For his first show with Freight +Volume in New York, Canadian artist Kim Dorland will be presenting several new paintings in the exhibition “North,” in which he explores placing figures in various surroundings. Born in Alberta, Dorland draws his imagery from his native landscape in large-scale representations of a forgotten mid-century suburbia and its surroundings, ennobling the banal. His settings are as much the subject of his canvas as are Edward Hopper‘s peripheral locales. Dorland’s strong compositions are punctuated by a high chroma palette and executed in a non-traditional media mix of oil, acrylic, and spray paint. His immediate and confident brushwork, along with the use of thick impasto combine to depict the familiar in a vibrant and unexpected way.

Dorland received his B.F.A. from the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in Vancouver and his M.F.A. from York University in Toronto. He has had several solo exhibitions, having shown at Angell Gallery in Toronto and Kasia Kay Art Projects in Chicago. “North” will open on April 5 and will be Dorland’s first exhibition in New York.

Pocket Room has recently opened in Antwerp. Why new galleries continue to open, while the local art market continues to shrink, is anyone’s guess. Maybe it’s the image of success postulated by the other new galleries that spur them on. Let’s hope it’s the pure love of art that has inspired Pocket Room to open their doors. To kick start this new gallery, they have turned to an elder statesman of the Antwerp art scene, Guy Rombouts.

Over the last 20 years, as one part of the artist team Rombouts/Droste, he has developed a visually-based alphabet, based on squiggles and color. He recently developed this into a fun Web site entitled “AZART“. This exhibition marks a turn to a more traditional sculpture making practice. Using odds and ends found around the house, it recalls the work of the Belgian artist Rene Hayvaert. The combining of two objects into one sculpture appeared in Belgium in the mid 90’s with the work of Dutch artist Jan Vos.

With his insistence on not gluing, welding, or nailing, Rombouts seeks to leave room for the possibility of life within the sculpture, rather than locking it into a lifeless position. Although this stance does require some balancing, pinching, and clamping, it makes it all the more important that Rombouts is able to find the proper fit for the disparate objects. Works on view include a hammer fitted with a rolled up piece of paper for a handle, cribs turned into cages, and a cane made into a chair. In one of the most poignant works, three table clamps squeeze each other in position, allowing the sculpture to reach for the sky. This piece works as a metaphor for what the Antwerp art world could be. Here each part supports the other, allowing for unlimited potential.

Rombouts has previously shown at Gallerie Tanya Rumpff, Holland and Zeno X, Belgium.

Guy Rombouts at Pocket Room, February 17-April 5th.

The exhibition “Feral” which opened this weekend at the Luggage Store in San Francisco is a collaborative show created by artists Monica Canilao and Swoon. Through the construction of immersible environments, the artists create a domain “populated by wicked women and feral girls.” They use wood, paint, paper, and found materials in the fabrication of their mystical and spontaneous world.

Canilao is interested in the passage of time and the exploration of space, home, community, and life. She uses expendable materials, such as paper and fabric, in the composition of her stitched and interwoven collages and sculptures, finding life and energy in items made by hand. Canilao received her B.F.A. in Illustration from California College of Arts and has exhibited in San Francisco at the Onsix Gallery and 111 Minna Gallery.

Brooklyn-based artist Swoon blends photography, traditional printmaking techniques, portraiture, and figurative drawings in the creation of her worlds, often populated by street people and characters based on her friends and family. Her subjects are realistically rendered and engage in typical pedestrian and urban activity. The inhabitants of this imaginary universe move through a cityscape of bridges, water towers, and fire escapes. Swoon’s brilliant use of positive and negative space gives life to her cut out creatures. Swoon has exhibited at Deitch Projects and MoMA’s P.S.1 in New York, but is best known for integrating her imagery into the city landscape. Inspired by traditional graffiti, she uses the city as her canvas, as well as engaging in street parties, poster campaigns, and billboard alterations. In New York City she has recently placed several hidden peepholes throughout the metropolis where, once stumbled upon, viewers are able to catch a glimpse of a secret and dream-like place. The installation “Feral” will remain at The Luggage Store until April 26, 2008.

Photo: Ken Adlard Courtesy of the artist and Lisson Gallery

And Larry makes three. Over the last month London has had the privilege of hosting new work from three of the father figures of contemporary art. Besides Ed Ruscha and Larry Clark, there was also Lawrence Weiner. Weiner’s exhibition took place at Lisson Gallery, and just ended last week. These guys have inspired generations of younger artists, by continually producing challenging new work over a 30 year career. Weiner’s exhibition came on the heels of his first American retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art.

This time Weiner focuses on emphasizing his command of the formal concerns of artistic presentation. Visually stunning in the use of vibrant hues, this exhibition also sharpens the sociological implications that have always been present in Weiner’s work. “FIRST MOVE, SECOND MOVE, THIRD MOVE”, suggests that the first move should be to circle the wagons, establishing a protected personal space. Only then, will we be prepared to go out and deal with societal structures. “OFFSIDES”, uses two vertical lines as a formal devise to bracket the text, while not confining it. Thought of in a social context, it establishes opposition. It can refer to expanding to new territories or taken negatively, being on the wrong side.

“FOUND BY CHANCE AFTER ANY GIVEN TIME FOUND ALONE AFTER ANY GIVEN TIME” The operative words here are, “Found” and “Alone”. Found refers to others, while alone stresses the individual. This highlighting of the personal should not be taken in the, “Me Generation”, sense of the word. Larry’s too much of an old hippie for that. Rather, he’s asking us to consider how our personal choices affect society.

Weiner began his career with the pioneering conceptual art dealer, Seth Siegelaub, later he worked for years with Leo Castelli. Currently he works in whatever contexts he finds interesting, while remaining fiercely loyal to those he respects. Demonstrating continuing curiosity, Weiner also has a super cool website, “HOMEPORT“, and all this at 66.

Lawerence Weiner, “OFFSIDES” Lisson Gallery, February 6, – March 15.

Houston-based artist Robert Pruitt makes beautifully crafted work, but his exceptional craftsmanship is only a tool for exploring the ways in which African Americans have been represented throughout history. An exhibition of Pruitt’s new work, titled Two Tears in a Bucket: Considering The Alcubierre Metric, is currently on display at Mary Goldman Gallery in Los Angeles. The exhibition presents a series portraits on Kraft paper. Predominately rendered in orange and black, the portraits exude an introspective confidence, but they also suggest a disturbing coalescing of misrepresentation. In Pruitt’s work, Historic imagery merges seamless with contemporary imagery.

The Alcubierre Metric, also known as Alcubierre Drive or, in Start Trek terms, “warp drive,” is a mathematical speculation. Alcubierre Metric proposes a measure of space time in which you can travel faster than light, something that Pruitt hopes to do through his current work. Speeding up the dialogue surrounding representations of African Americans may, hypothetically, launch us into the future.

Pruitt is a member of Houston collective Otabenga Jones & Associates, which participated in the 2006 Whitney Biennial. Pruitt has also shown at the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston. Two Tears in a Bucket opened on March 15thand runs through April 19th.

At Gagosian Gallery’s New York location, an all-star cast of appropriation artists have joined forces to present a haven of prefabricated art objects. Prefab includes work by Richard Prince, Rudolph Stingel, Rosmarie Trockel, Sherrie Levine, Martin Kippenger, Mike Kelley, Jeff Koons, Richard Artschwager, and Alighiero e Boetti. Together, the often tongue-in-cheek work of these nine artists begins to look surprisingly serious, especially since all the work in the show adheres to painting‚Äôs traditional rectangular format. Prince’s unapologetic appropriations, for instance, become more severe next to the residue of Stingel’s Styrofoam.

The exciting aspect of Prefab is its integration of seemingly unlike artists. Sherrie Levine’s conceptually steeped re-photography has never been this smoothly related to Jeff Koons’ flamboyant fabrications, and Alighiero e Boetti has never seemed so closely related to the over-intellectualized genre of prefabricated art.

The timing of Prefab is also interesting, giving the current trajectory of these artists’ careers. Prince is coming out of a retrospective at the Guggenheim; a survey of Stingel’s work was recently on display at Chicago’s Museum of Contemporary Art, as well as other national museums; Trockel’s work was featured in a traveling IFA exhibit; Koons’ sculptures dominate the third floor of the new Broad Contemporary Art Museum. Prefab makes these artists, many of whom have become canonical art world figures, seem relevant and contemporary again. Prefab runs through April 19th.

In a two-part show for Howard House in Seattle, Gretchen Bennett presents her own work in “Hello,” located in the front of the gallery, as well as curating “Supernature,” located in the center gallery. Bennett is best known for her interest in urban iconography and her downloadable and printable sticker series. For “Hello,” she chooses to re-examine through drawings the widespread imagery of the ill-fated lead singer of Nirvana, universal pop icon Kurt Cobain. Methodically and meticulously penciling line-by-line single video frames of her subject collected from YouTube, the artist presents colorful and luminous drawings of the drug-addled musician. By stopping motion and revealing the painstaking precision of her own hand, Bennett refreshes our view of the ubiquitous iconic image, giving us a more personal look at the star without becoming sentimental.

In the center gallery of Howard House is “Supernature”, curated by Bennett, which examines the notion of the perfect landscape in the works of Saul Chernick, Andrew Guenther, Matthew Day Jackson, Alexander Kantarovsky, Robert de Saint Phalle, Suzanne Walters, and Aaron Williams. Instead of presenting a romantic and idealistic view of the natural world, the artists assert the idea that the perfect landscape can be found in artificial or abandoned settings. The show is a collection of assembled topography in the form of paintings and installations which act as landmarks or “places” for the viewer to examine. In contemporary society, we become increasingly detached from the experience of authenticity or purity in the natural world. This mediated view of our world is not Nature, but Supernature, and can offer us a new kind of authenticity.

Gretchen Bennett received her M.F.A. from Rutgers in 2001 and has exhibited widely on both coasts. She has had a solo show at Amo Gallery in Washington, and has exhibited at PS122 Gallery in New York City.