More from our tour of Singapore's art scene: Bringing close to two decades of international art from Berlin, Michael Janssen Gallery opens in Singapore with Keep it simple. Keep it fresh., featuring renowned American artists John Baldessari and Meg Cranston.

Back in the early 1970s, John Baldessari told a story about his pencil. It was a sad pencil that he revived. It was a moment of his own obsessive attention to detail that compelled him to revive it. It was subtle, but it was art.

John Baldessari, hailing from National City in San Diego, California, is an internationally acclaimed conceptual artist that has been been practicing from the mid twentieth century to the present. With over 200 solo shows and nearly 1,000 group shows, Baldessari's work is well known and frequently exhibited to say the least.

John Baldessari is one of our favorite Southern California artists with a long career in various mediums. His retrospective of prints dating from 1970 to the present on view at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego compiles a long practice of deconstructing and reconstructing images changing how we perceive and read them.

In light of current economic standings, John Baldessari has created a 75 by 25 foot $100,000 bill. The $100,000 bill has a history that originates from the Great Depression, when 42,000 of the large bills were circulated as an attempt to relief economic hardship and resolve issues surrounding credit.

Despite how you feel about Jason Schwartzman, here is a great commercial that reaches out to the non-art crowd, hoping to widen the audience that takes interest in the Pacific Standard Time exhibitions coordinated by the Getty.

These text paintings from famous California artist John Baldessari date back to the 1960s. Each painting packs a witty message about the state of contemporary painting and the dilemmas, standards, and requirements the art world places upon the traditional art form.

We just recently mentioned John Baldessari's show over at Sprueth Magers in Berlin. In addition to this recent show, Baldessari put up a new mural in La Jolla, California. The conceptual artist  is known for his collage work with found photographs and odd appropriations that investigate and question how we perceive the world around us in a variety of ways.

Late last month, influential Southern California-based artist John Baldessari opened a solo exhibition, Double Feature, at Sprueth Magers in Berlin. Known for his collage and text works, Baldessari uses quotes based on American film noir from the 1940s and 1950s, such as Blast of Silence, Dead Reckoning, Sudden Fear, or Deadline at Dawn for his newest body of work.

Volcom took influential Southern California-based conceptual artist John Baldessari’s art into their own hands and made it wearable with a limited run of 500 Baldessari x Volcom tees available now. More after the jump . . .