M+B Gallery in West Hollywood is currently presenting Alison Jackson: Confidential. Alison Jackson, known for her unnerving depictions of celebrity look-alikes, has never before shown in the Los Angeles area. Confidential features charged photographs of public figures, often politicians or pop-culture icons depicted in less-than-flattering poses. Though Jackson uses ‘look-alikes’ rather than real-life celebrities, her photographic fictions closely resemble the figures they satirize. At first glance, Bush seems to be playing with a rubick’s cube in the oval office, Bill Gates seems to be happily dancing around with his ipod, and Halle Berry seems to be intently painting her Oscar black. Jackson wants her audience to see what they imagine before they recognize the images as fictional. The artist, a graduate of London’s Royal Academy of Art, gained notoriety when she staged a photo of Princess Diana and Dodi Al Fayed fondling a mixed-race love child. Since then, Jackson has won a BAFTA for her work on the BBC Two series Doubletake and has also directed a film about Tony Blair, titled Blaired Vision. The exhibition at M+B runs from December 15th through Janurary 26th and will be accompanied by a monograph published by Taschen.

Alber Oehlen, a German artist who currently lives and works in Bizkaia, Spain has been on the international radar for decades as a provocative painter. The artist studied with Sigmar Polke in the mid-seventies at Hochschule fur Bildende Kunst, Hamburg and emerged in the 1980’s along side artist Martin Kippenberger. Oehlen challenges painting today by rigorously investigating and referencing historical painting from many periods, simultaneously. The scope of his painting references allows the artist to point out some of art’s failures, something that Oehlen is very interested in revealing. The artist recently exhibited “Spiegelbilder” with Max Hetzler in Berlin, and “The Good Life” at the Nolan / Eckman Gallery in New York. Oehlen has appeared in countless publications, and in April of 2003 Artforum conducted an interview between Oehlen and Eric Banks.

The Happy Lion Gallery, located in Los Angeles’ Chinatown, is currently presenting a collaborative exhibition titled The Sundowners. Six emerging LA artists, Seann Brackin, Naomi Buckley, Spencer Douglass, Aragna Ker, Candace Lin, and Maeghan Reid participate in the exhibition, grappling with the terrain of history, memory and illusion. Performance artist Anna Oxygen also contributed to the show, performing at the opening on November 10th. Candice Lin received her MFA in New Genres from the San Francisco Art Institute, but each of the other artists received an MFA from Claremont Graduate University. The exhibition’s title is intricately related to its theme; the word “sundowner” refers to a vagrant or nomad and the art at The Happy Lion has a nomadic, searching quality. The Sundowners is a both foreboding and tender grouping of work: Ker’s sculls and Lin’s psychological portraits of young women contrast with Buckley’s nostalgic sculptural assemblages and Reid’s urban portraits. While each artist takes a distinctly different approach to image making, each uses unconventional materials, like duct tape, matchsticks, pushpins, or magnifying glasses, to create illusionistic landscapes. The Sundowners will continue through December 22.

Glasgow-born painter Kaye Donachie bases her work on found imagery and film footage of rebellious members of counter-culture groups. The work directly confronts power structures and the dynamics of social groups to reveal patterns found in cultural references that have become a part of a collective consciousness. The artist also manipulates these references so that they operate as a narrative, building connections between the past and the present. Donachie is a graduate of the Royal College of Art in London and attended both the Hochschule der K√ºnste (H.D.K) in Berlin and the University of Central England, Birmingham. She currently lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions include “Monte Verita” at Maureen Paley Gallery and Peres

Projects, Los Angeles, and “Never Learn Not To Love” at the Artists Space in New York.

Recently on view in the Scion Installation art space in Culver City’s Arts District in Los Angeles were works by Mark Mothersbaugh. The new 4500 square ft. warehouse space held Mothersbaugh’s custom-printed rugs in an exhibition titled “Rugs During Wartime and Peacetime.” Mothersbaugh recent spoke about his new works, time with the band DEVO, and making art today with ex-fashion & textile designer-turned-gallery owner; Freddi Cerasoli. Read article below.

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Brazilian artist Jorge Mendes has created a group of work titled “Tide” for the Dennis Anderson Gallery, Belgium. It took place on the Saint Annake Strand, on Antwerps Linkerover, where the tide rose so high that part of the work was blown across the Schelde and landed in the gallery. What’s left of the work will be on view in the gallery until Jan 19. The title, “Tide”, is a reference to the unstoppable flow of water around the world; it’s also a play on words for the Flemish word for time, “Tijd”. The work explores the difficulties an emigrant faces trying to find his place in a strange land and nature vs. civilization, ecological issues, and arts place in society.

Young Toronto-based painter Shauna Born has gained critical acclaim for her figurative paintings which intimately feature the artist’s friends and acquaintances. Her quietly composed works focus mainly on the humanistic and expressive qualities of her subject’s face and hands. Born renders each character with great painterly attention, formally constructing the surface to reveal a ghostly quality. Through these works, the artist is able to explore society’s idealized notions and obsession with youth, glamour and beauty. Born was represented by Katherine Mulherin Gallery in the Aqua Art Miami at Aqua Hotel last week. Other solo exhibitions include “This Pretty Face” and “Stomach” both at the Le Gallery in Toronto. The artist is a graduate of Ontario College of Art and Design (OCAD).