Andrew Guenther is an American artist who lives in New York. Born and raised in Wheaton, Illinois, his work deals with the concepts of the evolution of the self, life and spirituality, and  the evolution of culture. Guenther’s work will appear in a group show entitled MIE: A Portrait by 35 Artists at Freight and Volume, curated by Nick Lawrence and Mie Iwatsuki. The opening will be on Saturday, January 21 from 6 – 8 p.m.

Craigie Horsfield is a British artist who works with photography, video, sound, and installation. He recently added tapestry to his repertoire, using imagery from his photography and film stills. His work can be seen at his upcoming show at Marvelli Gallery, 526 W. 26 St., NYC, opening February 2.

The Poetry Club Art Space is a new underground gallery in the basement of a Bed-Stuy apartment, open to all mediums of art, performance, music, and catering specifically to young and emerging artists. Curated by Melissa Godoy Nieto, in collaboration with María J. Baez and Liliana Zúñiga from Mexico City, their current exhibition, No Sombrero, focuses on the interplay between embracing Mexican culture and the pursuit of contemporary life. All the works all use a Jacob’s ladder toy, commonplace in Mexican households, as their canvas and are all functional. A selection of the 70 works on view are shown here.

New York based painter Jay Gaskill creates wildly hypnotic paintings that bring together abstraction, pop culture, and design. By combining colors that are harmonious or perfectly ill-fitting, his pristine paint handling allow the images to keep you moving through them at multitude of speeds, triggering emotional associations or sonic echoes. He will be exhibiting at Hunter College’s Times Square Gallery as part of the Fall 2011 Thesis Exhibition.

As our fifth guest blogger, artist Mathew Cerletty presents the highly absorbed and abstracted paintings of Italian realist painter Domenico Gnoli. Gnoli, who passed away at age 37, was mostly overlooked before his death in 1970. Though he still remains a somewhat obscure Post-War Italian painter, a few of his paintings have trickled into the auction houses, widening the audience for his work. Both artists share a hyper-focus on seemingly banal subject matter, Mathew’s own paintings can be seen at his first solo show, Susan, on view at Algus Greenspon, 71 Morton Street, NYC, through December 17.

German painter Neo Rauch’s current show at David Zwirner titled Heilstätten,  roughly translates to “a place of healing”. At the center of the show stands a bronze Athena-like figure, arm outstretched, carrying an owl, chest eerily buldging with the heads of men. The same woman, painted as a fountain at the center of a town square, is hidden in a much larger painting,  easily overlooked in the complex mapping of ochre walls, lavender coated men collapsing, and towering trees. The woman-with-owl motif presents itself a third time in one of the show’s largest painting titled Aprilnacht or April Night, where two figures, one male, one female, both hold and examine large ominous birds. Only his is a fragment, a lone head; hers is complete. Her hand, clothed in a green sleeve, five fingers outstretched with the quiet command with which a mother would hold a baby, is placed, curiously, at the dead center of the painting. Heilstätten will be on view until December 17 at David Zwirner Gallery, 525 W. 19 St., NYC.

Brian Sensebe is an independent art-director and painter based in New York.

Ayala Serfaty is an Israeli designer. Her intricate and beautiful creations are as much scientific as they are artistic, and utilize the most advanced green and sustainable technology. A selection of her light sculptures and her new furniture line are on display at the Cristina Grajales Gallery, 10 Greene St., NYC, through December 23.

As our fourth Guest Contributor, we invited the curatorial team from AD Projects to contribute a post. AD Projects will be presenting an evening of videos on Tuesday October 24 from 7 to 9 pm, at the Big Screen Plaza. In the spirit of film they have put together the following:

Last year, AD Projects coined the term “caméra vivant” to describe narrative, non-documentary camera-based artwork that both captures a performative act and is created with the intention of being experienced by an audience as a video or photograph. We don’t often go around inventing terms, and we deliberated for quite a while before deciding that the concept deserved to be named. We presented Camera Vivant, an exhibition of work by emerging and mid-career artists, at the Central Utah Art Center in February 2011. These images explore this subcategory of new media where performance and the camera, both still and moving, intersect.

(above images: Lewis Carroll. Saint George and the Dragon, 1875. Kuba Bakowski, Ursa Major, Bobrek-Centrum Coal Mine, 2008. Gregory Crewdson, Untitled, 2001. Elodie Pong, Video Still from Je Suis Une Bombe, 2006. Narcissiter, Video still from Mannequin, 2007.  Robert ParkeHarrison, from the series titled Architect’s Brother.  Bec Stupak, Video still from Flaming Creatures (Blind Remake), 2006. Lucas Samaras, Photo-Transformation, 1976)