In his current exhibition at Simon Lee Gallery in London, the American Artist/filmmaker Larry Clark takes a departure from the focus of his previous works. While his earlier series “Tulsa”, “Teenage Lust” and the film, “Kids”, took a hard unblinking look at teenage sex and drug use. This new series entitled simply, “Los Angeles 2003-2006″, follows the life of Jonathan Velasquez, a teenage Latino skater from East Los Angeles, through his adolescent years. Velasquez seems comfortable allowing the “old man”, (Clark is 36 years his senior), to hang out with him and his friends as they go about having their fun. Remember your own youth, don’t we all wish we could still have this much fun.

Clark’s previous series work in a similar vein to that of his photographic contemporaries such as Nan Goldin and Dash Snow. Each of them investigates the culture of sex and drugs. The departure that Clark makes with this new series is that no overt sex or drug use can be seen. In their previous works Goldin, Snow and Clark, left one with a feeling of hopelessness and despair.

This time Clark closes in on his subject, snapping close-up photos that seem to reveal the inner workings of the teenage mind, showing the hope and belief of a promising future that comes with new freedom. The rebel attitude is still evident however, especially in the tee shirts they wear. Their shirts pronounce themselves as, “Misfits”, “Ramones“, “Gringo” “Zero”, “Lower Class Brats”, these kids seem certain that they can make a difference. They probably don’t realize the weight they are taking on their shoulders, but this sort of confidence is to be encouraged. Maybe that’s what comes from finally being able to grow a little mustache.

Larry Clark is also represented by Luhring Augustine, New York.

Barbara Kruger, Cindy Sherman, Jenny Holzer and Louise Lawler have joined forces in a viral public art project. Since early February, the artists have been disseminating art work throughout Los Angeles – Kruger and Sherman via billboards, Holzer via posters, zip screens and stickers, and Lawler via sound and broadcasts. The above video shows Holzer’s zip screen “Truisms” as it loops at Hollywood Boulevard and Highland Avenue.

The multi-location, multi-media exhibition, titled “Women in the City,” was arranged to coincide with the opening of the Broad Contemporary Art Museum and is being sponsored by the Broad Art Foundation, the Pasadena Arts Council, and the Francois Pinault Foundation. Work by Holzer, Kruger, and Sherman is currently on display at the Broad Contemporary, and all four contributing artists have been influential art world figures since the 1980s. Emi Fontana, who curated “Women in the City,” is the organizer of West of Rome, a project that supports art work that engages the city and the public. “Women in the City” re-envisions the ways in which Kruger, Sherman, Holzer and Lawler engaged social and political spaces in their work, literally putting their work into prominent urban locations.

An exhibition of Martin Schoeller’s photographs will open at Ace Gallery on March 5th. Schoeller, who won the Life Magazine Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for new talent in 2000, makes each feature of his subjects vividly distinctive. The show at Ace Gallery will feature Schoeller’s photographs of female body-builders, large format images in which each woman is pictured from the stomach up. With vapid, grey backgrounds, the photographs are all about the women’s grippingly well-defined features.

Schoeller worked with Annie Leibovitz from 1993-1996. Like Leibovitz, he often photographs celebrities and has shot for a variety of high-profile magazines, including Rolling Stone, GQ and Vogue. Unlike Leibovitz, whose images often create environments around their subjects, Schoeller’s work has less to do with context and more to do with staring his subjects in the eyes.

In addition to Ace, Schoeller has shown work at the Griffin Museum of Photography in Boston, at Bernard Toale Gallery, also in Boston, and at Hasted Hunt in New York. His most recent show at Hasted Hunt, which included piercing photographs of Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, and Terence Howard, closed on February 23, 2008. Schoeller, who was born in Munich, Germany, currently lives and works in New York. “Female Bodybuilders” at Ace Gallery will run through April. The exhibition’s exact closing date has not yet been announced.

The Gagosian Gallery is unarguably one of the most successful contemporary art galleries of our time. The current exhibition of works by the Los Angeles-based artist Ed Ruscha gives us new reason to delve into history and understand what it takes to become a historically important artist. Ruscha seems to intuitively know which new galleries would go on to claim their place in art history, and he wants to show his work in that context. His list of exhibitions includes Ferus Gallery in 1963, Nicholas Wilder Gallery 1967, Texas Gallery 1973, MTL 1978, Galerie Rudiger Schottle 1978, and Galerie Tanja Grunert 1984. Although these galleries may not be household names, a quick check will make it clear, (considering the other artists they showed early in their careers), that these are ground breaking establishments, and they’ve all shown Ruscha.

Another thing that sets Ruscha apart from the field, he doesn’t follow trends, he sets them. Quite possibly the first artist to make work using exclusively text, (his earliest text pieces are from 1963), clearly predating Laurence Weiner, Martin Maloney and Christopher Wool. While most artists wanting art world recognition move to New York, Ruscha stayed home in LA. He along with John Baldesarri, Paul McCarthy, Bruce Nauman and a few others trusted the future of LA. He also shares with Nauman and McCarthy a restless creative spirit, producing work in all mediums available. Maybe not good for the market originally, but it’s certainly not a problem for them now.

Fast forward to the present day. For his current exhibition at Gagosian, Ruscha again heads into new territory. Unafraid to challenge his own previous ascertains, this time he picks works from his own history, and pairs them with his new version of the original. “Tool and Die”, “Tech-Chem”, and “Trade School” take on a whole new meaning when combined with fences, buildings and barbwire. The original works done in nostalgic black and white have now been updated with futuristic color. Ruscha

has said that these new combinations, “air my doubts about progress in the world and hopes for the world… They reflect my feelings about how things change, and that they don’t always change for

the better.” All this leaves us hoping for more.

Ed Ruscha, at Gogasian Gallery, London until March 20, 2008

Currently on view at Sprueth and Magers in Cologne, Germany are the photographs of German artist Nina Pohl. Testing the physical boundaries of truth within the photographic image, Pohl creates dynamically

constructed photos which challenge the authenticity usually associated with photography. Painting is a core component in the artist’s practice and is used as tool to further call into question the concept of reality in photography.

The artist has completed solo exhibitions with Galerie Sprueth and Magers and Kunstverein Heilbronn in Heilbronn, Germany.

UK born sculptor David Spriggs creates work which explores both the deconstruction and systematic ordering of forms in space. Spriggs creates

his dynamic work by layering sheets of transparent film which contain drawings and paintings that are specifically spaced apart to appear to be three dimensional in form. The combination of layers allows the viewer to walk around the work to see it fully in the round.

The Spriggs received an MFA in Sculpture at Concordia University in Montreal and his BFA from Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design. His exhibition, ‘Archaeology of Space’ is currently on view at The Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge, Alberta and will be exhibited again this May at Rodman Hall Arts Centre Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario.The artist has exhibited with Leo Kamen Gallery in Toronto and the Third Avenue Gallery in Vancouver.

The latest exhibition by acclaimed Melbourne artist, Darren Sylvester is currently showing at Sullivan and Strumpf Fine Art, Paddington. The artist is primarily known for his ultra sleek photography, often depicting popular culture and people in seemingly ordinary situations, accompanied by lengthy, ambiguous, narrative titles. This current display, while including his signature style photography, also includes wooden masks that are almost tribal in appearance, making reference to human vanity and the fears of aging. A large scale acrylic painting resembling the many colors available in a make-up pallet has also been included within the exhibition, while each of its hues have been modeled from actual Clinique products.

Sylvester earned a Bachelor of Fine Art Photography/ Graphic Design from Charles Sturt University, NSW, and is currently completing a Masters of Fine Art at Monash University, Melbourne. His work has been displayed on an international scale, having exhibited at venues including the The Roving Eye Gallery, Washington DC, Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Photography and the National Galley of Thailand, Bankok.