Image courtesy of the artist and Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, NY

Rosemarie Fiore is drawing with fireworks, low explosive pyrotechnic devices such as color smoke bombs, jumping jacks, monster balls, and ground blooms, to name a few. The artist recently exhibited several of these large scale works on paper in a solo show at Priska C. Juschka Fine Art in New York. The artist’s incendiary process of exploding and containing live fireworks over paper reveals her remarkable aesthetic control over the combustible material. Photographs of this process recall Hans Namuth‘s photographs of Jackson Pollock slinging industrial paint onto canvas and the indelible images of Richard Serra hurling molten lead against the walls of his studio.

Image courtesy of the artist and Priska C. Juschka Fine Art, NY

Fiore ignites her chosen explosive inside a bucket or other container, which is inverted on the paper. The explosions create strokes and sunbursts of vibrant pigments, including magenta, ochre, rust, and copper, all varying in saturation and intensity. Gunpowder marks and sooty burnt surfaces provide visible traces of the detonation. Fiore overlaps and collages the best effects on large sheets of the same paper, repeating these actions a number of times. The final works are heavy and contain multiple layers of collaged explosions, resulting in abstract compositions and fields of color described by Robert Schuster of the Village Voice as “op art visions of the cosmos.”

Fiore has often worked out of action, considering each process a performance and documenting it by video and photograph. She has used repurposed machines and has previously painted and drawn with a modified floor polisher, a windshield wiper, and a Scrambler (the multi-armed amusement park ride). She received her B.A. from the University of Virginia in 1994 and her M.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 1999 and has also shown at the Gallery Bar and the Winkleman Gallery in New York.

Chelsea’s Black & White Gallery presents its latest group exhibition, Commune, curated by Dominique Nahas. The name deliberately refers to the various meanings and usages of the word “commune.” Nahas draws attention to the crucial role of the art community within society. The show itself emphasizes this importance by choosing to include works that are considered not to be expensive, making the artwork accessible to the greater community. This choice addresses the role of contemporary art itself in the midst of a struggling economy. The exhibition effectively presents ideas about artistic community and responsibility through the work of 24 international artists. Among the work is Chitra Ganesh‘s digital collage, Her Shimmer Pulse, 2008, which draws on both cultural and religious aspects of Hinduism. While, Oliver Lutz‘s video, Ascender, 2006, addresses the idea of the individual as a part or apart from their environment. With differing approaches, these artists draw on their community and surroundings to produce such work.

Dominique Nahas is both an independent curator and critic based in NYC. He is a professor at Pratt Institute and has contributed to publications such as Art in America and d’Art International.

David Spriggs‘ atmospheric installations, such as Axis of Power, above, inhabit both the two-dimensional and the three-dimensional realm, challenging the viewer’s concept of space. The piece, which was commissioned and produced by this year’s Sharjah Biennial, is “like a scientific specimen, the power of nature appears to have been captured, isolated, and objectified within the confines of the room’s architectural space,” as captioned at the installation in Sharjah. Initially, the spiraling forms recall the eye of a hurricane or other meteorological phenomena. As the viewer walks around Axis of Power, the intriguing and methodical manner in which it was constructed is revealed.

Axis of Power consists of several sheets of transparent plastic film that have been marked with white acrylic. These sheets are then installed in precise spatial increments with aluminum tee bars and springs, creating multiple image planes. The logic dictating the placement and hanging of the sheets contrasts with the organic and ethereal nature of the work. The resulting combination is at once chaotic and controlled.

Spriggs is influenced by Futurism and Cubism, as well as digital art and cinema. He received his B.F.A. from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and his M.F.A. from Concordia University in Montreal, where he currently lives and works.

Christian Maychack has returned to Jeff Bailey Gallery in New York City this month to present a new group of sculptures in an exhibition titled Host. The Brooklyn-based artist has created seven unassuming new works, all of which rely on the organic structure of tree limbs and branches as a central form to expand upon. In a departure from previous works, which typically feature manipulated anthropomorphic forms that depend on man-made architectural structures for their existence, these new works build upon existing organic structures, adding an obvious man-made quality that is dependent on an organic form. However, upon further inspection, the work contains the same level of craftsmanship and obsessive construction as the artist’s previous materially oriented works. Host mines the natural and cultural connections that are often overlooked by man, making a point to highlight that these two elements are intimately connected. These works become a meditation on form, both natural and artificial, providing a new language to understand the constant control, manipulation and systemization of man in connection to nature.

Maychack is a graduate of San Francisco State University, and recently completed the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture artist residency. He has completed recently solo exhibition with Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco, and Sirius Art Center in Cobh, Ireland.

Photographer, Lori Nix, is currently presenting new work from her ongoing series The City, in a three person exhibition at G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle. The exhibition, titled View Master, presents her work, along with Grace Weston and Jonah Samson. All of the artists in the exhibition make use of intricately fabricated, three dimensional sets to construct an entirely new reality. In the spare bedroom of her Brooklyn apartment, Nix builds these highly realistic dioramas, which explore urban environments devoid of human presence, often reclaimed by nature. For View Master, Nix will present three of her latest works, Church, Laundromat, and Botanical Garden. Each image continues to playfully blur the line between truth and illusion, calling into question the authenticity of the documented image in contemporary society.

Nix has exhibited her photographs nationally, including recent exhibitions with NAB Gallery in Chicago, Randall Scott Gallery in Washington D.C., Jenkins Johnson Gallery in New York City and Stephen Cohan Gallery in Los Angeles.

Currently on view at Marvelli Gallery in New York City is the exhibition Palomar: Experimental Photography. The exhibition contains photographic works by 6 artists including, Phil Chang, Talia Chetrit, Nancy de Holl, Tamar Halpern, Mariah Robertson, and Asha Schechter. While the exhibition is incredibly diverse in the varying techniques, approaches, sizes and formats employed by each artist, the work is all united by a soft-spoken conceptualism that defies the often overly glossy, high production images that we are accustomed to viewing by both commercial and artistic sources. Many of the works in the show are created through an ink-jet or digital c-print process, while other works are created though the re-photographing of existing imagery or by darkroom manipulation processes, such as solarization, ambrotype, photograms, and multiple exposures. While the work is seemingly compelled by formal concerns, upon further inspection, one notices that it is a new type of conceptualism that is driving many of the artist’s decisions, resulting in work that is as visually seductive as it is smart.

The Fruitmarket Gallery in Edinburgh is currently showing, Buried, a solo exhibition featuring new and recent video and photographic work by artist Willie Doherty in conjunction with the release of a new publication by the same name. Doherty, who was born and raised in Derry, Northern Ireland, addresses his homeland’s struggle to come to terms with its haunting past of violence and loss. His work has universal resonance in its focus upon a site of contested nationality, the human capacity for violence, and the collective memory of such legacies.

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