Featuring: Jedediah Caesar Harriet Harry Dodge & Stanya Kahn Robert Fontenot Will Fowler Drew Heitzler Elisa Johns William Jones Ashley Macomber Laurie Nye Renee Petropoulos Anna Sew Hoy Ed Templeton Rob Thom

Los Angeles moves east in Sugartown, a two-part showcase of artists living and working in the greater Los Angeles area. This exhibition will be held simultaneously in two New York venues, Participant Inc and Elizabeth Dee Gallery. Sugartown provides a snapshot of the energetic and swiftly developing art scene in Los Angeles while allowing thematic divergences and affinities between the coasts to emerge. The art/performance collective My Barbarian (www.mybarbarian.com) will stage an opening performance at Participant Inc on July 8 at 8pm.

Part One at Elizabeth Dee Gallery features a diverse group of artists whose works focus on the geographies of storytelling. In these works the halcyon days of summer, ripe with enigmatic romanticism, dovetail with bohemian nostalgia and surface obsession. Issues of gender and sexuality are explored through the conduit of musical subculture, as in the elegantly examined documentation of the Mexican communitys obsession with Morrissey and the death of Kurt Cobain retold on video.

Part Two at Participant Inc breaks with traditional modes of presentation to outline the lineage and boundaries of emerging discourse in a post-Helter Skelter era. Punk rock, performativity and 80s glam culture contribute to a certain dark irony articulated by artists who deliberately assemble conflicted vernaculars.