The recent works of Los Angeles-based artist Vincent Johnson expound upon his research of the American Cold War Civil Air Defense Program. Johnson focuses on forms related to the mechanics of this period. For example, the artist has a new site-specific sculptural installation currently on view at LAXART in Los Angeles called “Civil Air Defense Project #1.” For this installation, Johnson took the form of a Cold War Chrysler Air Raid Siren that was used in the ’50s to warn the public about upcoming air raids and used the device for formal experimentation and as a deceptive tool to comment on current social, political and military relations. Johnson’s photographic work has been exhibited in museums and art spaces internationally, such as at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA) in Chicago, P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center in New York City and the Adamski Gallery of Contemporary Art in Aachen, Germany. The artist received his M.F.A. from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena (1997) and participated in a collaborative project at the Studio Museum in Harlem.

In the recent “Lost Edge” series, artist Dimitri A. Kozyrev experiments with fragmenting, constructing and rearranging pictorial space. The artist says that the abstracted series is a contemplation on the Avant-garde artists of the early twentieth century Soviet Union, such as Malevich, Rodchenko and Lissitzky. The artist explores the role of these artists and uses the events of that time period to better understand the current state of military and artistic affairs. Kozyrev attended the Ohio State University for his B.F.A. in painting and received his M.F.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara. The artist has completed solo exhibitions at the Gulf Coast Museum of Art in Largo, Florida, the Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles and the Scope Art Fair in New York City. Kozyrev also attended the Art Omi Residency and is the recipient of the Levitan Fellowship at the University of California.

Dysfunctional Americana that uses familiar imagery to tell stories is how Michael Paige Glover describes his new body of work. Glover uses adults and children that are placed against backgrounds of anarchy, destruction and uncertain imagery that he relates to past memories and self-awareness. Pulling inspiration from ’20s to ’50s photos, films, magazines and personal photographs, the artist spends months combining, arranging and decoding metaphors that unravel a specific feeling contained within each piece. In the end, Glover creates personal symbols using iconic imagery that aid in the discovery of his process. After traveling to Vance, France, to apprenticeship alongside Nall Hollis at the N.A.L.L. Art Association and then to Florence, Italy, to study with Andrea Spinelli, Glover received his M.F.A. from the New York Academy of Art. The artist also received a one-month fellowship from the Vermont Studio Center and was recognized by the Queen Museum of Art for the Queen Artist Registry.

In a recent solo exhibition at the Jack Tilton Gallery, French artist Delphine Courtillot created a series of new paintings, gouache on paper, that highlight the fantastic within the ordinary. This was the Amsterdam-based artist’s first solo exhibition in New York City, and she presented all-night scenes that were derived from her own carefully staged photography, often containing somewhat mystical characters such as maids and nuns. The artist allows the camera to possess authorship over the final painting, in that the artist’s marks are driven solely on the information captured in the photo. Coutillot was born in Paris in 1972, and she studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts. The artist has been included in other galleries and exhibitions in the U.S., including works with the Roberts and Tilton Gallery in Los Angeles and The Armory Show in NYC (both 2005). Courtillot has recently completed several international residencies, including the Chinese European Art Center in Xiamen, China, and the United Sardines Factories in Bergen, Norway.

Five female artists working in the mediums of film and photography have been selected for the exhibition “Strange Magic,” on view now at the Luhring Augustine Gallery in New York City. While each of the artist’s ideas varies immensely, they are all unified through their interest in furthering the medium’s formal and expressionistic potential through collection, assembly and manipulation. The photographic works of Anne Collier (whose image is shown above), Liz Deschenes, Amy Granat, Eileen Quinlan and Sara VanDerBeek will be on view until July 28. A review posted in The New York Times Magazine today mentions the show as No. 3 in an article titled “An Afternoon in Chelsea-Which Shows Are Worth The Sweltering Slog?” The exhibition was curated by Natalia Mager Sacasa, director of the Luhring Augustine Gallery.

The OKOK Gallery in Seattle is currently presenting “I Have Been Remembering: Half-Lives & Half-Truths,” new works that include a site-specific installation by Minneapolis-based artist Gregory Euclide. The exhibition is a continuation of the artist’s interest in the implicit psychological layers of landscape and included a live sound performance and composition by Kamran Sadeghi on opening night. The exhibit also contains hundreds of one-inch drawings made from memory during the artist’s trip from Minneapolis to Seattle. The circular drawings are each installed behind a single piece of bubble wrap and then displayed across the gallery walls, eventually breaking down and spreading across the floors. Additional pieces of bubble wrap are injected with water from Euclide’s paintings and various other outside sources. Next year, the artist will receive his M.F.A. from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Recently, Euclide was featured in New American Paintings‘ Midwest Competition, which was curated by Elizabeth Dunbar, the curator of Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. OKOK Gallery conducted an interview with the artist that discusses the ideas and processes of his new work.

Gelitin, the Austrian-based group of four collaborative artists, is participating in the group show “Das Hamsterrad” (the hamster wheel) this year at the Venice Biennale. For the exhibition, Gelitin built a wooden construction of embracing arches that tower in the gallery space. A smaller and slightly less complicated version of the structure was also presented this year with a performance called “Bunter Abend” at Deitch Projects in New York City. These are just a few of the projects that the group has accomplished this year. Others include “The Dig Cunt,” a multi-day performance produced by Creative Time held on Coney Island, and “Das Kakabet,” an exhibition with Galerie Nicola von Senger in Zurich. The artists have been exhibiting together internationally since 1993 and are currently represented by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Paris and Miami and Gagosian Gallery in London, among others. Gelitin was a previous DailyServing feature, included for their 200-foot-long and 20-foot-high pink bunny sculpture constructed in the hills of Artesina, Italy.