For her first LA solo show, painter Korin Faught will be exhibiting a series of twenty two oil on canvas paintings and drawings at Corey Helford Gallery from March 22-April 19, 2008. Faught is influenced by mid-century modernity, both in fashion and interior design. She depicts young and stylish couples and twins together, but not necessarily engaged with one another. They seem slightly self-conscious and distracted, their gazes often divergent. She uses a neutral palette, which is complemented by highly diffused indoor lighting and a formal composition. However, this neutrality is enhanced by the subtle depth seen in the white of her palette. In “The Couple,” her ability to depict an entire range of color can be seen in the suggestion of the pinkish skin underneath the sheet, the warm white of the wall, the coolness of the blouse, and the patterning of the pillow.

Faught received her B.F.A. from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 2004 and has previously exhibited at Merry Karnowsky Gallery and Gallery Nucleus in California. She has also been featured in the Italian magazine Abitare and on Juxtapoz.com.

The Whole of Everything,a recent collection of works by Del Kathryn Barton is currently showing at Karen Woodbury Gallery, Richmond. Often of a dark, fantastical nature, Barton’s paintings, sculptures and ink works portray child-like characters, mutant creatures and deranged human forms. Best known for her vibrant water colours, Barton’s monochromatic, whimsical ink works also make a prominent appearance within the exhibition, and depict a sexualized fusion of fantasy worlds and naked bodies.

Barton currently lives and works in Sydney, Australia. She earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the College of Fine Arts, Paddington, where she later worked as a drawing lecturer. She has won various awards for her art practice, and most recently became the winner of this year’s prestigious Archibald Prize - for a self portrait with her two children entitled You Are What Is Most Beautiful About Me, A Self Portrait With Kell and Arella. Her work has appeared in various solo and group exhibitions around Australia, while also appearing internationally in 2002 within Half a World Away: Drawings from Glasgow, Sao Paulo and Sydney, at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Centre, New York.

Israeli sculptor Zadok Ben-David brings his internationally acclaimed exhibition Blackfield to Australia. Currently showing at Annandale Galleries,the display includes large scale works replicating the human form and a monumental 5000 piece installation consisting of miniature flower and plant sculptures. Each of the small pieces that make up the work are painted black on the front and tinted in various colours on the reverse side. This is intended to deceive the audience’s vision as they slowly rotate around the installation and view the work changing colour right before their eyes.

Ben-David was born in Yemen before immigrating to Israel later that year. He studied at Bezalel Academy of Art & Design, Jerusalem, Reading University and St. Martin’s School of Art, London. He has received various awards including the 2005 Tel Aviv Museum Prize for Sculpture and the 2007 Grande Premio at the XIV Biennial Internacional de Arte de Vila Nova de Cerveira, Portugal. He has been commissioned to create a sculptural work for the Beijing Olympics and has exhibited largely on an international scale at spaces including 121 Gallery, Antwerp, Galerie Albrecht, Munich, and Ambrosino Gallery, Miami.

The current exhibition at Kips Gallery, Fay Ku: A Survey of Works 2004-2008 curated by Brendon MacInnis, demonstrates Ku’s most significant works to date. Ku’s exhibit coincides with Asian Contemporary Art Week in New York, which runs from March 15-24th. The Brooklyn-based artist is simultaneously showing at Sam Lee Gallery in Los Angeles in a two-part group exhibition, her part titled, Deviance.

Born in Taiwan but raised in suburban America, Fay Ku’s work explores the dichotomy of two worlds. Her sparse graphite, watercolor, and ink drawings on paper display Eastern influences, at times referencing the Japanese woodcutting technique, ukiyo-e or “pictures of the floating world,” though the subject matter is purely her own. Children and women figure predominately in Ku’s work, often presented precariously straddling the divide between myth and reality. Because of the scale of Ku’s chosen canvas and the subject matter therein, the viewer is forced to investigate every minute limb and figure floating among the large stark white paper. In Deviance, there is a metamorphosis of Ku’s subjects where feminism, coquettishness and innocence are faced with uncertainty and the treacherous adult world.

Fay Ku received her MFA from Pratt Institute (2006) in Brooklyn and bachelor’s degrees in visual arts and literature from Bennington College, Vermont (1996).

Corey McCorkle is one of the eighty-one artists currently exhibiting in the 2008 Whitney Biennial. His video about The Knickerbocker Greys, a historic after-school leadership program for children and teenagers, is being shown at the Park Avenue Armory (not coincidentally the location of the Knickerbocker Greys’ weekly meetings). McCorkle studied Architecture at Pratt Institute, ultimately receiving a BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He earned an MFA from the University of Chicago.

McCorkle’s work – a mix of architecture, sculpture, installation, and traditional documentary technique – explores utopian communities and zones of public space. He has documented his travels to a dilapidated zoo in Istanbul in which feral dogs have overtaken the facilities designed to house wild animals. He has studied townships in Moray, Scotland, the nineteenth-century Oneida Christian Perfectionists (located in Oneida, New York), and Auroville, a self-contained community located in southern India. His altered photographs and well-crafted sculptures and installations demonstrate his understanding of these specific zones throughout history while also sparking the viewers’ interest in such off the radar niches. McCorkle’s journey to Cambodia in search of a mystical white calf named Preah (“God” in Khmer), who apparently cures a variety of ailments with his lick, was documented with vivid photographs carefully displayed in a meatpacking warehouse, focusing not on the cow but the power and contingency of belief. In Rouge, McCorkle creates a bridge between Art Nouveau and socialism. He created a replica of the staircase of Victor Horta’s “Maison du Peuple,” a historic Brussels building built in 1896 – 99, whose architecture was flamboyantly Art Nouveau. It served as a public meeting house for the Belgian Socialist party under much controversy; it was subsequently torn down in 1965. McCorkle’s title, Rouge, juxtaposed with the smooth white wooden and polyester surface serve as a monument of both transition and timelessness.

Through the medium of ceramics artist Kim Simonsson questions the role of the child and nature in the modern world. Often referencing Manga cartoon imagery, children and sometimes animals are presented in Simonsson’s work to challenge tradition, cultural habits and beliefs for both the East and West. These traditions are also challenged through the artist’s choice of material. Simonsson uses ceramics to draw a parallel with decorative China figurines and traditional ceramic craft of the West, updating both by saturating them in elements of pop-culture. Simonsson graduated from the University of Arts and Design, Helsinki, Finland (2000). Recent solo exhibitions in Finland include Galleria Huoltamo, Tempere, and Arabia Gallery Helsinki. The artist is also represented by Nancy Margolis Gallery, NYC, and has received project funding from the Stina Krook Foundation and the Svenska Kulturefonden.

Opening tonight at James Cohan Gallery in New York City will be a collection of works by Japanese artist Tabaimo. The new work comes after her successful commission for the 2007 Venice Biennale, and continues the use of everyday Japanese imagery mixed with darker views of sex and violence. The main work at James Cohan is titled public conVENience, a five-channel video with floor to ceiling images. The artist, barely into her thirties, has now exhibited in over 15 countries and has been included in the Yokohama Triennale, the Sao Paolo Biennale and the Biennale of Sydney, Australia. Upcoming exhibitions include Japan’s Yokohama Museum in 2009 and Parasol Unit Foundation for Contemporary Art, London, in 2010.