On May 10th, Cerasoli Gallery opened separate exhibitions by two artists working in different media: Andy J. Simmons’ photography exhibition Visions of Europe and collage artist Joshua Krause‘s Convince Me I’m on Fire will be shown in two gallery spaces.

In Gallery One will be the work of Andy J. Simmons. Born in South East London, Simmons grew up learning to take photographs and to skateboard. Both of these interests are reflected in his photographs as well as other subcultural rituals. He works with Polaroid film and plastic cameras to capture stills as equally simplistic as his machinery and presents the images in an honest and straight forward documentary style. Each photograph is uncluttered and exudes a clean sense of beauty. Simmons refers to Transworld Videos and Slap Magazine as his major influences.

In Gallery Two is the collage work of Joshua Krause who works with acrylic, enamel, and resin on natural or painted wood. Krause relies on dreams and the unconscious to guide him through his artistic production. In his works, the foreground is an ornate organic pattern composed of white dots from which partial faces emerge in patches. Krause is primarily self-taught and currently lives and works in San Diego, California. His extensive client list includes the New York Times, Option Snowboards, Escapist Skateboarding, and Loud + Clear Records.

Visions of Europe and Convince Me I’m on Fire will remain at Cerasoli Gallery in Los Angeles until June 7, 2008.

The photography, video and performance works of artist Kelly Nipper proclaim the material proof that is inherent to photography and lens-based media at a time when most artists are determined to prove the falsities of the medium. Nipper explores the human relation to time, space and dimension, usually carried out through the choreographed acts of her subjects. The artist often works against normal photographic expectations, leaving her viewers void of the satisfaction that comes from the release of a climax or the capturing of a spectacle. Instead, Nipper engages her viewers with quiet, unassuming, though philosophically rich, images that investigate the empirical nuances of life. Nipper lives and works in Los Angeles and is an M.F.A. graduate of the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. This year, the artist will present an exhibition with the Anna Helwing Gallery in Los Angeles. Previous exhibitions include “Bending Water into a Heart Shape” at the Galleria Francesca Kaufmann in Milan, Italy, and “shotgun and a figure 8″ at the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Santa Monica, Calif., which was reviewed by Artforum (2001). The artist has performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art in California, PERFORMA07, and she has received the Alberta Prize for Visual Art from the Alberta duPont Bonsal Foundation.

Tokion Magazine presents the Fifth Creativity Now Conference in New York City at Cooper Union‘s Great Hall on May 17th-18th. The doors will open at 11 am on both days with the conference beginning at noon and finishing at 6:30 pm. Tokion is an innovative New York-based magazine that covers artists, fashion designers, people from the film industry, photographers, graffiti artists, designers, musicians, and new media artists on a global scale. Founded over ten years ago, Tokion has become one of the most authoritative anthologies on alternative emerging art and artists as well as featuring more established artists such as Bjork and Jeff Koons. Previous print covers have featured diverse artists and thinkers such as Isabelle Huppert, Jena Malone, James Franco, Natasha Kahn, Jarvis Cocker, and most recently Nate Lowman, who will be presenting at this year’s conference.

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Alex Lukas and Brian Willmont present new work in their two-person exhibition at Park Life in San Francisco opening on May 9th. Both artists are members of Philadelphia’s Space 1026 artist collective.

Alex Lukas paints contemporary landscapes depicting moments of disaster and destruction as seen from a distance. He collects his imagery from various sources, including the mainstream media and blockbuster films, which pump out threatening messages on a daily basis. All paintings include an element of unease and anxiety, familiar feelings in a post-9/11 atmosphere. He works with a variety of materials, combining watercolor, ink, spray paint, acrylic, and enamel on paper, creating a dynamic textural as well as emotional effect. In addition to painting, Lukas runs a small ‘zine publishing company called Cantab Publishing. He began making ‘zines in 5th grade when he created his first Xerox comic and continued throughout highschool and college. Lukas attended the Rhode Island School of Design and has previously exhibited at White Walls in San Francisco and Galleri Loyal in Sweden.

Brian Willmont describes the new American folktale in his Technicolor paintings that are tarnished with traces of American History, Pre-Renaissance and Persian miniature painting, as well as dreamscapes and the fantastic. Willmont received his B.F.A. from the Massachusetts College of Art in 2007 and has previously exhibited at LaMontagne Gallery and the Mills Gallery.

Californian artist Mary Corse has been creating bold minimalist paintings since the ’70s. In recent work, the artist has focused on light and its effects through large reductive painting; this is clearly illustrated in “Untitled (Inner White Band)” above. Corse uses a mostly monochromatic palette that contains deep blacks, pure whites and varied grays. In the past, the artist created a series of light boxes that investigated various illuminations more literally through wall-mounted structures. In the past five years, Corse has exhibited three times with the Ace Gallery in Los Angeles and was reviewed in Art in America for her 1996 exhibition with Ace. Previous exhibitions include works with the Peter Blake Gallery in Laguna and Chac-Mool Gallery in Beverly Hills, California. Corse has received awards from the Cartier Foundation (1993) and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts (1975).

The large-format chromogenic prints created by Robert Polidori depict a grand sense of destruction and desolation. The interrupted landscapes are hauntingly void of humans and offer only traces of previous human existence. Polidori has traveled internationally to find these forgotten cities where natural or man-made circumstances have caused everyone to flee. New Orleans, Havana, Versailles and Chernobyl are among the cities that the artist has photographed. Polidori is a staff photographer for The New Yorker and has exhibited with Marti-Gropius-Bau in Berlin and Lombard-Freid Fine Arts in New York City. Last fall, Polidori exhibited documentary photos of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans at The Met in New York City, and the exhibition was reviewed in The New York Times. In 2003, Art in America reviewed the artist’s exhibition at Pace/MacGill in New York City.

A recent collection of works by Indian artistic duo Jitan Thukral and Sumir Tagra are currently on display at Gallery Barry Keldoulis, Waterloo. Known for their prolific use of color, their works often reference advertising and consumerism as a response to contemporary culture. Entitled Somnium Genero 02, their current exhibition is a combination of paintings and sculptural works, all of which include vibrant imagery and surrealist influence. Symbols of man-made technology including planes, television screens and radio transmitters are interwoven with images of flowers, evoking a sense of natural beauty. Such hybrid imagery is affixed to canvases and some circular sculptural works, causing them to appear almost as enlarged, ornate Christmas decorations.

Thukral and Tagra were both born in New Delhi, where they still currently live and work. Both artists attended Delhi College of Art, while Thukral furthered his studies at Chandigarh College of Art, Tagra chose to do so at The National Institute of Design, Ahmadabad. They have collaboratively exhibited at institutions including Bose Pacia, United States, The Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai and Teatro Armani, Milan. In 2006 they were honored on the list of 101 Emerging designers of the world, as featured in Wallpaper Magazine.