Opening this evening at the Scion Installation L.A. space in Culver City is the exhibition Fairytale of Berlin, curated by Janine Bean and Matthias Bergeman, of the Janine Bean Gallery in Berlin. The exhibition surveys the work of 11 artists and one artist group. Each participant critically engages Berlin as an active site, loaded with a variety of creative sub-cultural intersections. The included artists employ different techniques and methods within a wide range of media including painting, sculpture, installation, drawings, and photographs. The exhibition will be on view through February 7, 2009. Look out for an upcoming interview and further images of Scion‘s Fairytale of Berlin on DailyServing.com.

Herve Graumann constructs dizzying, modern day vanitas still lives from kitsch, throwaway souvenirs of our plastic culture. The works both valorize and disdain the role of the object in modern day culture. Like schools of fish joining together to create the impression of a much larger- and more powerful- entity, the multiplicity of Graumann’s constructions aggrandize and impress. They are at once thrones to commodity culture and disdainful commentary on the never ending supply of useless consumer goods.

Graumann notes, “think my ‘inspiration’ started when I took the ‘computer’ as a model. It was in the 80’s, and it was quite a new subject to observe and to think about at that time: the nature of it, of what was on or under the screen and how to manage it. The act of ‘saving’ an image, to be able to modify or duplicate datas… The size of images mentioned in ‘weight’ and not only in the traditional dimensions, the color depth of an image, the compression, the format… Inspiration is linked to the environment, in dialectic with the world you live in, and this world started to change radically with the use of computers. Our everyday life has been modified since and we can clearly see today how it changed our reality and the way we deal with. It was the revolution we had in front of our eyes.”

Wholly relevant in today’s seeming rising tensions between the analog and digital, Graumann’s works reference and flit between technological language’s from binary patterns and information systems, reinserting a kind of aesthetic beauty and harmony within these seemingly anti-humanistic vessels.

Herve Graumann is currently represented by Galerie Guy Bartschi in Geneva and Nettie Horn Gallery in London.

Bejing-based Yue Minjun is one of the most important artists of the Chinese avant garde. Part of the Chinese avant garde movement, Cynical Realism, Yue Minjun’s work is characterized by a signature laughing figure which serves as a portrait of the artist. Upon greater inspection the smiling faces contain fear, animosity, and a sense of discomfort that is a product of facing reality in contemporary times. After working as an electrician, Yue Minjun studied painting from Hebei Normal University. In 1999 he was included in the Venice Biennale and in 2000 exhibited with Chinese Contemporary, London. In 2004 the artist was included in both the Gwangju Biennale, Korea, and Shanghai Biennale in China. Yue Minjun currently lives and works in Beijing, China.

Ryan Brennan‘s work typically presents multi-faceted collage sculptures that layer evocative materials–whether home videos from his youth, personal memorabilia from his parent’s basement, items culled from thrift stores, and iconic or diaristic personal symbols, such as boom box radios, string, video game parts, or baroque ornamentation. Brennan reassembles these mementos in an organic and free-spirited fashion, recontextualizing their unique histories to create beautiful realms of imagination and possibility. Appearing as memories beautifully quilted together through a sensitive and poetic intuition, Brennan’s works “offer a gateway… into the idealistic, creative mindset of the child that exists inside of each of us.”

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Massimo Audiello Gallery in New York is currently presenting Alison Brady‘s second solo show, An Uncertain Nature, until February 28th. Brady received an M.F.A. in Photography, Video, and Related Media from The School of the Visual Arts in New York City. She works in series of color photographs that investigate subconscious desires and trigger emotional and sexual responses.

Brady creates compelling scenarios in domestic interiors by inserting some mysterious or troubling elements. Her subjects, both strangers and friends, often have their identities obscured by bizarre set pieces, creating images that are at once alluring and repellant. The artist states that she attempts “to create dichotomies between the sensual and the horrific, the beautiful and the destructive.” She has previously been featured on DailyServing for her exhibition at the Foundation Center of Photography in Poland last summer.

Amy Bennett‘s newest work captures viewers with cinematic scenes marked by stark contrasts. Reflective symmetry, gestural figures and overcast skies portend any number of human misfortunes. Past first glance, her acute realism reveals that she studies more still-lifes than she paints en plein air. Her crisp lines and angular brush strokes depict the multifaceted surfaces of a 13 x 3′ styrofoam and resin model of lakefront property she constructed in order to complete her recent work.

Bennett constantly reminds us that the emergence of a painting’s meaning is often tied to the artist’s process. Fabricated landscapes are flawlessly painted, accented with miniature figures gesticulating near the surface of a New England lakeside. Keen observation and technical ability help Bennett direct the viewer to explore themes like loss, solitude, and aging. Bennett also invites the viewer into her world, where protagonist often becomes narrator. In the end, we are trapped beneath a smooth, shiny, seal of lacquer that covers each painting and encapsulates the unfolding events in time.

The young artist’s professional career is an impressive, ten year, time-line dotted with multiple group and solo exhibitions, prestigious awards, and many high honor degrees. She uses a realistic approach to representation, likely influenced by her training at the New York Academy of Art, where she received her MFA in 2002. Bennett displayed her infatuation with fictional constructions early in her career, as witnessed last year at exhibitions Buried at Galleri Magnus Karlsson, Stockholm, Sweden, 2007, and Size Matters: XS at Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, Peekskill, NY, 2007. Her recent series, At The Lake, opened at the Richard Heller Gallery in Los Angeles on January 10th and runs through February 14th. In fall, the show will travel to the Tomio Koyama Gallery in Tokyo.

Artist Mark Mulroney opened his third exhibition with Mixed Greens in New York City this weekend, titled Follow the Nosebleeds. For this exhibition the artist uses a variety of media such as drawing, paintings, sound and sculpture to examine stories of traditional American life. Seeming disconnected memories of the artist synthesis into a variety of irreverent religious imagery and references of contemporary american culture. The artist transforms the space at Mixed Greens to be a intimate space loaded with absurd and humorous works.

Mulroney is a graduate of The University of California at Santa Barbara. Previous solo exhibitions have taken place at Gregory Lind Gallery in San Francisco, Richard Heller in Los Angeles and The San Diego Museum of Contemporary Art. The artist has also participated in countless group exhibitions including works at OKOK Gallery in Seattle and RAID Projects in Los Angeles.