How can art navigate this complex world? That is the question at the core of this exhibition. What emerges is the sense that there is not one single overriding manner of engagement but rather several, and these approaches can coexist. An artist's response can involve mixtures of the highly didactic and willfully ignorant, the noble and the profane.

In State Line, America and its status in the world are questioned through manipulations of the reverential and the patriotic in wall relief, painting and drawing. A traditional Arabian geometrical pattern is subverted as the Star of David emerges from within a carpet of red, white and blue custom plastic squeeze toys. The geographical touchstones of Bush's America are explored in autopsy: its geography a veined skin, sliced and rearranged to form new organisms; its people a conjoined group of grinning skulls.

Bill Kleiman uses industrial materials and processes to replicate common objects in sculptural amalgams with a narrative thread. His solo exhibition Human Nature was featured at Acuna-Hansen Gallery in 2003.

Christopher Pate creates modernist-based abstraction using inventive formal language and hybrid forms. In the latest phase of this project, popular images, both found and depicted, have emerged. Christopher Pate's work has been featured in solo exhibitions at Cartelle Gallery and Roberts and Tilton, and in the group exhibition Rogue Wave at LA Louver in 2001 and 2005.