Currently on view at the Cerasoli Gallery in Culver City, California is a double solo exhibition featuring Mario Wagner‘s Lost Art of Murder in Gallery One and Marco Cibola‘s A New Division in Gallery Two. Mario Wagner is a German artist and illustrator who is exhibiting a series of paper-collage canvases that employ traditional methods of collage and consequentially reference modernist qualities, yet they also utilize a flat spacial aesthetic with loud colors that are reminiscent of more contemporary trends. With the image’s hard-edged structure being the most unifying element between the two shows, Marco Cibola’s A New Division series makes use of geometric abstraction with muted palettes and unique spacial construction. Both artists have exhibited internationally, and Wagner’s illustrations have been featured in Playboy, Esquire and The New York Times Magazine. The exhibition will be on view through July 5, 2008.

German artist Hans-Christian Schink’s photography is primarily focused on sparse landscapes and highways. His stoic images feature structures and land that are symbolic of the solidarity found in large urban environments. Often focusing on his native land, the artist has photographed the autobahn, train systems and constant construction in the former East Germany. New works depict a similar landscape but now contain mysterious floating bars that hover low in the sky. Schink studied photography at the University for Graphics and Book Art in Leipzig. The artist has exhibited in Los Angeles with the ACE Gallery and the Paul Kopeikin Gallery. He has also exhibited with several international galleries, including Martin-Gropius-Bau, the Dany Keller Galerie in Germany and Grand Prix Europeen de la Ville de Vevey in Switzerland.

Black & White Gallery in Chelsea is currently showing one of Julian Montague‘s recent art projects, To Know The Spiders, until July 12, 2008. Montague is intrigued by the often neglected common presences and occurrences of everyday life. The book version of a previous project, The Stray Shopping Carts of Eastern North America: A Guide to Field Identification, was published in 2006 by Harry Abrams. The book details his highly methodical research and classification project of the stray shopping cart phenomenon, which took place over the course of six years. The book met wide acclaim and received the Diagram Prize for the Oddest Title of 2006.

For To Know the Spiders, the artist has conducted a visual exploration and analysis of a seemingly mundane creature- the household spider. The exhibition includes photographic evidence of the artist’s somewhat scientific process. First, this overlooked occupant of our shared interiors is put to rest at the exact location it was found. The artist then collects the specimen and studies the face of the spider below a microscope, creating several drawings during this stage. From these drawings, a fabric banner is assembled with a stark black and white portrait of the little victim. This banner is then placed and photographed in the exact location of collection, thereby recognizing the presence of this innocuous invertebrate and serving as a fibrous farewell to the spider who had to die for this understanding to be gained.

This exhibition concludes Black & White Gallery’s three-part season long multi-disciplinary program entitled The Proper Animal. All artists included in the program

utilized highly original animal iconography, inevitably bringing ethical questions into play. Montague received his B.A in Media Studies from Hampshire College in 1996 and has exhibited widely in the US, including shows at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut, Art in General in New York City, and Light Factory in Charlotte.

This Friday, June 13th, Civilian Art Projects in Washington, D.C. will host a gallery talk and closing reception for Jason Zimmerman‘s solo exhibition Feel Better, Longer. Zimmerman graduated from the Corcoran College of Art and Design in 2003 and is moving to Oregon later this year to pursue his M.F.A. in Contemporary Arts with Harrell Fletcher in his new Social Practice program at Portland State University. This exhibition at Civilian includes several independent projects that explore the themes of containment, growth, and creation through a variety of media, including video, photography, drawing, and site-specific installation.

This exhibition is based on the belief that there is no distinction between what is considered to be natural and unnatural and that any activity of the human animal is indeed a part of nature. The artist includes both living things and inanimate objects in his projects, always emphasizing the importance of process, such as in the choreographed, collaborative video in which Zimmerman surrounds a young man with artificial flowers. In this same video there is a table supporting several terrariums, small self-contained ecosystems created in commonly discarded plastic items that the artist has found and cleaned. In a separate project, the artist displays several specimens, objects he has collected over time from places of meaning, and shares them with the viewers. Zimmerman’s environments explore the boundaries between the artificial, the real, and the remembered.

Miami-based artist Jen Stark‘s exhibition “Much-Much” will be on view as well in the Project Space of Civilian Art Projects until this Saturday.

PPOW Gallery in New York is currently showing several monumental oil paintings and intimate watercolors by Angela Fraleigh in the exhibition and i would shine in answer being without becoming until July 3, 2008. Fraleigh received her B.A. from Boston University in 1998 and her M.F.A. from Yale University in 2003. She currently lives and works in Bethlehem, PA and Brooklyn, NY.

Fraleigh’s oil paintings depict struggles between couples in intimate relationships, thereby addressing the universal themes of power and gender. Her large-scale compositions focus on the realistically rendered faces and hands of her figures, which are surrounded by layers of beautifully applied swirling and dripping paint. This method simultaneously reveals and conceals the encounter occurring amidst the paint, a visual tease that enhances the sexual and physical tension between the figures. In her compositions, it is difficult to distinguish violence from lust. The strong glances of the female protagonists could easily express all-consuming desire or furious terror. This ambiguity is heightened by the alluring tactility of the paint’s surface.

Fraleigh’s command of her medium can be seen in the easy transitions from extreme realism to elegant abstraction. Due to the size of her compositions, we are immediately thrust into these salacious scenarios, being at once voyeurs and participants in this greater dialogue of gender and identity.

We Want a New Object, California Institute of the Arts‘ 2008 MFA show, recently opened in an L.A. art scene hot spot. A hefty handful of Chinatown galleries and venues are hosting the exhibition, which features work by 34 students. A sea of multi-media work, the exhibition is heady, youthful and vibrant, just like CalArts’ reputation. A sizable number of students – including Carlin Wing, Betsy Hunt, and Mike H.J. Chang – are working in video and performance mediums. On June 7th, 6 artists will project videos at The Mountain Bar and performances occur throughout the exhibition’s duration.

Students selected writer Malik Gaines as the curator and Christine Y. Kim, a New York based curator, also lent a hand in organizing the exhibition. The location – Chinatown is much nearer the pulse of LA’s art scene than CalArts’ more rural location in Valencia, CA – makes We Want a New Object seem like a coming-out party in the old-fashioned sense. These MFA candidates are emerging and hitting the art scene with a splash.

We Want a New Object is on display at Acuna-Hansen Gallery, Black Dragon Society, David Salow Gallery, Fifth Floor Gallery, Kontainer, Peres Projects, Telic Arts Exchange, Betalevel, and The Mountain Bar.

Using everyday utilitarian materials such as Styrofoam cups, hot glue, straws and scotch tape, artist Tara Donovan creates sculptures that suggest molecular forms, clouds or even abstract landscapes. Donovan uses the innate transparent properties found in the materials, coupled with light, to articulate the space and structure of her sculptures. Donovan’s work also suggests a dependence on the environment it occupies, which affects qualities such as the scale, mass and overall orientation of each piece. Donovan is a graduate of the Virginia Commonwealth University (1991) and has since exhibited in galleries and museums nationwide. Exhibitions include works at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego and Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland (2004). In the same year, the artist exhibited with the UCLA Hammer Museum; view writings on that exhibition here. She also was the 2005 recipient of the Alexander Calder Foundation‘s first annual Calder Prize and, in 2006, was granted an artist residency with the Atelier Calder in Sache, France. On Jan. 5, the New York Times reviewed the exhibition “Constructed Abstractions,” which is on view now at the Whitney Museum of American Art at Altria, featuring Donovan and five other artists.