has also been included in group shows throughout Europe. Jennifer Nehrbass lives and works in Albuquerque, NM.

Seattle’s Crawl Space has welcomed artist Derek Larson as this year’s Studio Intensive Residency Artist. Larson has created a new exhibition titled Liquid Crystal, which will be on view through July 12th. The Seattle-born, Vermont-based artist was locked in to the Crawl Space for a week-long residency to produce an entirely new body of work. However, Larson had some help as he welcomed participants to visit the gallery during the residency and contribute “culturally nostalgic objects” for the purpose of investigating “the effects internet mediation has on the emotional resonance of these artifacts.” The artist is questioning the authenticity and meaning of pre-internet objects that maintain a physical presence as opposed to that of a digital presence. Objects such as photos, records and video all qualify as useful objects for his investigation.

The artist is a 2007 graduate of the Yale School of Art. He has recently exhibited Yesterday’s Code at Jack the Pelican Presents in Brooklyn, NY.

Currently on view at San Francisco’s Ratio 3 gallery is a new exhibition titled Safe Word. The collection of works explores the operation of Kink.com, the gallery’s neighbors located on the corner of 14th and Mission Street. Housed within the 200,000 square-foot San Francisco National Guard Armory and Arsenal space, Kink.com produces and publishes a massive collection of online BDSM (Bondage and Discipline, Sadism and Masochism) videos. Ratio 3’s Chris Perez invited 5 artists to create new work utilizing the content of Kink.com as an “image source and a site for personal investigation.” The resulting work from artists Danny Keith, Amanda Kirkhuff, Takeshi Murata, Francine Spiegel, and Anthony Viti span many media including painting, video and wall drawings. Each artist reflectively explores the intensely erotic and disturbing content of Kink.com, creating a surprisingly sincere collection of works.

Artist Danny Keith, whose work is pictured above, has created a series of four oil paintings which explore one of Kink.com’s video categories, Naked Kombat. Utilizing video stills as source material, Keith creates anthropomorphic figure paintings that marry two fighters into a singular form.

Artist Amanda Kirkhuff created two graphite drawings featuring full frontal female nudity that has been broken down through pixelation. This method of pixel-based rendering slightly masks the graphic quality of her subject while subtly referencing the image’s digital make-up.

Safe Word will be on view through August 8th, 2009.