Opening at the end of this month is the exhibition “Saved with water,” by Finnish artist

Susanna Majuri. Galerie Adler will present the work in Majuri’s first solo exhibition in

New York. The artist’s photographs are rooted in narritive and usually depict an interaction between subject and landscape. When speaking of her work the artist has stated, “I follow the logic of colours when I combine places, people and clothes. To me, the most important quality of photography is its capability to convey emotions. I want to start secret love affairs with places.” Each scenario is loaded with psychological possibilities and symbolism that successfully commingles fiction with fact. Majuri currently lives and works in Helsinki, Finland, and has exhibited in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, Germany and France. She is a graduate of the Turku Arts Academy (2004), and received her M.A. in photography from the University of Art and Design in Helsinki. In 2005, the artist won the photography prize Gras Savoye Award in Arles, France.

“Figurative Pakistan” is a new group exhibition scheduled to open this week at Aicon Gallery in London. The exhibition features the work of four prominent Pakistani artists, Ijaz ul Hassan, Ahmed Ali Manganhar, Sana Arjumand and Naiza Khan, whose work is pictured above. Collectively the group is able to address several of the social, national and political issues that have impacted Pakistan over the past several decades. All of the artists, with the exception of Ijaz ul Hassan, are of the same generation. Hassan, born 1940, has made major contributions to the development of Pakistani contemporary art for this political works which in 1970 caused his arrest and solitary confinement. Naiza Khan, has exhibited worldwide, and continues to explore society’s view of woman and the female body through both Islamic and Western perspectives. Ahmed Ali Manganhar, has taken up the genre of “Company” painting, from the era of the East India Company, and Sana Arjumand investigates the role of religion vs. culture and what it means to be young, female and Pakistani today.

Stepping into the Perry Rubenstein Gallery in New York City is a little like stumbling upon a musical shipwreck. Diana Al-Hadid has used plaster, fiberglass, wood, polystyrene, and cardboard to create a romantically ramshackled and dilapidated sculpture, “Record of a Mortal Universe,” which is based on the phenomenon of a hero’s collapse. Sourcing religion, architecture, and physics, Al-Hadid’s pointed and varied references unfold within the work, from a grand staircase that leads to a decomposing Greek temple to an upside-down vaulted arch and melted pipe-organ pedals. A gramophone extends through a ring of decrepit temple columns and crumbling gothic buttresses, making the sculpture seem as though it has appeared, tattered and torn, from the background of a painting by Hieronymus Bosch.

“Record of a Mortal Universe” also explores gravitational collapse, or the phenomenon of a massive body collapsing under its own weight. The sculpture sets up an engaging dichotomy in that the foundation’s materials, cardboard and melting resin, seem tenuous and unable to support such a gigantic mass. Yet the reference to Greek architecture and ruins suggest that this is somehow a solid structure that has been around for an untold number of years.

Diana Al-Hadid is a Brooklyn-based, Syrian-born artist who graduated from the Virginia Commonwealth University in 2005. She participated in the Skowhegan residency this past summer, and her work will be at the Perry Rubenstein Gallery until the 24th of November.

Lauren Bon has turned Ace Gallery‘s large Wilshire space into an intensely sensorial experience, filling it with raw honey, earth, carcasses, bees, corn, cotton and wood. Bon conceived of the exhibition, “Bees and Meat,” as a sculptural symphony that joins decay and growth. In one small gallery, a lamb carcass hangs on the pole of a fountain that regurgitates slow streams of honey. In another gallery, the walls are covered with stacks of bent wood, twine and cotton. A third gallery has been transformed into a majestic, knee-deep sea of corn kernels. Because of its scale, the exhibition took longer than expected to install. Initially scheduled to open on October 20th, it opened on October 27th and will run through January 20th. Lauren Bon, who lives and works in Los Angeles, has been making land-focused work since the early 1990s and she became known as the “Not a Cornfield” artist after she transformed 32 acres of Los Angeles’ industrial Brownfield into a cornfield in 2005. Bon graduated from Princeton in 1984 and received her Masters in Architecture from MIT in 1989. She has shown at the Freud Museum in London, the Santa Monica Museum in West Los Angeles, and Boston’s Miller Block Gallery.

Opening this evening at the Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York City will be the second solo exhibition of new sculpture by California-based artist Liz Craft. The show includes five large-scale all white, cube-based sculptures which contain surface reliefs, cut outs and protrusions. While at first glance these works seem to be rooted in a minimalist aesthetic, Craft continues to infuse subculture iconography in to her works that references hippies, bikers and new age characteristics. The cubes double as architectural structures which house the other elements including Godzilla, palm trees, cushions, blooming vases, and floating figures. Craftsmanship is also a quality that is consistent through the artist’s work as she meticulously constructs each sculpture. Craft currently lives and works in Los Angeles, and has exhibited in the 2004 Whitney Biennial and “Eden’s Edge: Fifteen LA Artists” at the Hammer Museum in 2007. The artist also recently had her first monograph published by JRP Ringier/Halle fur Kunst which contains an introduction and interview by Bettina Steinbrugge, and essays by arts writer Bruce Hainley.

In his eighth solo exhibition with the Andrea Rosen Gallery in Los Angeles, German-artist Wolfgang Tillmans is currently presenting a new series of photographic images titled “Atair.” Tillmans continues his investigation in the nature of photography through the reinterpretation of portraits, still life and landscape imagery. Tillmans equally concerns himself with exhibition strategies that challenge traditional notions of display within a particular space. When speaking of his work the artist has stated “Accepting the insolvable nature of certain questions whilst continuing to research relentlessly is, for me, a viable way to engage reality.” While the artist’s content can change radically from piece to piece, what remains consistent is Tillman’s ability to elevate mundane images to offer new insight through shifts in scale, layout and presentation. The artist has exhibited world-wide with recent exhibitions at P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City, Helsinki-Festival, Taidehalli, Helsinki, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago and UCLA Hammer Museum, Los Angeles. Next year, the artist will exhibit at the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City, Mexico.

Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago is currently presenting a solo exhibition of new photographs titled “Security” by Minneapolis-based artist Paul Shambroom. The show leads the viewer through a reductive documentation of various power structures that represent the current state of democracy. The photos are taken at different facilities financed by the Department of Homeland Security. Shambroom’s work is frozen somewhere between reality and fiction, depicting scenes that are isolated and sterile. Previous work for the artist has investigated democracy through civic duties being carried out in municipal buildings across Middle America. Shambroom has exhibited though out the US and Europe with solo exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Photography in Chicago, Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and Tanya Bonakdar Gallery in New York City. The artist has a mid-career survey exhibition with full catalog that is being organized by a three-museum consortium (Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Weisman Art Museum, Univ. of Minnesota, Minneapolis, University Art Museum, Cal. State, Long Beach) and was recently awarded support by the Warhol Foundation.