Andy Warhol ate a hamburger for Jorgen Leth‘s 1981 documentary, 66 Scenes from America. He sat alone in a gray-blue room, wearing a suit coat and a tie that matched the ketchup bottle. He chewed slowly, fidgeted, stared off into space, removed the top of his bun, rolled his burger up like a taco, then fidgeted some more. He looked at the camera only once, giving it an uncomfortable, searching glance, as if asking how much longer he had to maintain the charade. At the end of the scene, he tensely announced, “My name is Andy Warhol and I just finished eating a hamburger.”

Todd Gray, California Mission: Horse, 2006

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The Vincent Award is a biennial art prize, meant to promote peaceful communication in Europe. The Award, established in 2000, is always accompanied by an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and past winners include Pawel Althamer and Neo Rauch. The 2008 shortlist includes Francis Alys, Liam Gillick, Deimantas Narkevicius, and Rebecca Warren. Work by the four artists can currently be seen at the Stedelijk. Peter Friedl, initially shortlisted, withdrew from the competition in June and was not replaced. According to the jurors, all of these artists are making work “highly relevant” to the art of today. The winner will be announced on September 12th.

The above video soundlessly walks you through The Vincent Award exhibition, capturing the haunting calm of Narkevicius’ video work, the esoteric militantism of Francis Alys’ multi-medium installation, and globular classicism of Rebecca Warren’s sculpture, and the aloof sleekness of Liam Gillick’s video Everything Good Goes. Warren is the only artist not working in video this year, and all of art of the multi-media work in the installation, even Warren’s sculptures, seems to favor narrative over object hood. The exhibition continues through September 30th.

Painter and recent Rhode Island School of Design MFA graduate Ricky Allman, creates post apocalyptic landscapes that simultaneously reference dynamic mountains with architectural structures such as skyscrapers. The artist utilizes geometric abstraction along with organic forms to stimulate the image and allow for the multiple layers to tell a narrative about the possibilities of earth’s future.

Allman has a forthcoming solo exhibition next year with Byron Cohen Gallery in Kansas City, Missouri, which comes after Your smallest sins are my greatest accomplishments: Recent work by Ricky Allman at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas. Allman was featured in Beautiful / Decay Magazine Issue P in 2006 and was featured in Wallpaper Magazine 2008: 110 Art and Design Graduates to Watch.

Jaguar Shoes will present Tonight I am an Owl, new work and the first solo exhibition by Hannah Waldron, one of London’s hottest emerging artists and illustrators. The exhibition, which will be located at The Old Shoreditch Station, will focus on the artist’s imaginative drawings which feature an abstract vocabulary built from the artist’s own world. The works will include glow in the dark screen prints, fantastical landscapes and images of the animal kingdom.

The work often exists as a hybrid of art and design and includes animation and film. Waldron grew up in Lewisham in South East London, close to where the artist continues to live and work. She attended the Chelsea College of Art and Brighton University, where she began her career as an illustrator. Since her graduation, the artist has completed several major projects including the design of a new magazine Counterpart, a music video for Good Shoes and various book covers.

For the first show of their fall season, the James Harris Gallery in Seattle, Washington will present new works by artist Richard Rezac, for his third exhibition with the gallery. Rezac’s work is rooted in geometric abstraction that serves to reduce the formal elements of shape and color. While the work is presented as a two dimensional object on the wall, the viewer can’t deny its sculptural form as a relief. Some of the pieces are supplemented with preparatory drawings, allowing the viewer to gain insight on the creative process.

Rezac has exhibited internationally with a 2006 survey of his work at the Portland Museum of Art. In addition, the artist has shown with the Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago and the Artgarden in Amsterdam. Rezac currently lives and works in Chicago.

Emerging Australian artist Erin Smith is currently showing work at Diaz Castillo Gallery in Melbourne. Smith’s compositions are constructed of individual letters that mingle together to create large symbolic images. As a child, Smith kept a diary where words were written over and over, deconstructing language into its simplest structural components. By denying her letters any verbal meaning, Smith gives these familiar structures new visual potency. The density and dispersion of the letters lends an elegant chaos to the typographic assemblage.

Smith has previously exhibited at Metro Arts Gallery in Brisbane and the Mori Gallery in Sydney. Her work is displayed alongside that of Jason Wing in Diaz Castillo Gallery’s current exhibition, appropriately entitled Before You Are Famous. The exhibition will continue until August 30, 2008.

Quiet Politics, currently on view at Zwirner & Wirth in New York, lives up to its name. It’s understated, discreet and somewhat guarded. In the wake of recent political intensity, David Zwirner has invited a different approach to politicized art, an approach that emphasizes thoughtfulness over reaction.

The show is a multimedia experience, including work from a surprising collection of later and early career artists. Robert Gober‘s reworked newspaper pages have a characteristically heavy wit while Felix Gonzalez-Torres’ Untitled (Fear) is as contextual and inclusive as ever. Lisa Oppenheim, whose work is pictured above, makes geometric abstractions out of Crayola’s “multicultural crayons,” a strange commentary on the role race plays in contemporary visual culture. The other artists in the exhibition are equally unobtrusive, making political observations, but not really taking political stands. Christopher Williams, Rosmarie Trokel, Roni Horn, Walid Raad, David Hammons, Michael Brown, Jennifer Allora & Guillermo Calzadilla, and Adel Abdessemed make up the rest of Quiet Politics’ line-up. Ideally, the show endeavors to widen the range of politics in art, making the dialogue more inclusive. If nothing else, it will offer a relieving glimpse into an aesthetic politics that is more judicious then heated.