Gerwald Rockenschaub has been placed as one of the most internationally known Austrian artists working today. Since the early 1980s, the artist has created a complex array of works from computer animation to sculptural objects and painting. Continuity is found in the artist’s work through his reductive imagery and mix of architecture, discourse and design. The artist is also a well-known techno DJ, allowing his experience with club culture to emerge and influence his works. Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac in Salzburg, Austria, is currently presenting “My Machines,” which features new works by Rockenschaub. Recently, the artist had a comprehensive retrospective at the Vienna Museum of Modern Art, which helped to fully launch his career. Just a few weeks ago, Rockenschaub received the Fred Thieler Award for painting at the Berlinische Galerie, and, last month, the artist presented a site-specific installation at documenta 12 in Kassel, Germany.

Artist Mike Giant has reached international acclaim recently for his versatile artistic ability that spans graffiti, design and tattoo. Giant was born in Upstate New York and grew up in New Mexico. After studying architecture, he moved to San Francisco to work for Think Skateboards. In 2002, Giant traveled to Tokyo with fellow artists

Sam Flores and Bigfoot to exhibit in a show presented by Fifty24SF and Beams T, and, in 2003, that artist founded the now infamous “Stay Gold” tattoo shop. Giant is currently exhibiting in the Fecal Face 7.5 Year Anniversary Show held at the Minna Gallery in San Francisco. He has upcoming exhibitions with Monster Children Gallery in Sydney, Australia, and White Walls Gallery in San Francisco and the Magda Danysz Gallery in Paris.

The Gagosian Gallery‘s Madison Avenue space in New York City is currently presenting

“With Full Consent,” works dated 2004-2007 by artist Jill Magid. The exhibition continues Magid’s investigation of the emotional and philosophical links between authority, protective institutions and the individual. The artist has staged and edited scenes that were captured by police using public CCTV surveillance cameras, using the footage to “seek the potential softness and intimacy of their (police) technologies, the fallacy of their omniscient point of view …” Magid is a graduate of science in visual studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., and completed an artist-in-residence program at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam. The artist, who now lives and works in N.Y.C. and Amsterdam, has completed major solo exhibitions with the Tate Liverpool (2004) and the Centre D’Art Santa Monica in Barcelona (2007).

Outlining sidewalk stains, skid marks and graffiti on the streets on New York City, Los Angeles and Las Vages is just a portion of what goes into the work of L.A.-based artist Ingrid Calame. What may look like a Pollock-style painting at first glance is more a method of controlling shapes and outcomes than personal expression. After the painstaking process of tracing each found stain, Calame returns to the studio and begins to cut out the forms and arrange them in what she calls constellations. She then creates a final tracing of the pattern in order to transfer them onto an aluminum panel as the underdrawing for a final painting. For her first solo show at Deitch Projects in 2000, Calame included three elements of her project: colored pencil drawings, enamel on aluminum paintings and an excerpt of a large constellation. Calame received her BFA from Purchase College in New York and her MFA from California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, Calif. The artist will be showing at the James Cohan Gallery in September and the Indianapolis Museum of Art in November. She also has a show scheduled at Galerie Schmidt Maczollek in Cologne, Germany, in 2008 and has served as a studio assistant for Harriet Schorr and Chuck Close.

Artist Alison Elizabeth Taylor is known for creating biting social critiques executed through the exquisite craft of marquetry, or wood veneer inlay. Taylor, who is a recent MFA graduate of Columbia University School of Art, creates narratives that offer insight into America by investigating the distractions of contemporary culture such as sex, video games and luxury SUVs. The artist’s combination of marquetry, often associated with luxury and the reign of Louis XIV, and the ideologies of American life, further underscores the opulence of our time. This year the artist presented “The Powder Room,” an exhibition with Track 16 Gallery in Los Angeles, and last year she exhibited with the James Cohan Gallery in New York City. Taylor has received awards from the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Program and the Herbert S. Germaise Fellowship for painting and drawing.

Conceptual artist and designer Andrea Zittel will be speaking on cultural imperatives and market forces in a public discussion between artists/designers Bruce Tomb, Mike Kuniavsky and Donald Fortesue held at The Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif., this afternoon at 4 p.m. Zittel was the 2007 Headlands Artist in Residence, producing new work that further explores her interest in the intersection of sculpture, design, architecture and technology. The artist is known to address all levels of habitation in contemporary society, consistently evaluating the most effective and sustaining methods of creation and use. Zittel is influenced by modernist design, reducing all elements of her creations to necessity. As a result, the artist continuously changes her own home to suit her changing interests and needs. She founded A-Z Administrative Services, a one-woman organization that develops a variety of products such as clothing, furniture and even food, which has been called “an ongoing endeavor to better understand human nature and the social construction of needs.” Zittel received her BFA from the San Diego State University (1988) and her MFA from the Rhode Island School of Design (1990). The artist has shown her works internationally with exhibitions at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMoMA), Venice Biennale and the Whitney Biennial. Her current traveling mid-career retrospective, “Andrea Zittel: Critical Space,” has been featured in the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and several other major museums in North America.

In an exhibition ending just last week with the Peres Projects in Los Angeles, artist Chris Ballantyne presented “Existing Outside of Another.” Ballantyne, who was born in Mobile, Ala., focuses much of his works on mundane architectural structures such as parking lots, old swimming pools and billboards. A dominate characteristic found in his recent work is a strong and eerie glowing natural light that seems to reference the glow of urban artificial lighting. Ballantyne, a previous DailyServing feature, moved around the country in his youth and has since remained influenced by suburban developments, interstate highways and the ideas of ownership and trespassing. Ballantyne’s paintings, drawings and sculptural installations have been exhibited in “Out of Place” with the Santa Barbara Contemporary Art Forum in California and “Body of Water” at Cheekwood Museum’s Temporary Contemporary gallery in Nashville, Tenn. The artist received his MFA in painting and drawing from the San Francisco Art Institute (2002) and has since been featured in Art Forum and Artweek magazines.