Currently on view at Black & White Gallery in Chelsea, NYC is a new series of constructed photographs titled Shanghai At Last, by the artist Isidro Blasco. The exhibition is conceptually built around the physical space and architecture of Shanghai and and is presented in impressive sculpture / relief-like constructions where the collaged photographs sit directly on top of a wood armature. About the exhibition, the artist has stated, “Every city has a different impact on my work. I try to respond to the way the city is affecting me through the way I respond to the space that I inhabit. By doing so, I connect my experience as an outsider who walks the streets and interacts with the city with my more intimate feelings about closed and private spaces”.

Isidro Blasco was born in 1962 and currently lives and works in New York City. The artist recently exhibited The Truth at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, in Sheboygan, WI, La Construccion del Paisaje Contemporaneo at the Centro de Arte y Naturaleza in Huesca, Spain, and Substance and Light: Ten Sculptors Use Cameras at the Museum of Art, Munson-Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, NY.

British artist Lucy Williams redefines the idea of collage. Her detailed, low-relief work focuses on mid-20th century Modernist architecture and involves the careful layering of materials such as card, Perspex, fabric, thread and pillow stuffing. Each material is layered precisely by the artist to illustrate railings, lamp cords and other structural elements. In an interview with Wallpaper Magazine Williams said she sees her vacant images as spaces to be inhabited. “The era was about belief, ideas that we now no longer hold, of social cohesion through the design of a building, Utopian dreams long dissipated,” Williams says in her interview. She recently had her first solo exhibition in London Beneath a Woolen Sky, at the Timothy Taylor Gallery. Williams has also exhibited with the McKee Gallery in New York in 2004 and 2006. She has her B.A. in fine art from the Glasgow School of Art and her postgraduate diploma in Fine Art and Painting from the Royal Academy.

I don’t usually get hung up on press releases, but there’s one phrase from the release for Daniel DeSure‘s current exhibition that I can’t forget: “things we use to soften the blow.” DeSure’s work is described as an understated, non-reactionary response to the fact that blows are a given. Things inevitably go wrong; technologies malfunction, people disagree, cars crash, natural disasters strike. But what if we stop worrying about the inevitable blows, asks DeSure? What if we accept malfunction and disaster and focus on living instead of preventing? He’s not the first to ask questions like these, but there’s something surprisingly relevant about the way in which he asks.

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The all new Cerasoli:LeBasse Gallery in Culver City, California is celebrating the newly formed partnership with their first gallery opening together, Blender, new works from Vincent Hui, Melissa Haslam, Ryuichi Ogino, Deth P Sun, and Mari Inukai in Gallery 1 and Jennifer Davis and Suzanne Sattler in Gallery 2.

The selection of emerging international artists coming from Japan, China and Australia are all influenced by the various cultures of Asia and reflect that influence in their paintings and drawings. While these artists demonstrate a vast approach to their craft, certain aesthetic continuities begin to emerge when viewed as a group. Each artist has a slight touch of illustrative qualities inherent in their work, and each subtly attempts to bridge the cultural divide between the East and the West.

Suzanne Sattler, whose work is pictured above, is a graduate of Hartford Art School, and has worked as a professional printmaker with several famous artists such as Andrea Zittel and Louise Bourgeois. She has recently left the print world to pursue her own artistic career. Sattler lives and works in New York City.

On exhibition until November at San Francisco’s Mission District-based gallery, Triple Base, are Jay Nelson’s latest works. Titled Temporary Autonomous Zone, Nelson captures his journey for “self” through an array of paintings, drawings, and sculptural devices. Working mostly with landscapes, Nelson’s body of work is comprised of gauche, watercolor, graphite, and oil on paper or canvas. In addition to his delicate two-dimensional practices, Nelson has applied his creative energies into ambitious and conceptually driven sculptural models. In Temporary Autonomous Zone, the gallery space functions as a nest for his dichotomous endeavors. Displayed is Nelson’s deluxe-edition motor scooter, fully equipped for a solitary coastal tour. Skillfully fashioned wooden editions (roofs, drawers, and encasings) are added to the scooter and additionally, to a Honda hatchback car–which one can find in the Mission neighborhood streets surrounding the gallery– thus transforming these everyday transportation modes into energy-efficient and fully autonomous vehicles. The sculptural structures placed alongside Nelson’s soft, ambiguous paintings and drawings at Triple Base successfully articulates his search for an independent self.

Born in Los Angeles, Nelson currently lives and works in San Francisco- a notable detail since his work conveys a notion of the American West and the investigation of oneself. He graduated in 2008 with an MFA from Bard College and holds a BFA from California College of the Arts in Oakland, CA.

As one of the most monumental presidential elections approaches, artist Nikki McClure takes action. Vote for Survival, a series of politically minded and motivated screen prints and signs, is on display at Needles and Pens in San Francisco. McClure, who is known for her elegantly detailed paper cut-outs, has taken a new approach in reaction to the present day political changes. Vote for Survival is a traveling exhibition which will tour the west-coast towns of Los Angeles, San Francisco and McClure’s hometown of Olympia, Washington. In addition to silk-screen prints, Vote for Survival includes numerous original paper cuts. These works, generated from a single piece of paper, are delicate in both technique and subject matter. Drawing influence from life’s austerities, McClure’s tactile approach in demonstrating birds, weeds, children, berries and boats is inherently an homage to beauty and simplicity.

In addition to paper cuts, McClure produces an annual calendar, numerous book covers, posters, album covers, cards and t-shirts. Vote for Survival is simultaneously exhibiting at GR2 Giant Robot in Los Angeles until November.

Currently on view at Loyal Gallery in Stockholm, Sweden is a new group of water color paintings on birch panel by New York based artist Suzannah Sinclair. The exhibition, titled Eyes For No One, largely consists of portraits of young woman bearing confrontational gazes, though not always back at the viewer. The women convey a multitude of emotions ranging from the vulnerable to the proud all the while in a seductive manor that calls into question both sex and sentiment. Sinclair completed two exhibitions earlier this year with Voges + Partner Galerie in Frankfurt and with Samson Projects in VOLTA NY.

Sinclair first exhibited with LOYAL in the Spring of 2007 in the group exhibition I’ve Been Setting Fires All Day. LOYAL was founded by Kristian Bengtsson, Amy Giunta and Martin Lilja in 2005, and was born from Loyal Magazine.