In a recent exhibition with the Bellwether Gallery, photographer Tanyth Berkeley presented three major bodies of work — “The Fugitive,” “The Muse” and “The Frequency” — all capturing intimate images of individuals. As with previous series, the artist examines aspects of trangendered women, albinos, street performers and anonymous people. Berkeley’s images are taken in both a snapshot and staged format, and, although the artist captures a wide variety of images, they all embody a shockingly humanist perspective. Ideas of anonymity, individuality and the desire to be noticed through expression are often present in the artist’s work. Berkeley is a recent M.F.A. graduate of Columbia University School of the Arts (2004) and attended the School of the Visual Arts (SVA) in New York (1999). This fall, Berkeley will be included in a three-person exhibition, titled “New Photography,” at the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA).

New York-based sculptor Aaron Spangler creates dark Romanesque-styled wood relief sculptures that marry two and three dimensional qualities. Each work is carved in maple and then painted with black gesso that is covered in powdered graphite. The artist often portrays rural and suburban landscapes of the American

Midwest, some of which contain the images of this own home in Minnesota. Juxtaposed within these would be typical scenes that are images of militias, bunkers and other subversive yet starkly political references. Spangler has recently exhibited with Kantor/Feuer Gallery in Los Angeles and Zach Feuer Gallery in New York. The artist has appeared in several reviews, including two with The New York Times, and he received Best Single-Artist Show by Citypages for his exhibition with the Soap Factory in Minneapolis (2002).

Artist Francis Upritchard’s work titled “Save Yourself” seems to be a constructed reference to b-grade movies, in which the artist has unearthed an ancient tomb below the gallery that contains a mummified figure. However scary this scenario would seem, the mummy is constructed with rags and a glass eye and vibrates, powered by an electric cord visible on the floor. Upritchard derives many of her images and objects from the archived collections of the Pitt River Museum and the Wellcome Collection. Using dark and haunting metaphors, the artist is able to transform her make shift objects that often contain faux-clay pots, medical instruments and animal heads into relics of natural history or odd tourist shop memorabilia. Upritchard was born in New Zealand and now lives and works in London. Recent exhibitions included works with the Andrea Rosen Gallery and Salon 94, both in New York. The artist has also completed an artist in residence with the Camden Arts Centre in London and has exhibited in New Zealand with the Ivan Anthony Gallery and Artspace in Auckland.

Brooklyn-based realist painter David Jon Kassan creates work grounded in a formalist style that captures elements of the figure and multi-layered, textured surfaces. While his subject matter varies, the artist primarily follows the philosophies of the Ashcan School of American Realists. Kassan often mixes the attention of the figure with the surrounding surfaces to create works that simultaneously reference Abstract Expressionism and traditional portraiture. The artist attended the Arts Students League of New York, the British Institute of Florence in Italy and is a B.F.A. graduate of Syracuse University College of Visual and Performing Arts. This year, Kassan is exhibiting in the “Converging Passions” exhibition with Andreeva Gallery in Sante Fe and “The Los Angeles Art Show” at the Barker Hangar in the Santa Monica Airport in Los Angeles.

Currently on view at Ace Gallery in Los Angeles is “VOOM Portraits” by artist Robert Wilson (Feb. 24-April 30). Wilson creates work that is rooted in theater and, as of recently, has been displayed through video on plasma screen televisions. Wilson has captured the images of many famous actors such as Brad Pitt, Johnny Depp and William L. Pope, who is in the image above. Often, the video works move very slowly and test the patience of the viewer, which has led Wilson to be accused of disregarding his audience, while at the same time others have noted this controversy as a successful and challenging element in his work. The use of traditional theater is skewed as he emphasizes choreography and staging over the use of plot and dialogue, which has also been furthered through the artist’s inventive use of sound. Wilson was born in Waco, Texas, and graduated from Pratt Institute in New York (1965), where he currently lives and works. The artist has completed three exhibitions already this year, including works with the Paula Cooper Gallery and Phillips De Pury & Company, both in New York. Wilson has been the recipient of many prestigious awards including the Louise T. Blouin Foundation Award (2005), the Pratt Legends Honoree and the American Innovator Award from the Japan Society in New York.

Currently on view at the Mary Boone Gallery in both the Fifth Avenue and Chelsea locations as well as with Team Gallery in New York are works by premiere French conceptual artist Pierre Bismuth titled “One Size Fits All.” The artist is known for his deconstruction of cultural products and reconstitution of material in which his subjects undergo to reveal the structures of mass media products, the mechanisms of visibility and systems of name recognition and context. At Mary Boone in Chelsea, the artist has taken the exhibition’s ad in Artforum and Art in America and has blown up the image to a mass scale in order to have the gallery present the magazine as opposed to the normal construct of having the magazine present the gallery. Even the works of other gallery ads are presented on the back and titled “The Flip Side of My Work.” Bismuth lives and works in London and Brussels. Last year, the artist exhibited works at the Santa Monica Museum of Art and with Galerie Erna Hecey and Galerie Jan Mot in Brussels. Bismuth was recently featured in “Space Redefined in Chelsea” in the Art Review section of The New York Times.

“Secrets and Cymbals, Smoke and Scissors (My Friend Dash’s Wall in the Future)” is work by conceptual artist Dan Colen that is a life-size recreation of the interior wall of a friend. In Colen’s version, each element attached to the wall — every sticker, newspaper, photo and hand-written note — has been illusionistically painted by the artist. Colen extends this process of painting into other works that equally underscore value in the mundane and familiar through his painstakingly realist application. Colen is a graduate of the Rhode Island School of Design (2001). Recently, the artist exhibited “No Me” with the Peres Projects in Berlin and the work above with the Deitch Projects in New York. Notable group exhibitions include “Fantastic Politics” at the National Museum of Art, Architecture and Design in Oslo, Norway, and USA Today at the Royal Academy of Arts in London.