Recently on view at Walter Maciel Gallery in Los Angeles was a solo exhibition of new work by San Francisco based artist James Buckhouse. Projected onto the large, white gallery wall, Buckhouse presented a computer controlled animated video entitled DAY FOR NIGHT, along with selected still images from the video on display, presented as C-prints.

Recalling the imagery of Cindy Sherman’s Untitled Film Stills, DAY FOR NIGHT is made up of a looping sequence of hand-drawn images in black and white that depict scenes of urban dwellers mid-sidewalk strut or coffee sip, in a similarly contradicting manner of casually-staged. Just as Sherman depicted herself through her photographs decades ago in the role of film siren or damsel in distress, seemingly caught in mid-action, Buckhouse’s drawings- compiled into the animation- depict a contemporary cast of youngurbanites as they drift through their lives of obscures plot lines around the world, mulling over mundane events and interacting with one another. Sometimes they partake in more exciting adventures like car chases orHitchcockian drives down dark, tree canopied country roads.

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Gedi Sibony‘s current exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis features frugally elegant sculptures made from a span of mundane materials. Wittily titled My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, this is Sibony’s first solo show in a museum. His tender brand of minimalism seems especially appropriate during an economic downturn; his work acknowledges the lyrical potential of things that are fairly unexceptional and gives them new cultural purpose (in W Magazine 2008 Art Issue, Sibony was quoted as saying of his materials, “I did something to these objects; they kept me company . . . I can’t help but look at them as something that reflects me”).

The museum’s chief curator, Anthony Huberman, who organized My Arms Are Tied Behind My Other Arms, expresses his excitement about Sibony’s work in the above video (he is equally excited in the handful of accompanying videos viewable on the museum’s youtube page).

Sibony, who received a BA from Brown University in 1995 and an MFA from Columbia in 2000, participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial and also appeared in last year’s Unmonumental at the New Museum. My Arms Are Tied continues through April 19th.

What would it look like if you compiled fleeting images from some of the most popular film moments onto a painted canvas? Artist Jim Gaylord shows the viewer this point of view in his solo exhibition Cliffhanger at the Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco. Moving away from the more collage-like paintings of his past, Gaylord’s latest work carefully marries his interest in film and the history of painting, and the result is a collaboration of recognizable imagery and colorful shapes in variety of painting techniques. Combining the brushwork of abstract impressionism with the psychological limbo of the Surrealists and the ambiguity of conceptual art, Gaylord’s paintings and prints reflect an artist who is informed of those who preceded him as well as by a vast popular culture which¬† surrounds him. Titling his work such things as Study (Braveheart + Jackass: the Movie + Cloverfield + Last of the Mohicans + Home Alone 2), Gaylord gives credit to his sources and influences as well as providing the viewer with an acute lens with which to understand his creative process. Among the eleven works on view at Gregory Lind Gallery, the most noteworthy is a set entitled Final Destination 00:15:11:22 and 00:15:22:07,¬† paintings highlighting a convergence between some sort of outer-space video game and a crude oil fire, evoking a feeling of playfulness and cultural despair.

Cliffhanger will be on view until March 14, 2009.

Currently on view at Locust Projects in Miami, FL are new sculptural collages by Canadian-born, Barcelona-based artist Michael Swaney. The exhibition, Safari Arc Performance, features artwork created during the Fountainhead Residency, in which the artist focused his material selection on found and recycled objects from Biscayne Bay. While Swaney is no stranger to creating work with recycled materials–often large collages–he did state, “I was quite taken aback at how disgustingly messy the bay’s shore was, and also grateful that I could build almost an entire installation on this basis.” Once displayed, the sculptures begin to act as artifacts that have been hypothetically unearthed to offer insight into the cultural rituals of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Swaney creates hilarious cultural connections within the work, negating any serious overtones that may have been present. The arrangement, which is built to mimic a museum display, is complete with its own faux-viewer and an over-sized styrofoam humidity control device. Other works on display culturally refer to Jar Jar Binks, Cheech, and Mr. Peanut. The exhibition successfully mixes humor with more serious issues of environmentalism, institutionalism of objects and cultural investigation past and present.

Swaney is represented by Iguapop Gallery in Barcelona, Atelier Gallery in Vancouver and Katharine Mulherin Contemporary Art Projects in Toronto. The artist has an upcoming exhibition with the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco in April.

Safari Arc Performance will be on view at Locust Projects through February 28th, 2009.

Currently on view at DRKRM Gallery in Los Angeles is a solo show of work by prolific New York documentary photographer Joseph Rodriguez. The exhibition, entitled Flesh Life: Sex in Mexico City, features photos from Rodriguez’s eponymous book, marking first time the photographs have been exhibited in Los Angeles. Flesh Life: Sex in Mexico City chronicles the lives of sex workers of every gender and sexual affiliation, through a striking series of 25 black and white photographs, and confronts the contradictions of the world’s oldest profession in a country where extramarital sex is both wily rampant and considered a mortal sin; where desires of the flesh and religious dogma are equally revered.

Joseph Rodriguez is a documentary photographer of over 20 years, with degrees from the International Center of Photography, New York; New York City Technical College; and School of Visual Arts, New York. He is represented by Bill Charles, New York. Rodriguez’s work has been exhibited internationally, including the African American Museum, Philadelphia; NYU Tisch School of the Arts, New York; Galleri Kontrast, Stockholm, Sweden; and Fototeca, Havana, Cuba.

Flesh Life: Sex in Mexico City is on view from February 14 – March 15, 2009.

Justin Cooper is predominantly known for his off-the-wall performances that psychologically challenge both the players’ and viewers’ endurance, as in his first solo show at Monique Meloche gallery in 2006 or more recently during Art Basel Miami in-and-around the pool at the National Hotel in South Beach. However, a long-standing interest in sculpture and drawing has pervaded Cooper’s performances often resulting in dimensional objects that balance between the natural and the manmade. For his 2008 solo show THREAD in Gallery 400 at the University of Illinois Chicago, Cooper used 1 mile of garden hose to create a site-specific installation that functioned as both a drawing in space as well as a set for opening and closing performances. In Paranormaldise, now on view at Monique Meloche gallery in Chicago, Cooper presents a series of sculptures manipulating mostly ready-made materials from familiar places like Home Depot or the Party Store. As the artist states, his new sculptures spring Athena-esque from a cubicle-constructed notion that investigates the delicate line between vacation and hallucination.

Also on view in the project space is Cooper’s 2007 video Studio Visit, about the difficulties sometimes involved with art-making, accompanied by a suite of related drawings.

Justin Cooper graduated in 2005 from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago with an MFA in sculpture, performance, and video. He received his BFA from the University of Colorado in 2003 and studied at the Sorbonne, Paris in 2002. Cooper has performed and exhibited in cities worldwide including Hong Kong, Berlin, Rio de Janeiro, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, London, Los Angeles, Mexico and Sweden. His work was recently reviewed by Susan Snodgrass in the September 2008 issue of Art in America. He had a summer residency at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine 2007 and this summer he will be a Resident Artist at the Djerassi Program in Woodside, CA. Cooper currently teaches at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Green Cardamom in London and The Third Line, a contemporary Middle Eastern art gallery in Dubai, are presenting Lines of Control, a series of exhibitions taking place in Dubai, Karachi, and London. The series is part of a project begun in 2007 by Green Cardamom which investigates the chaos and creativity present at certain national boundaries. This year, 2007, marked the 60th anniversary of the independence of India and the creation of Pakistan as well as the establishment of Israel from British controlled Palestine. These areas of partitioning expose the human impulse to define borders and set up alterities, but also provide fertile territories for the development of new cultural and intellectual projects. Lines of Control is about commemorating the past as well as recognizing the current hybridized life in partitioned times.

Artists from the Middle East and Asia are participating in the exhibitions, including Muhammad Zeeshan, Bani Abidi, and Sophie Ernst (an artist working in Pakistan whose Dying Gauls, a projection on a plaster cast from 2006 is seen above). The program includes exhibitions, discussions, films, and a publication. Lines of Control has traveled from Dubai to Karachi and will be opening at Green Cardamom in London on February 18th. The exhibition closes on March 29th.