Currently on display through March 16th at Brooklyn gallery Jack the Pelican Presents are painters Robin Williams and Nathan Lewis in two separate solo shows within the same complex. Williams paints haunting young children stuck in the midst of play, while Lewis is a history painter.

Williams’ children are depicted alone or in multiples, engaged in quotidian childhood activities, such as drinking juice, jumping on trampolines, and blowing bubbles. The subjects have a disturbed quality, but are executed in a colorful palette. The limited surroundings allow the viewer to focus on the children, who seem terrified, as in Double Mint. The young twins are stuck in a gummy embrace, with their rheumy eyes glancing outward and their soft flesh displaying an unhealthy pallor. Formally recalling earlier figurative artists Lisa Yuskavage and John Currin, Williams departs from their purely aesthetic approach by portraying the anxiety-riddled psychological aspect of modern childhood. Williams received her B.F.A. in 2006 from Rhode Island School of Design and has previously shown at Nathan A. Bernstein & Co., Ltd. in New York and at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco.

Nathan Lewis creates epic scenes of fear and disaster that often directly reference authors and events of the past. His compositions typically include several people in a dramatic state of panic, evoking themes of catastrophe and mortality. Lewis draws on our post-9/11 perpetual state of apprehension, allowing viewers to relate to the collective terror and fundamental futility presented in these large canvases. Lewis received his M.F.A. from the Tufts University and his B.F.A from the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts. He has exhibited at Golden Street Gallery in New London, CT. This is the first solo show in New York for both Williams and Lewis.

Is it possible to make sculptures out of sound? The Belgian artist Leo Reijnders believes so. In his on going series “Wolkenbreiers”, Reijnders invites visitors to his radio program to create their own self portraits. His list of guests runs the gamut of cultural thinkers, from renowned local artists, such as Guillaume Bijl, Ria Paquee, Danny De Vos, and Koen Van Den Broek, to international visitors from all fields of the creative arts. These have included the Austrian curator Ulrike Lindmayr, Norwegian fashion designer Siv Stoldal, Ethiopian painter Mulugeta Tafesse, Gert Segers editor of “Revolver” magazine and “Echo Base”, an experimental sound studio based in Brussels. Reijnders only ask questions when necessary, allowing the artists space to create their own “self portraits on air” about their activities.

This idea of letting artists present themselves has historical precedents. The Los Angeles artists Paul McCarthy utilized a similar strategy in the early 70’s when he invited artists that were relatively unknown at the time to his radio show. Unfortunately his program was canceled when the young performance artist Chris Burden broke FCC rules by begging listeners to send him a dollar. The historical importance of McCarthy’s project was acknowledged last year when the archives of around 100 reel to reel tapes were acquired by the Getty Museum.

Still to come on “Wolkenbreiers” in the near future are, museum director Jan Hoet, cultural TV presenters Chantal Pattyn, photographer/critic Bert Danckaert, theater maker Jan Fabre, painter Luc Tuymans, gallery holder Geoffrey De Beer, as well as many more. The program is available “on line” so that international listeners can follow the creative ideas circulating through Belgium.

“Wolkenbreiers” is broadcast live, every other Monday from 4 – 6pm on Radio Central at 106.7 FM on your radio dial.

Christof Mascher’s show at The Happy Lion Gallery in Los Angeles features a whimsically insidious array of paintings and drawings. Titled ‘Fake Empire,’ the exhibition is the artist’s first U.S. solo show. Mascher’s work eerily merges the expressionistic mark-making with illustrative, though far from literal, imagery and his paintings call to mind scenes from dark fantasy novels. While exhibition titles often seem removed from the work included, Mascher certainly seems to be masterminding a ‘Fake Empire’ in which murky expanses of water connect icy fortresses.

Mascher, a German artist who lives and works in Braunschweig, attended the Braunschweig University of Art and the University for Applied Sciences and Arts in Hanover. His recent exhibition at Galerie Michael Janssen in Cologne, titled ‘The Ghost Yard,’ featured paintings on wood that were as dark and fantastic as the work at Happy Lion. However, the paintings and drawings currently on view in Los Angeles have significantly more perspectival depth to them, making it seem as though Mascher has created his own dimensional world. Mascher, who is new to the international art world, has also shown at Kunstverein Hannover and Figge Von Rosen Galerie, where he participated in 2006 show ‘Cropped: Young Artists from European Academies.’ ‘Fake Empire’ runs through March 1st.

The Broad Contemporary Art Museum officially opened to the public on February 16th. The museum is the ambitious new incarnation of the Broad Foundation’s mission to improve public education. Its opening on the campus of the Los Angeles Museum of Art is part of LACMA’s plan to expand and transform its facilities and programming. Now, with the addition of the Broad Museum, LACMA has vastly improved its contemporary art offering.

Eli and Edythe Broad began the Broad Foundation, an organization bent on bettering education, in 1984. The Foundation aimed to keep the Broad’s expansive collection of contemporary art in the public domain. Now, with the opening of BCAM, they have found a way to permanently exhibit their Warhols, Koons, and Hirsts.

Designed by Renzo Piano, BCAM is an angular and flamboyant building distinguished from the rest of the LACMA campus by its rows of red pillars and its three-story escalator. It houses work that has rarely, if ever, been available to the public outside of the gallery setting. With few exceptions, each featured artist gets his or her own room. When entering the third floor galleries, a viewer first encounters a room full of some of Jasper Johns’ most intriguing paintings, followed by room of gutsy Rauschenberg work, and then a room of clean-cut Elsworth Kelly paintings. Cindy Sherman has a vast room in which her more gory images are hung salon style and her untitled film stills occupy glass cases in the middle of the space. Damien Hirst has two galleries all to himself in which include work from his recent ‘Superstitions‘ series, and Richard Serra’s winding steel sculpture dominate the first floor. BCAM present an incredible array of contemporary art, giving more space to 20th and 21st century art at one time than many museums ever give.

“Supernova” is the latest exhibition by husband and wife collaborative duo Eleanor and James Avery. Currently showing at Grantpirrie, Redfern, the display showcases a selection of large scale sculptural works created by the pair. Appearing almost like over sized Christmas decorations, the angular structures are an exploration of contemporary culture and the interplay between reality and fiction.

Both artists were born and educated in England, with James earning a Masters of Art and Design Education from the University of Warwick, Coventry and Eleanor completing a Masters in Fine Arts at the University of Central England, Birmingham. They were recently commissioned by the Queensland Government to create a series of sculptural works for Brisbane Cycle Centre. Both artists also have fruitful solo careers, with Eleanor set to participate in a group show at Gitte Weise Gallery, Berlin later this year while James has had his work displayed at various institutions including Leicester City Gallery, UK, West Space, Melbourne and Gold Coast City Art Gallery, Queensland.

Artist Taylor McKimens is currently presenting a new group of paintings featuring his signature illustrated grotesque figures and objects in an exhibition titled Sweet Dreams of Phoenix with Gallery Loyal in Stockholm Sweden. The artist renders the mildly monstrous images with color and compassion, drawing influence from sources like MAD Magazine and Garbage Pail Kids. In addition to his paintings, McKimens also created large graphic cutouts that serve to bring his paintings into real space. McKimens began to reach national attention shortly after his graduation from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, CA when the artist began to exhibit with New Image Art Gallery in Los Angeles. Since, the artist has exhibited with Deitch Projects and Clementine Gallery in NYC, as well as Annet Gelink in Amsterdam and Perugi Arte Contemporanea in Padova, Italy.

Mckimens has been previously featured on DailyServing.

Currently exhibiting at Pitzer College Art Galleries in Claremont, California until March 22nd is alumna Lizabeth Eva Rossof ’95. The artist is most well known for her bold series,”1,000 Words For Bush”, in which Rossof imitates Apple’s infectious advertising campaign consisting of candy colored posters with dancing silhouettes. Instead of dancers with iPods, she injects silhouettes of the President accompanied by one-word public reactions to his image such as “iTerrorist”, “iUh-Oh”, and “iFear”. Rossof has placed these posters in San Francisco, New York, and Chicago, revealing an interest in using the machinery of the media to question identity and personal perceptions of others.

As a traveling artist who does not own a home, the concept of domesticity is also of interest in her work. In Grassification, Rossof comically attempts to merge two American obsessions, the road trip (a symbol of freedom) and the perfect lawn (a symbol of domesticity), by caring for a 2’x4′ plot of portable grass on her travels. The grass is photographed sun-bathing with Rossof, having coffee with her friends, and window-shopping. The artist has previously exhibited at the UC Santa Cruz’s Sesnon Gallery, West Space Gallery in Melbourne, and the Pulse Miami Contemporary Art Fair 2007.