Pixelated images with a pop touch

Zhong Chen is the latest in a long line of migrants who have made successful careers as artists in Adelaide. His rise can be most relevantly compared with that of Hossein Valamanesh, who arrived here 15 years earlier and now sees his career celebrated in the Art Gallery of SA. However, Chen, only in his early-30s, has yet to prove he has the consistence and individual vision of his predecessor.

Although the technical proficiency of Chen's Juliet, Juliet series cannot be criticised - and he has improved immeasurably since his last effort, shown in this gallery in 1999 - the reference to digital pixelation, superimposed upon his figure and landscape work, injects a contemporary look on to an essentially 1990s Noe-Geo approach.

He takes this glossy, hyper-realist surfaces and use of kitsch and pop objects a step further, while exploring his Asian-Australian identity. Chen moves into similar ideological territory to that explored by Deborah Paauwe in her photography but, with each image broken up into grids comprised of squares of colour, the paintings are remarkably similar to those recently executed by John Hart.

One wonders, then, if two such ostensibly convergent series can emerge from a small visual art community like Adelaide, how widespread this new trend actually is. Is there, in fact, an international movement of pixelationists? In the corridors, two less experienced practitioners show their potential. James parker, a winner of the Ethel Berringer Printmaking Prize at the University of SA, revels an innovative use of materials, combining the linocut method with stone rather than paper.

His small single-panelled and larger multi-panelled works, and drywall sculptural ideas, are kept simple but not consistently resolved in aesthetic terms. Deidre But-Husaim's computer-morph graphics, using 1950s-style fashion and pin illustrations, lean a little on the output of Annette Bezor but with sufficient divergence and personal clarity to suggest she can take the next step.

In the Sue Tweddell Gallery, however, Damien Graham seems to have lost focus and discipline.

His untitled montage has the potential to really cause a fuss, considering recent unwarranted action at the Adelaide Institute of TAFE. Graham, who has a penchant for Baconesque graphics and an incination to shock like Juan Davila, appears to have temporarily squandered his potential in a pornographic rut.