Mekanism Skateboard Company recently partnered with German artist Dirk Skreber to custom paint a new series of skateboard decks. Skreber explores imagery related to natural and man made disasters. In this project,

he renders the pieces of a vehicle in the process of being blown up, which is further echoed in the fragmented grid of skateboard decks. In total Skeber completed fifty skateboard decks in over four paintings.

The artist, who was born in 1961, currently lives and works in New York City and Dusseldorf, Germany. His rencent exhibition Blutgeschwindigkeit (Blood Speed) is currently on view at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Germany and will travel to the Museum Franz Gertsch, Burgdorf, Switzerland. The artist is currently represented by Blum and Poe in Los Angeles and Friedrich Petzel Gallery in NYC.

Adventures of the Woman in Black is an upcoming exhibition at Green Cardamom in London, opening next week, featuring new works by Kuwait-born artist Hamra Abbas. The exhibition will include the artist’s vision of the female super-hero as she confronts issues of male perpetrated violence as it relates to the Middle East. The concept of the female super-hero draws attention to the compassionate yet assertive role of woman in the violent world that we live in.

The leading work in the show is a slick, black fiberglass figure, standing over two meters in height in a stoic and monumental form. The work furthers the artist’s interest in appropriating loaded cultural imagery and altering the often iconic forms to reveal new and challenging views that push against traditional values and cultural norms.

Abbas currently lives and works in Islamabad and Boston and works as an Associate Professor at the National College of Arts in Rawalpindi. She has received degrees from Universitat der Kunste, Berlin and National College of Arts, Lahore. Recent exhibitions include New Works at Gallery NCA and a self-titled exhibition at Gallerie Dorothia Konwiarz, Berlin.

Opening tonight at P.P.O.W Gallery in New York City will be Solar System (The Turning Heads) new paintings by artist Thomas Woodruff. The artist began with a simple visual test, to see if he could elevate the simple “upside-down head” trick often seen in old parlor-style portraits. The paintings, many of which are painted on black silk velvet, are also motorized and automatically rotate right before the viewers eyes. Woodruff has stated that all of his choices with these paintings are deliberate and used to challenge the viewers traditional notions of taste, especially in how they relate to often standardized puritanical beliefs. The result are paintings that reference a broad range of religious imagery and artistic movements.

This exhibition marks Woodruff’s seventh solo exhibition with P.P.O.W. The artist has exhibited internationally with recent shows including the major traveling project FREAK PARADE which is presently held at the Herron Gallery in Indianapolis, IN.

Julian Hoeber’s third solo show at Blum and Poe Gallery, titled All That is Solid Melts into Air, explores aged forms, bronze busts and op-art in particular, and emphasizes the way old recycled ideas shape “new” people and objects. In an insightfully written artist’s statement, Hoeber describes himself as a tube, listing the span of influences that have cycled through his system. What comes out is a digested, sometimes decaying conglomeration of forms.

Hoeber’s show includes two bodies of work – one a set of fifteen works on paper that toy with viewers’ perception; the other a series of bronze heads that have been shot, bit, and beaten up. The heads sit on reflective pedestals just high enough to emphasize their human scale.

Hoeber earned his MFA from Art Center. He also studied at Karel deGrote Hogeschool in Belgium and at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He recently participated in the group exhibition Against the Grain at LACE. All That is Solid Melts into thin Air will be on view through October 2008.

MADE UP, the fifth edition of the Liverpool Biennial‘s International Exhibition, opened September 20th and runs until November 30, 2008. The lineup of international artists exhibiting this year spans the globe and a broad range of media. The abstract, and suitably loose, curatorial theme of “made up” exalted artists like Australian photographer and film maker Tracey Moffatt to create a series of self-portraits, which depict Moffatt role-playing, a la Cindy Sherman, interjecting herself through found imagery and photo editing into awkward positions of stodgy employment from her past. Other notable artists exhibiting this year are: Omer Fast, Jesper Just, Yoko Ono and Ai Wei Wei, who created an enormous spider web of light and steel, in an artistic nod to the spider, “one of nature’s architects”. Wei Wei’s spider web spans the length of space across Liverpool’s Exchange Flags and bloats the ordinary or mundane into the extreme and fantastic.

MADE UP was curated collaboratively by a team drawn from partner galleries and the Biennial under the artistic directorship of Lewis Biggs. The exhibition takes place across thirteen locations around the city of Liverpool, including The Bluecoat, Tate Liverpool, Open Eye Gallery and FACT (Foundation for Art & Creative Technology).

Australian artist Greer Honeywill‘s sculptural work investigates humanity, domesticity, and the changing nature of the home. Her materials range from kitchen graters, skewers, and mop twine to timber framings and personal ephemera. The artist forces the viewer to re-evaluate these objects and investigate the political and social issues and hierarchies which unfold in every home.

Honeywill grew up in suburban Adelaide in the 1950s and her work references this personal past, with allusions to her mother who faced domestic challenges, such as an alcoholic husband. The role of the household woman and the setting of the kitchen are frequently given attention and analysis in Honeywill’s work. Embroidered House, seen above, was inspired by the walk of the ghost crab, an animal scientists refer to as “nature’s housewives.” By drilling thousands of tiny holes in the walls and roof of the house, Honeywill pays tribute to the small tasks that become daily rituals. Their illumination creates a poetic pattern both on the structure and the surrounding walls.

The artist recently showed work at Craft Victoria in Melourne and received her PhD in Fine Art from Monash University in 2003. The artist is currently represented by Flinders Lane Gallery in Melbourne, Australia.

Opening this weekend at Sprovieri Progetti in London will be Drive thru #1, new work by Brazilian artist Matheus Rocha Pitta. The exhibition, which is the artist’s first UK show, will feature sculpture, video and photographs that investigate the concept of the word ‘apprehend’ as it relates to the Brazilian police. Often, the term apprehend is used to describe seized goods (mostly drugs). Once these items are confiscated, the police will create a display of the goods and call the press to have the items photographed and circulated through the media, boasting the crack-down. Pitta is interested in the meaning of this term and how it relates to global issues of possession, displacement and territory.

The exhibition was recently awarded the first Illy Sustainart and ARCO prize in Spain. Matheus Rocha Pitta was born in Minas Gerais, Brazil in 1980, and studied history at the Universidade Federal Fluminense and philosophy at the Universidade Estadual of

Rio do Janeiro.