Currently on view at artandphotographs in London is Testimony: Joakim Eneroth An exhibition of Photographs of instruments of torture is an exhibition featuring several photographs that bluntly, and as the title suggests, displays instruments of torture. In 2005, Swedish photographer Joakim Eneroth traveled to Dharasala, India to meet with a Paiden Gyatso, a recently released prisoner of China that had spent over 33 years in captivity. Once released, Gyatso, from fear of being recaptured, traveled over the Himalayas out of China and into India. Gyatso carried with him a bag of these instruments, which he hoped to reveal to the world and expose the torture practiced by Chinese prison officials. Together Gyatso and Eneroth accomplished this goal of which the result in part is this exhibition.

Joakim Eneroth is a graduate of Nordens Fotoskola in Biskops-Arno in 1999. Since, he has been honored with the Swedish Picture of the Year and won first prize in the Prix Voies Off in Arles, France. The artist’s project Seeing Reality Behind My Projections was exhibited at the Guangdong Museum of Modern Art in China and his book Swedish Red is scheduled to be released this month.

The Soft Epic; Savages of the Pacific West is a monumental video and audio installation that is currently on view at Telic Arts Exchange on Chung King Rd. in Chinatown, Los Angeles. Philadelphia-based artists Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib have collaborated on this five-projection work collaged with vast contemporary references of cultural anxiety, urban decay and epic sci-fi movie excerpts to create an entirely new apocalypse. Nadia Hironaka is an MFA graduate from The Art Institute of Chicago and lives and works in Philadelphia. She is a professor at The Maryland Institute College of Art and has recently exhibited videos at PULSAR, Venezuela, Rencontres Internationals, Paris/Berlin, and The Den Haag Film and Video Festival, The Netherlands. Matthew Suib has exhibited internationally with recent works included in exhibitions at Philadelphia Museum of Art, Kunstwerke Berlin, Mercer Union, Toronto, and PS1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City. Both artists founded Screening, Philadelphia’s first gallery dedicated to the presentation of innovative and challenging works on video and film.

On view through the month at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, CA is the work of artist Roni Horn. In the artist’s first solo exhibition in Los Angeles in nearly ten years, Horn ha presented a varied body of work which includes sculpture, photography and text-base works. The artist continues her investigation of form, material, time, presence and place with subtle intent. Horn has taken much inspiration from the inherent qualities of the Icelandic landscape, which provides the artist with many opportunities for references on nature and identity. Her photographic series includes images of Isabelle Huppert which capture the actress’s many different expressions and moods.

Horn was born in New York in 1955 and studied at the Rhode Island School of Design and Yale University School of Art. She has received several fellowships including the NEA and Guggenheim, as well as the Alpert Award in 1998. Horn has a retrospective scheduled in 2009 at the Tate Modern, and later with the Whitney Museum of American Art in NYC.

Photographer Rhona Bitner has spent the past 15 years of her career observing and capturing the performer and the performance space. Though the artist documents the space, the photos are far from documentary. In her new body of work titled “STAGE,” Bitner captures the silent moments just before and directly after someone appears on the stage. The space becomes filled with anticipation, expectation or the memory of the performed act. The dialogue between the viewer and the act is further challenged as it is being seen through still photography, complicating the relationship between the viewer and the physical space within each image. Bitner lives and works in New York and Paris. She exhibits work in the U.S. with the CRG Gallery in New York and the Howard Yezerski Gallery in Boston. From March 8 to May 18, the artist is exhibiting with Galerie Xippas in Athens, Greece, and last year she exhibited works with Blondeau Fine Art (BFAS) in Geneva, Switzerland. Bitner received a fellowship from the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming twice (1993, 2002) and has been reviewed by ARTnews (March 2006) and appeared in an article with the Boston Globe (Dec. 8, 2005).

Nashville-based photographer, painter and draftsman Chris Scarborough creates diverse works that references the archetypes of Japanese cartooning similar to Manga. The cultural concepts of cuteness and beauty mixed with the playful violence of Japanese cartoons all inform Scarborough’s imagery and process. While working in graphite, painting or the computer, the artist painstakingly renders his subjects with absolute precision. The artist’s drawings were recently featured in the Southern Edition of New American Paintings, and he has been featured this year in The Constructed Image at Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, SC. The artist has ongoing gallery representation with the Curator’s Office in Washington D.C., Foley Gallery in New York City, Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta, and TAG in Nashville. Scarborough is a graduate from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and has been included in several publications such as ArtPapers and The Red Clay Survey.

Opening later this month at Hosfelt Gallery in New York City will be two separate solo exhibitions featuring works by painters Chris Ballantyne and Naomie Kremer. Ballantyne’s exhibition Everything Means Something and Nothing is What it Seems to Be continues the artists hard-edged painting approach which conceptually investigates suburban spaces that are fenced in or out of other parts of nature. The graphic images often feature buildings, pools, parking lots, and fences is absurd, yet familiar positions. Ballantyne received his MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute and resides in Brooklyn.

Force Fields is the title of California and Paris-based artist Naomie Kremer. The artist’s abstract paintings offer immense amounts of movement as the overall mark making is gesturally placed without any preconceived notion of what the painting will be. The physicality of the painting is reminiscent of certain abstract expressionist painters, as the artist leaves the content of the painting up to the viewers interpretation. Kremer is an MFA graduate of the California College of Art.

The artists in Environments are living in the here and now, responding to Global Warming, going green, and pollution with down-to-earth sincerity. Curated by Al Nodal, currently president of the Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Commissions, the exhibition emphasizes the role artists play as citizens and is part of the 18th Street Art Center‘s Future of Nations Series.

Environments is ultimately about engagement: How can citizens actively and effectively engage environmental problems? The artists involved represent a confluence of international, socially active aesthetes. The multi-disciplinary team Los Animistas, 18th Street’s current artists-in-residence, explore the cultural relationship between humans and nature; Ala Plastica is an Argentina based organization that collaborates with scientists and environmentalists; Lauren Bon is best know for her Not a Cornfield project, in which she turned inner city brownfield into a fertile community cornfield; Natalie Jeremijenko runs a research lab out the art department at UC San Diego, studying landfills, pollutants and other environmentally pertinent phenomena. Each artist or collective in Environments is taking a different, aware approach to citizenship and the exhibition as a whole is a hopeful glimpse into what might happen if the boundaries between art and life continue to break down.

The exhibition opened on July 12th and continues through September 13th.