“Bring the War Home” is an exhibition presented by QED in Los Angeles and the Elizabeth Dee Gallery in New York, organized by Drew Heitzler, artist and co-founder of Champion Fine Art, a two-year gallery project of 21 artist-curated exhibitions. The title of the exhibition not only refers to the current military situation in Iraq and abroad but goes further to reveal truths about the current social, political and economic state of affairs that drive the art world. The purchasing of art is a luxury and is most often held by an elite concentration of patrons, who, by default, benefit from President Bush’s tax cuts and the luxury of life in the top income bracket. As a result of an art world dominated by market concerns, many shows are thought to be too conservative and safe and are actually self-censored by the artists themselves as a means of achieving greater sales. The artists chosen for this exhibition understand the paradoxical position from which they operate and carefully consider art created for profit and art made for the uncompromising idea. Countless artists will present new work in both exhibitions that investigates these ideas, including Craig Kalpakjian, whose image is shown above.

Currently on view at the James Harris Gallery in Seattle is “Dark Matters,” new works by Rashid Johnson. The artist creates work through a variety of different media such as photography, video, sculpture and painting, all centered on ideas of race, identity and sexuality found in contemporary culture. For “Dark Matters,” the artist is exhibiting the large-scale photographs of a nude white woman that hangs opposite a photo of a famous African-American physicist. Both photographs examine notions of identity, race and the art historical roles of portraiture, the female nude and the male gaze. Johnson is currently preparing for solo projects with the 404 Arte Contemporanea in Naples, Italy, as well as the Monique Meloche Gallery in Chicago, in which he is currently featured in a group exhibition, “How do I Look.” The artist is a graduate of the School of the Art Institute and Columbia College, both in Chicago. Recently, Johnson was featured in “The Production of Escapism” at the Indianapolis Museum of Contemporary Art and in the LISTE, The Young Art Fair in Basel, Switzerland.

Recent Boston University graduate Matt Phillips is currently being featured in an exhibition titled “Orderline,” which is organized by Petra Projects and hosted at the Mehr Gallery in New York City. The exhibition unites Phillips’ recent paintings with the textiles and drawings of Pratt Institute graduate Eliza Stamps. Phillips approaches painting through several simultaneous avenues, experimenting with painting as both object and illusion. The artist recently exhibited in the second-annual Boston Young Contemporaries (BYC), a student-run, juried exhibition that features more than 150 new works by MFA and POST-BAC candidates from 11 New England Schools. The artist is originally from Roanoke, Virginia, and received his degree in visual art and art history from Hampshire College, where he will begin teaching as a visiting professor this fall. Click the link below to read the interview with the artist.

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In a current exhibition at the Gagosian Gallery in Beverly Hills, world-renowned conceptual artist Chris Burden is presenting the new show “Yin Yang,” which explores ideas inherent in the complementary principles of duality. The artist, who has a longstanding obsession with machines, motor vehicles and ready-mades, has chosen a 1973 Lotus Europa sports car and an International T6 crawler Bulldozer from his private collection to illustrate his ideas. The Lotus represents the perfect race machine — light weight, fast, but completely impractical — while the Bulldozer is a solid, heavy and otherwise unstoppable machine of duty. Burden will exhibit a series of photographs documenting the vehicles along with the machines themselves. The artist received his B.F.A. from the Pomona College at Claremont, Calif., and is a M.F.A. graduate of the University of California at Irvine. Burden first received international attention for his controversial performance in 1971 titled “Shoot,” in which the artist instructed a friend to shoot him in the arm in a gallery full of people. The artist has since created numerous performances and conceptual projects exhibited internationally in venues such as South London Gallery and the Tate Gallery in London, as well as Magasin 3 in Stockholm, Sweden. Burden began teaching at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1978 and remained a faculty member until his resignation in 2005.

SABER is one of Los Angeles’ leading graffiti writers who had already developed wide notoriety for his omnipresence within the L.A. area when he created in 1997 the world’s largest illegal graffiti piece (a title which he still holds). The solo project was created on a sloping cement bank on the Los Angeles River and can be viewed from a satellite photo. The complete work took the artist 97 gallons of paint and 35 nights to create. The artist grew up in the Glendale, a suburb of Los Angeles, and was introduced to graffiti at age 13. Later, SABER joined the infamous graffiti crews AWR, MSK and The Seventh Letter and began creating public works both legal and illegal worldwide. SABER’s first solo exhibition, “Close Encounters,” is opening this weekend at White Walls Gallery in San Francisco along with a book signing for the artist’s new 168-page monograph, “Mad Society.” The book will be released by Gingko Press and has an in-store release date of Aug. 7.

The video and photographic documentation of Bahamian-born artist Heino Schmid is derived from the artist’s own experiences and immediate environment. By incorporating and recontextualizing found materials, Schmid is able to question the inherent conflicts of social and personal boundaries and how divisions are created by these conflicts. Often, the artist uses elements of performance, which allows the work to contain a distinct narrative. Elements of nature are also used as objects of observation and as environments to contain other works. Schmid studied photography at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) and completed his graduate degree from The Utrecht Graduate School for Visual Art and Design in Utrecht, The Netherlands. The artist has exhibited twice this year with the Popopstudios Gallery in Nassau, The Bahamas, and has recently exhibited with the Universiteitsmuseum in Utrecht, The Netherlands.

David Stephenson’s large-format color photography exhibition “Drawing Time” explored the passage of time within the environment. Representations of the passing natural processes, including human actions of forestry, mining and residential development, mark the environment’s instabilities because of competing value systems. Stephenson’s newest body of work, “Vaults,” is set to open at the Julie Saul Galley Sept. 6. Working the past three years, the artist has recorded gothic architecture in northern European churches and cathedrals. Stephenson’s interest is in the explorations of the sublime through architecture. The artist has created anthropomorphic designs by using diptychs and triptychs that reference naves, crossings, apses and choirs. Stephenson received his B.A. in art history and his B.F.A. from the University of Colorado. He then went on to get his M.A. and M.F.A. from the University of New Mexico. The artist later moved to Australia where he received his doctorate in philosophy from University of Tasmania, which is where he now teaches contemporary and historical perspectives on art, with a concentration on photographic practice and theory. Stephenson also has an article in CIRCA Art Magazine.