New paintings by New York artist Jane Fine are currently on view this month with Pierogi in Leipzig, Germany, in her show “Skirmish.” Fine has continued an investigation into armed conflict with scenes of tanks, barbed wire and trenches, created from pools of acrylic paint and marker. Each painting exists between figuration and abstraction and embodies an equal obscurity between painting and drawing, in a figure and ground relation. The absurdity found within the painting is an apparent mirroring of the U.S. occupation in Iraq, offering commentary and visual relief from the bombardment of the typical images of war that are received through news stations. Fine is a graduate of Harvard University, and she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Fine is a recipient of the New York Foundation for the Arts fellowship and has received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant. The artist has also completed residencies with Millay Colony for the Arts in Austerlitz, New York, and Cite Internationale des Artes in Paris.

San Francisco-based artist Val Britton constructs and integrates maps with other referenced imagery such as freeways, billboard scaffolding and road signs. The artist uses this process to navigate her past, charting memories and creating a personal record through symbols and metaphors. The artist’s laborious process is created completely by hand, fusing the media of printmaking, collage, painting and drawing and fiber arts within a single composition. Britton is a graduate of the California College of the Arts in San Francisco and is currently an affiliate artist at the Headlands Center for the Arts in Sausalito, Calif. This year, Britton exhibited “Time Lines” at Mina Dresden Gallery and “Near and Far” with 301 Bocana Gallery, both in San Francisco.

South African artist William Kentridge produces works that exist somewhere between film, drawing and theater and sometimes as a combination of all three. Kentridge’s drawings and stop-motion videos often have a subtle but reflectively political undertone, investigating the cultural dualities of South Africa and the artist’s birth city of Johannesburg. Using the reductive medium of charcoal with only a small amount of blue or red chalk, Kentridge is effectively able to portray narratives while allowing the drawing process to be revealed by erasing and redrawing the object on the same sheet of paper. Since the late nineties, Kentridge has exhibited with museums worldwide. In 2004, the Metropolitan Museum in New York presented a solo show of the artist’s work, which was followed by a premiere of Mozart’s Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute) in 2005 at the Theatre de La Monnaie in Brussels, with Kentridge as the director. The artist had perhaps his largest exhibition to date at the Musee d’art Contemporain in Montreal, and he received a project commission from the Deutsche Bank Guggenheim in Berlin the same year.

The sculptures and installations of Belgian artist Fred Eerdekens explore light and language through manipulated materials. The artist investigates connections between images and language as he transforms constructed objects into words. The artist projects light onto carefully organized objects to create small phrases within the shadow. Eerdekens uses a variety of materials to achieve this, including artificial trees, plants, piles of clothing and household goods to extend the direct relationship between the object and language. The artist is represented by Tache Levy Gallery in Brussels and Spencer Brownstone in New York. Recently, Eerdekens exhibited with Galerie Grita Insam in Vienna and MuHKA in Antwerp.

Japanese artist Mariko Mori creates a variety of sculpture and photographic work that explores ideas and symbols related to the self and the connection with others. The artist’s work addresses the issues of Eastern and Western individualism within a unified society and the notion of a collective consciousness. Mori uses images and characters to serve as a model for transcending the boundaries of nation, culture and ethnicity. Collective mentality and the spirituality in mass culture are also of interest to the New York-based artist as depicted in her 1999 installation “Dream Temple” at the Royal Academy of Arts in London. Mori attended the Independent Study Program at the Whitney Museum and is a graduate of the Chelsea College of Art in London. Recent exhibitions include “Art Unlimited” at the Fair of Basel in Switzerland and “Wave UFO” at the Venice Biennale.

Video, photography and sculptural installations are only a few of the vehicles that carry the ideas of Los Angeles-based artist Skylar Haskard. In a recent exhibition with the Anna Helwing Gallery in Los Angeles, the artist presented Octagonal Erection, a structure that revolves around other works and acts as a set for a multi-channel video. Some elements of the video depict the artist as an astronaut inside the structure who is repairing and building it from the inside as he scans the apparent outward universe. Haskard overloads most of his installations with information, challenging the viewer in their ability to take in all that the work has to offer. The artist’s constructed works contain a variety of found and re-contextualized materials, making use of many low-cost and accessible resources. Haskard is an MFA graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) and attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Drawing. Haskard also received his BFA from the Glasgow School of Art. This year, the artist will exhibit with Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, Scotland.

Chris Ballantyne‘s paintings, drawings and sculptural installations are an examination of suburban space. Ballantyne’s inspiration is drawn from the universalities of his different neighborhood homes. Ideas of land boundaries, manipulated space and economic design are developed out of observations from a variety of urban and rural settings. Ballantyne’s works are focused on architecture and landscape design and often explore complex relationships between individuals and their surroundings. Ballantyne received his M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the San Francisco Art Institute. Recent exhibitions include a self-titled show with the Cheekwood Museum of Art in Nashville, Tenn., and “Dream of New Jersey” at the DCKT Contemporary in New York. The artist has exhibited in Los Angeles and Berlin with the Peres-Projects, and, last year, he was featured in the 2006 California Biennial at the Orange County Museum of Art in Newport Beach, Calif.