MIGUEL VENTURA, Exercises or Return of the Body, Language I, 1998, two-channel video

These artists explore grand visions of the future, reiterating and/or questioning avant-garde notions that art has the ability to transform society. Your Utopia implies a subjective definition of an ideal social construction. One person's utopia is another's hell on earth, human nature making shared utopia an impossibility.

Artists in the exhibition display a wide range of approaches to this theme, often in conflict with each other. Some create futuristic artifacts based on historical references, some suggest sweeping political gestures, and others create fantastic architectural forms implying harmonious communities.

If art is reality, then Gregory Green's declaration of secession is not metaphor, but truth. Momenta Art officially seceded from the United States and joined the state of Caroline. All affiliates of Momenta received Caroline citizenship and the flag was displayed prominently outside the gallery door.

Jed Brain Pictures Presents Albert Budd contributes a demo for the video game Stabwoofie. Developed on a game engine that has acquired an internet cult following, Stabwoofie is the manifestation of paranoid hallucinations based on the Kennedy assassinations made virtual.

While assassination proliferated, the space program became an important aspect of cultural identity. Kara Hammond's planet-scapes derived from outdated space probes celebrate the newly outdated. They remind us of the promise of a scientifically-devised utopia while exploring the history of the future.

Miguel Ventura's utopian vision is language-based. Exercises or Return of the Body, Language I and Language IV are instructional videos based on glyph alphabets developed by the artist. These didactic primers are rooted in Ventura's previous series, The New Interterritorial Language Committee, and appear to be an expression of the culture of an unspecified racial group. They are post-revolutionary instructions of the new etiquette.

The past implies the future in David Shapiro's The People's Sandal: a shoe display of tire sandals combined with Abbie Hoffman's Steal This Book and plastic model kits of the Vietcong. The ingenious efficiency of this fashion statement is combined with counterculture glamour derived from refuse.

JED BRAIN PICTURES PRESENTS ALBERT BUDD, Stabwoofie, 1998, video with mixed media

A more positive contrast to these dark utopian visions is Drew Shiflett's Walkway. This architectural model/sculpture obsessively constructed of paper, wood and glue implies harmonious communities of the past, present, and future.

DAVID SHAPIRO, The People's Sandal,1998, mixed media