Inspired by his mother, a consummate baker, and his father, an architect, Komarin’s Cake Paintings series cleverly explores the intersection of the domestic with the architectural. The water-based enamel and spackle paintings are rendered on paper bags.  The reoccurring cake iconography is endlessly evocative --lending itself to many layers of interpretation and the spontaneous, bold lines, combined with the unusual media, strike a delicate balance between sophistication and simplicity. 

Cero Space, a gallery in the Brewery Arts Complex of downtown Los Angeles, is presenting paintings by contemporary abstract artist Jennifer Perlmutter. The series, "Running Through the Forest, Trails of Uncertainty" explores the artist's emotional and psychological challenges as filtered through the colors, energy and subtle impressions of the natural world. 

James Cohan Gallery in New York City is currently presenting “Jesper Just: This Nameless Spectacle,” which opened on September 6th and is running through October 27th. The exhibition will be the New York-based Danish artist’s first at James Cohan Gallery and the first solo exhibition in New York since his survey show at the Brooklyn Museum in 2008. Well known for employing high production value cinematography to create film works that subvert the usual stereotypes that have come to be associated with Hollywood’s mainstream film industry, Just has been selected to represent Denmark at the Venice Biennale in 2013. 

On the 18th of April this year Zimbabwe celebrated 32 years of independence. The reality though is that few were rejoicing. The freedom that was promised three decades earlier has become oppression, the democracy blacks fought a war and died for turned into dictatorship, and independence from 100 years of colonial rule turned into enslavement to a brutal regime.With the support of the Carmignac Gestion Photojournalism Award, this is what I went to Zimbabwe to document: 32 years of a country in violent decline.

Having been to a fair number of major international metropolises, I was surprised to find Tokyo to be a completely different urban animal. The alleys felt narrower and the buildings taller than in even downtown Manhattan, but most striking was the inescapable sense of overpopulation. Sure there were some sparse enclaves away from bustling city life, like the tranquil Meiji Shrine in Shibuya, but many of the areas we visited were similar to Times Square – throbbing with energy and packed with people. 

Arditi wants to infuse the future of visual art with the power of its primitive past. “I want to be as close as possible to what art started as, but with a modern twist,” he said when I visited his studio this month. He pulls pigments from natural sources like flowers, rocks, dirt, soil, clay, crystals — anything earth-produced that has a distinct color. He dyes a thick lacquer with the pigment, and then uses the solution to paint. “I want my art to be simple and accessible. I want art for the masses because that’s where art began. It has since turned into pretense and facade. The earth was the original canvas.”

The beating heart of Center City – with its restaurants, high-fashion boutiques and tourist attractions – pumps life to the extremities: west to Mantua, north to Olney, south to Point Breeze, and along that massive artery the Delaware into Fishtown, which I presently call home.  We are a city of neighborhoods – each with its own distinct heritage, demography, and architecture. We are an old city, a city of revolutionaries who told the British where they could stick it. We are New York's precocious cousin where you can still throw a rock without hitting someone, buy dinner and a drink for under $20, and get a Big Gulp should the mood strike. 

About three short blocks from place Fréhel, an empty lot on rue Ramponeau is surrounded by a former factory that contains artist studios and is now known as La Forge or La Kommune. The surrounding walls are constantly changing canvases whose styles and images cacophonously overlap. Upon close viewing, however, individual talents and messages emerge. The “Belleville Zoo” consists of an overlapping montage of images each vying to be on top. At first, the wall appears to be a mass of color, but individual characters shine through.

As the art market grows and in turn splinters into a plurality of labels, styles, and movements, artists are faced with a decision – is it better to adhere to definition and face certain limitations in the public reception of their work, or shirk association and push forward into new and possibly little understood territory? Brooklyn-based artist, Keith Pavia has wrestled with this dilemma of late, as he attempts to break through the boundaries of Outsider Art, a label that has undoubtedly helped foster his career.