Opening today at the Heaven Gallery in Chicago is the fourth-annual Scion Installation Art Tour exhibition titled “It’s A Beautiful World.” This year includes new works based around the show’s theme from more than 30 featured artists nationally, such as James Jean, Dalek and Jeff Soto, whose image is above. The exhibition, which will be featured countrywide in nine cities, kicks off this weekend and travels through next March. The show will have work completed in the mediums of painting, photography, sculpture and collage, an element of the show that Scion changes each year. Hosting galleries include RHYS Gallery in Boston, Mass., Gallery Lombardi in Austin, Texas, and Andenken Gallery in Denver, Colo. The final tour stop and auction will be in Los Angeles at the new Scion Installation L.A. Space in the Culver City Arts District. All of the artwork will be auctioned off to the public, and 100 percent of the proceeds will go toward art-related charities.

Pakistani-born artist Asma Ahmed Shikoh grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, in a society constrained by tradition that was later subjected to rapid changes because of the impact of globalization. The artist uses mixed media to combine popular icons, cityscapes and social issues. When American fast food had just arrived in Pakistan, McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken became icons in the imagery of her artwork, taxing the otherwise helpless ideals of nationalism in Pakistan. She now lives in New York City where her work includes Arabic metro maps, iPods, Dora the Explorer characters and yellow police tape. To highlight the role of individual practices in the shaping of a unique national identity, her solo show “Liberated” at Ceres Gallery in Chelsea included personal contributions of more than 100 Muslim women across America who contributed by mailing one of their hijabs (the head scarf adorned by Muslim women). Shikoh attended Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi and has shown at Queens Museum of Art in Queens and Exit Art in New York City.

On view now at the Redux Contemporary Art Center in Charleston, S.C., is “Tentacle House,” new works by Korean artist Si Jae Byun. Byun was the 2007 artist in residence with Redux, completing the program only five days ago. The work of Byun often revolves around the artist’s childhood experiences, focusing on inner conflict from social experiences, which are communicated to the viewer through the interactivity of her pieces. Using characterized images of human organs and videos that incorporate the artist’s own body, Byun creates vibrant youthful works using multiple materials to achieve her diverse ideas. Byun currently lives and works in New York City. She received a BFA and MFA from the Kookmin University in Seoul, Korea, and has just completed her second MFA from the School of the Visual Arts in New York City. The artist has exhibited internationally, including “Da-Da-Da-Da-Da” with the Shin Art Museum and installations with the Seoul Art Center and the Seoul Museum of Art in Korea. Additional group exhibitions include “kinaesthetics” at Visual Arts Gallery in New York City and “Dual Scenery” at Artcom Center in New Jersey. To read an interview with the artist, please click below.

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Bay Area artist Michelle Blade creates paintings that deal with social hierarchy and its absence in times of group accomplishments. Moments of trust within peer groups are captured amid pools of color, all contained on large sheets of light and fragile paper. By capturing ideas and activities held within a collective conscious, Blade is able to highlight a society’s failures and triumphs as it strives to move toward social equality and group connectivity. Blade was born in Los Angeles and is currently living and working in San Francisco while attending the M.F.A. program at the California College of the Arts. The artist has been featured in two solo exhibitions this year with Motel Gallery in Portland and Parklife in San Francisco. Blade has had original artwork featured in The New York Times Magazine and Flavorpill, both printed this year.

New York City-born artist KR has revolutionized traditional elements of graffiti and street art by placing his primary focus on the process. KR moved from New York City to San Francisco in the ’90s to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. With three primary areas of focus — application, documentation and material — KR became a dominant influence on the Bay Area graffiti scene. The artist invented and patented his own form of ink called “KRINK,” which is now sold internationally and is renowned for its opaque silver color and its ability to drip like no other ink. Recently at Eyebeam, an art and technology center in New York City that promotes digital research and experimentation and contains the Graffiti Research Lab, KR presented “Open City, tools for public action,” a painting performance and installation that demonstrated KR’s infamous techniques. The artist is affiliated with the Wooster Collective and was featured in the book “The Art of Getting Over” by artist Stephen Powers, also known as ESPO.

Artists Jan Braumer and Philipp Moll are presenting new works in “Noetik,” an exhibition at the Galerie Emmanuel Post in Leipzig, Germany. The exhibition, which is on view through August, features painting and installation from the artists. The paintings of Braumer depict interiors that are rendered from fragmented memories that incorporate a false use of lighting and place an emphasis on artificiality and the absence of humans. The installations of Moll are constructed out of simple materials that are formed into hut-like shapes and a variety of other forms that express their reluctance to be discarded. Moll’s work also calls into question ideas of imperfection, cliche and falsification. Both artists were born in 1970 in Nuremberg, Germany, and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Nuremberg. Braumer received a scholarship from the Cite des Arts in Paris (2003) and has exhibited four times in LICHTFELD in Basel, Switzerland. Moll co-founded the Kulturvereins Winterstein e.V., and received a scholarship from the Bavarian Ministry of State for Science, Research and the Arts in 2005.

Within the current exhibition “Handcrafted Optimism” at the Tony Wight Body Builder and Sportsman Gallery in Chicago is the work of three young abstract painters — Daniel Hesidence, Aliza Nisenbaum and Eric Sall. The exhibit, which is curated by John Henderson, an artist and recent graduate of the School of the Art Institute in Chicago, focuses primarily on the artists’ attention and exploration of the materiality of paint. By using the medium’s physicality, the artists are able to experiment more freely with the formal concerns of the painting, such as color, form and composition, by eluding concrete concepts and opening the painting to a wider interpretation. Through this approach to painting, the artists’ work remains handcrafted and optimistic, just as the title states. Hesidence, whose image is shown above, received his M.F.A. from Hunter College in New York City (2001) and has exhibited with Feature Inc. and John Connelly Presents. Nisenbaum is a graduate of the School of the Visual Arts in Chicago (2005), and Eric Sall received his M.F.A. from Virginia Commonwealth University (2006). Both have exhibited across the U.S. with works at places like ATM Gallery in New York City and the Shane Campbell Gallery in Chicago.