Fette’s Gallery in Los Angeles’ Culver City asked artists to take a new approach to self-portraiture. Fette’s has invited 25 artists to use a self-portrait to represent someone else. The quirky and provocative results of the project will be exhibited from January 11th through February 8th.

The exhibition, titled u=____, includes the work of an impressive span of internationally acclaimed artists. French photographer Raphael Neal, whose romanticized portraits have appeared in New York Magazine and Rolling Stone, contributed a vibrant, sultry image of himself as a woman: Me As Her Being His. Melanie Bonajo, originally from The Netherlands, has exhibited in unconventional spaces like the Winston Kingdom in Amsterdam and her contribution to the show is a faceless, neutrally colored image of herself in lingerie. U.S. photographer Amy Elkins also participates in the exhibition; Elkins works primarily in portraiture and she recently created a series in which deliberately posed young men standing before flowered wallpaper or curtains. Fette’s Gallery, which opened in October, 2006, has already established itself as space that consistently organizes innovative group exhibitions and u=____ will be no exception.

The American Typologies, an exhibition of found vintage photographs, opens January 5th at D3 Projects in Santa Monica, CA. Artists and collectors Gail Pine and Jacqueline Woods have been working collaboratively for the past decade, composing thematic “typologies” of 20th Century America. Pine and Woods have exhibited in Close to Home at The Getty and their work also belongs to corporate collections.

Since D3 Projects, which opened in June of 2007, is a venue that promotes interactive and community-friendly work, The American Typologies has found a fitting home. Pine’s and Woods’ composites of vernacular photographs have everything to do with history, memory and re-discovery. The artists spend hours sifting through the abandoned photographs they find at thrift stores or flea markets; their composites are thus carefully orchestrated preservations of shared histories. Pine and Woods openly reference artists Bernd and Hilla Becher, whose well-known photographs of water towers documented an era of construction, and German photographer August Sander, who ambitiously sought to document the people of the 20th Century. The American Typologies is likewise an attempt to document the cultural temperament of a century and it will remain on view through February 23rd.

For their first exhibition in 2008, 2x2projects in Amsterdam will present a new video and recent artist book by Raymond Taudin Chabot. The artist’s new video “That Place” is a continuation of an interest in the qualities of power and how they are conveyed through the facial expressions and gestures of the important person. In the video, a well-dressed stereotypical businessman man is shown riding in a car through a non-descript industrial site, completely immersed in his own thoughts and problems. Chabot’s work analyzes power structures through both the ideas of psychological and physical dependence as defined through the male gender. A recent graduate of Goldsmiths Department of Visual Art, Chabot released an artist book Cast (part 4) published by Roma Publications that contains a collection of appropriated media imagery that depict men of power in different contexts. The artist currently lives and works in London and has exhibited internationally with upcoming shows at the Centre of Contemporary Arts M’ars, Moscow and Passage, Mechelen, Belgium.

High Energy Constructs in Los Angeles’ Chinatown currently features a compelling exhibition of work by three young LA artists. You are not here, you are still there and think you are here is a persuasive hybrid of futuristic optimism and intensely felt ennui. The competent craftsmanship of Christian Cummings, Michael Decker and Marie Johnston is contrasted by the artists’ psychedelic color schemes and faux-kitsch materials, creating an instantly familiar yet paradoxically distancing scenario: you feel as though you have encountered a heartfelt rephrasing of your contemporary reality yet you have simultaneously encountered relics of a world that never actually existed. Continue reading for DailyServing’s review of the show.

Review by Catherine Wagley for DailyServing – Photo by Joshua White

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Currently on view at Antwerp’s newest gallery, Base-Alpha, are two solo shows by the young Antwerp artists Rachel Agnew and Lieven Segers. Seeking to break open the Antwerp art sceane, Base-Alpha will be presenting young unknown talent that have previously not found a place in the hermetic Belgian art scene. Run by, Captain: Bart Vanderbiesen and 1st Commander: Geoffrey de Beer II, the reining look at this gallery is a sort of Futuristic Adrenalized Post Punk.

In this, her first solo gallery exhibition Rachel Agnew presents large scale paintings that sarcastically celebrate abundance. Be it credit cards, cash or beauty, these self portraits relish in excess, but their crude making under cuts her belief in this system. While seductive and repulsive at the same time, they ask us to question our involvement in the selfish capitalist system.

Having received his MFA from Post Sint Joost, Breda (Holland) in 2001, Lieven Segers has previously exposed at De Brakke Grond and Stella Lohaus Gallery. Segers takes this opportunity to show a wide range of graffiti influenced, text based works. Directly addressing the anxieties that are a common component in contemporary life. His is a whimsical attempt to find a way out, in our desperate times.

Rachel Agnew “Collateral Damage” and Lieven Segers “Blow-ups and Other Things” December 15, – January 28, 2008 at Base-Alpha, Antwerp, Belgium

Paul McCarthy has used Belgium to stage the largest presentation of his work to date, with over lapping exhibitions, first at Middelheim Sculpture Park, in Antwerp, and now currently showing at S.M.A.K. (Stedelijk Museum Actuele Kunst) in Gent. This seminal Los Angeles artist, after having toiled away in virtual obscurity for more than 30 years, first began showing at LA’s Rosemund Felsen Gallery, then burst on the international scene in the early 90’s, when his influence on generations of artists was finally acknowledged.

In filling the museum to the brim, McCarthy utilizes practically all medias available to an artist today. Drawing, Sculpture, Installation, Photography, Video, etc…. are all crammed together. He also touches on most art movements from the past 40 years, blending Minimalism, Conceptual Art, Neo Expressionism, Neo Realism, Deconstruction, Performance, and everything in between. This exhibition also reveals McCarthy’s interest in referencing the art of his contemporaries. In works such as, “Dreaming” (Duane Hanson), “Mechanical Pig” (Wim Delvoye), “Destroyed Walls” (Gordon Matta Clark), “MJBH” (Jeff Koons), among many others, the playful McCarthy seeks to do his colleagues one better. A dangerous game, but all his gestures maintain that distinct McCarthy touch. This jammed packed installation leaves no room for rest, for the eye or the mind.

“AIR BORN/AIR BORNE/AIR PRESSURE” at Middelheim museum Antwep, Belgium. May 27, – Oct. 26, 2007

“Head Shop/Shop Head (works 1966 – 2006)”, S.M.A.K. October 13, – February 17, 2008.

Paul McCarthy is represented by Hauser & Wirth, Zurich / London

Currently showing at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney is Scott Redford’s Blood Disco, an exploration of Australian surfing traditions. Redford resides in Queensland where he was born and raised. Located at the north-eastern corner of Australia, it is often nicknamed the “Sunshine State” for its humidity and beach culture. The exhibition includes canvases created from foam, fibreglass and resin that are constructed in a highly similar way to surfboards. Redford drew the designs that appear on the works, before commissioning specialised surfboard manufacturers to create the unique canvases. Redford has widely exhibited his work both nationally and abroad and venues including Torch Gallery, Amsterdam, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra.