Swiss artist Virginie Morillo is having her debut solo exhibition in Zurich with Galerie Mitterrand + Sanz this week. The show, which is on view through the first week of March, has come after the young artist received much acclaim for her participation in the group exhibition “Swiss Folks,” and her solo exhibition at Galerie Edward Mitterrand in Geneva, Switzerland. Morillo often renders Disney characters with other more naturalistic figures to create absurd and slightly deviant situations. The artist has referred to herself as a “natural born Walt Disney character killer,” as she takes control of the childhood characters and causes them to act outside of their originally illustrated behavior. The exhibition will contain 10 new drawings and a large candle sculpture that is set on fire. Morillo, who is only 25 years old, is at the beginning of her career having only graduated from Ecole Sup√©rieure des Beaux Arts, Gen√®ve in 2006. Morillo currently lives and works in Geneve Switzerland.

On view through next week at Found Gallery in Los Angeles is “Tenebrous: The Photography of Steve Gullick.” The exhibition features over 30 rare, never exhibited before photographs of famous musicians shot over the past two decades. The London-based photographer has worked with groups such as Nirvana, the Flaming Lips, Elliot Smith and Bjork, capturing unique and insightful moments from these artist’s lives. Gullick’s photographic interests are rooted in over 20 years of the UK punk scene, however his career has allowed him to shoot a wide range of subjects from all over the world. His first collection of photographs “Pop Book Number One” was published in 1995 and in 2002 Gullick created the music magazine “careless talk costs lives” which was then followed by “loose lips sinks ships” in 2004. The exhibition at Found Gallery was featured in LA Weekly on Wednesday January 16th.

The Whitney Museum of American Art has recently announced artists for the 2008 Whitney Biennial, taking place March 6-June 1. Of the 81 participants, installation artist Carol Bove has been selected in addition to Rita Ackerman, Oliver Mosset, and Spike Lee. Bove has gained attention for what she calls “forced collaborations” with other artists. In a recent solo exhibition at Maccarone Gallery in New York, collectors lent Bove a 1963 eight-inch sphere by sculptor Arnaldo Pomodoro, which she placed on a platform surrounded by concrete blocks, bronze cages, driftwood and steel. In the same exhibition, she covered part of the gallery’s ceiling with rigid metal mesh and then suspended thin copper rods from it. Each rod corresponded to the exact location of a star in the night sky above the gallery on October 21, 2007. She did this same installation with bronze rods on March 2, 2006 in Berlin. The immediacy of this work demonstrates that Bove’s work is “not nostalgic” as admirer (and co-curator of the 2008 Whitney Biennial), Shamin M. Momin states.

Bove earned her degree in studio art from New York University and has been reviewed by the New York Times and W Magazine. She began her career with installations of bookshelves containing cultural paraphernalia from the 1960s, such as the writings of Jorge Luis Borges and framed drawings of Mia Farrow. The books and various objects chosen referenced revolution, LSD, suicide, and radical politics, among other things. Alluding to a time when creative freedom was seemingly unrestrained, Bove transcends simple nostalgia by taking a conceptual approach to the cultural ideals of the 1960s. Uniting her early works and her new installations is the allusion to the ephemeral quality of life, both in the cultural “moment” of the 60s and the temporal “moment” of the alignment of the stars.

Multi-talented artist Donald Urquhart is currently showing stylized paintings, drawings and mixed media at Jack Hanley Gallery in LA. Urquhart devised the exhibition, titled The End, to be a farewell to the past and the included work feels like a montage of 20th Century iconography. Urquhart, who fell in with the infamous performer Leigh Bowery in the 1980s, became an intricate part of London’s campy nightclub scene, collaborating with Bowery and even co-running a club called The Beautiful Bend. As Urquhart suggests in his writing on Bowery, the flashiness of the nightclub life influenced his stylized aesthetic. Urquhart’s work was included in the Saatchi Gallery’s Unreal: Altered Perspectives in Painting and in Beck’s Futures at the ICA in London. His recent solo show at Maureen Paley Gallery in New York included multiple renderings of girls and his 2006 exhibition at Herald Street Gallery in New York also featured girl-centric imagery, broaching everything from school girl play to pin-up girl glamor. The End at Jack Hanley Gallery will remain on view through February 12th.

For their first exhibition of 2008, Headlands Center for the Arts is presenting work by 45 of the Bay Area’s best emerging visual artists in an exhibition titled Close Calls: 2008. Included in the show is Joshua Hagler, image above, as well as Tournesol finalists Bianca Kolonusz-Partee and Kristine Branscomb-Fitzgerald. This is the sixth annual exhibition that takes place this time each year while the Headlands Residency program is not in session. The exhibition is split between two project spaces, each featuring work linked by conceptual approach. In the Eastwing space, viewers will find work that confronts the artist’s physical environment such as the natural landscape and architectural structures, while the Westwing contains work that engages the artist’s social environment such as family, urban community as well as larger global networks. In an essay for the exhibition, written by Headlands Program Director Anu Vikram, the work is described as being conceptually split by nature vs. nurture. The scope of the media explored in the exhibition is far reaching with varied approaches and results, and well represents the diversity currently taking place in the Bay Area.

In her tender novella Tumble Home, Amy Hempel wonders what drives us to preserve parts of our lives. She recounts a disturbing yet endearing news clip, a clip that has an uncanny resemblance to the exhibitions currently hanging in Gagosian’s Beverly Hills Gallery: “A woman in West Virginia carried her unborn baby for more than forty years. It calcified outside the uterine wall. When questioned by reporters, the woman said, ‘As long as the child is inside of me I haven’t lost it.'” While Hempel isn’t referring to the work of Y.Z. Kami and Sally Mann, she certainly could be. Her narrative describes what the two artists are doing: preserving and remembering in a way that taps into the mysterious nature of physiology, the sort of mysterious nature that allows an unborn baby to become a meaningful keepsake. Continue reading for DailyServing’s review of the show.

Review by Catherine Wagley for DailyServing

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Considering the continuing explosion of the art market, the current exhibition at Xavier Hufkens Gallery in Brussels, takes a much needed stance of opposition. Entitled, “I would prefer not”, joins together three artists, Bernard Bazile, Pierre Huyghe, and John Knight, each having maintained a stance against the comodification of the artist’s production.

The Frenchman, Bernard Bazile, first rose to prominence in the 80’s as one part of the artist team, Bustamante/Bazile. While his former partner went on to fame and fortune, Bazile instead focused on pursuing the work that he thought was needed, rather than what the market place wanted. Although he remains little known outside France, he is often cited by young French artists as a major influence on their work. This will be the first time his work is presented in Belgium since his 1987 exhibition at Galerie Micheline Szwajcer.

Pierre Huyghe has remained very elusive through his rejection of objects, instead focusing on creating situations that ask us to question how we construct and translate our visual experiences. He also remains hard to define because he often works in collaboration with other artists, so one must wonder what part of the work is his. Huyghe has previously exhibited at Barbara Gladstone Gallery, New York and Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven.

John Knight is one of the original conceptual artists and as such has always challenged the role art plays in society. Although remaining relatively unknown in the art world, Knight has long enjoyed the support of established conceptual theoreticians such as, Benjamin Buchloh, Anne Rorimer, John Welchman, and Luk Lambrecht. In grouping together these disparate artists, “I would prefer not”, attempts to refocus our attention to what art is suppose to be about, the exchange of ideas. It’s ok to say no.