Performance artist Andrea Fraser has long been acclaimed as provocateur, leading a unique style of performance art coined as “institutional critique.” The artist has conducted many famous performances, such as the 1989 work “Museum Highlights,” where the artist posed as a Museum tour guide under her stage name Jane Castleton at the Philadelphia Museum. During the piece the artist walked different groups around the institution using grandiose verbiage often associated with overly intellectualized critics, art historians and gallery directors. Perhaps her most controversial work to date is “Untitled” (2002) a videotape performance where Fraser had a 60 minute sexual encounter with a prominent art collector through a contractual agreement. The artist proposed the piece to the Friedrich Petzel Gallery and asked them to facilitate an agreement between the artist and the patron in which the patron participated in the production of contemporary art through a sexual act in a hotel room. In the end, the patron paid $20,000 for the work in the form of an unedited videotape of the performance, and one other copy went on view at the Friedrich Petzel Gallery. The New York Times Magazine reviewed the work and reflected both its art historical position and its opposition by many in the New York community.

On view now at John Connelly Presents is the solo exhibition “Too Much, Too Little, Too Late,” by New York-based artist Scott Hug. For the show, Hug is presenting a new body of paintings, sculpture, video and text-based work that continues his interest in the media, pop culture and politics. The artist appropriates images from media sources like Time Magazine and The New York Post in order to highlight the public’s obsession with celebrity news. One series contains headshots of celebrities taken from the New York Post’s Page Six gossip columns, reduced to a two color screen print and coupled with self help phrases such as, “Get Well Soon” and “Too Much Stress.” Hug received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and a Masters in communication design from Pratt Institute. The artist has exhibited with Deitch Projects, D’Amelio Terras, Elizabeth Dee Gallery, and The Kitchen in NYC. Hug appeared in a review in the New York Times which featured his collaborative exhibition with Michael Magnan at John Connelly Presents in 2004.

New York-based photographer Dan Eckstein works as a documentarian, simultaneously creating editorial and fine art imagery. In a recent project “Picture China,” Eckstein traveled over 10,000km documenting the rapid growth of a contemporary China over an eight week period. The artist visited both metropolitan and rural areas, capturing the people and places of that country and the issues that impact their life. Other photographic series include, “West 4th Street Handball,” an investigation of New York City’s popular street sport, and “Air Guitar,” exploring the fringe culture of air guitar contests which have recently developed as an international sport conducted in front of large crowds. Eckstein received a BA in Fine Arts from Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY in 2002, and currently lives and works as independent editorial photographer in NYC. When not traveling, he teaches photography for Common Ground, a non-profit arts organization in NYC.

Cleveland-based artist Michael Dotson is interested in the appearance of things, especially through the lens of fashion and architecture. Dotson looks at how individuals and spaces become dressed up and made to compensate or fight against an otherwise mundane body or landscape. Created under the principle that fascination comes out of boredom, Dotson has taken structures such as sports arenas as a point of departure to explore the aesthetic value of these spaces over their function. Through this process, the sports field environments become a seemingly arbitrary space divided by linear patterns. Last year, the artist graduated from the Cleveland Institute of Art which has been followed by exhibitions at Spaces Gallery and Frontroom Gallery in Cleveland and Playspace Gallery in San Francisco.

Los Angeles-based artist Natalia Fabia will present “Hooker Safari: A Glamorous Jungle Pageant,” a solo exhibition of new works with the Corey Helford Gallery in L.A. The artist’s realist figurative style of painting, mixed with the humorously seductive women pictured in the jungle with wildlife raise interesting questions like, “what are these hookers doing in the jungle?” This over the top imagery will be matched in the exhibition with an exotic vine installation comprised of chandeliers, flowers, and glitter. During the opening, Fabia will debut ‘Hooker Medallions’, a limited edition series of jewelry from the artists ‘Hookerfeathers’ collection. The artist was raised in Southern California and graduated from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. Fabia has been featured in exhibitions at Thinkspace Gallery in Santa Monica and the Shooting Gallery in San Francisco, and has appeared in Angeleno, Juxtapoz, and the New York Arts magazine.

Lawrence Weiner is mounting a new body of work, “As Far As The Eye Can See”, at the Whitney Museum from November 2007 through February 2008. The artist uses words to serve as the raw material for his art. Words are spoken, sung, painted, printed, stamped on coins and manhole covers, put to film, just about anywhere. The text is intended to help people understand their relationship to the objects in their world. Weiner is one of the key figures associated with the emergence and foundations of Conceptual Art and has defined art as “the relationship of human beings to objects and objects to objects in relation to human beings”. Recent solo exhibitions of Weiner’s work have been exhibited at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, D.C., Institute of Contemporary Arts, London, Dia Center for the Arts, New York, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Museum Ludwig, Cologne. Weiner has produced various films and videos, including “Beached, Do You Believe in Water?”, and “Plowman’s Lunch”. Weiner lives in New York and Amsterdam.

New York-based photographer, video, and performance artist Laurel Nakadate has developed a series of ongoing projects that began during her graduate studies at Yale University School of Art in which she involves middle-aged single men in a series of uncomfortable scenarios. The artist’s work successfully mixes voyeurism, awkwardness, and manipulation with ideas of feminism, the male gaze and power. Often she will invite men who hit on her in parking lots, grocery stores and the on the street to come to her apartment or she will go to their homes and ask them to participate in events such as a fake birthday party for her or dancing to Britney Spears songs with a Hello Kitty boombox. More often than not the men, out of desperation, blindly follow Nakadate’s requests to perform in the videos, regardless of how uncomfortable they may be. In another project, the artist, as an adult, dressed in an authentic Girl Scout uniform and went door to door with a secret camera selling countless boxes of cookies, attempting to enter the home of the buyer. Nakadate’s work began as an undergraduate student at School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston when she would document young women at wild parties in the Boston area. Later at Yale, the artist began conducting her projects through video which eventually led to several successful works that drew attention at the 2002 Armory Show in NYC. In 2005, Nakadate presented “Love Hotel and Other Stories,” which was featured in the New York Times and the Village Voice. This was followed by an acclaimed video in the 2005 “Greater New York” exhibition at P.S.1 in NYC. The Believer Magazine conducted an excellent interview with the artist in October of 2006.