CAMERA AS MIRROR/DOUBLE: Aly Su Borst takes emphatic, filmic photographs, whose underlying theme is the elusiveness of identity. She once saw her doppelganger and since then has been taking photographs of herself and people who look like her in order to try to frame pieces of a life and self. But like the mirror, these isolated scenes reveal only so much and the full picture remains out of reach. Borst's work was an official selection of American Photography 24, a prestigious juried event, and she has exhibited in a number of exhibitions including at Photographic Center Northwest, Seattle, and the Richmond Art Center.

MIRROR AS FATALISM: Ursula Brookbank creates worlds in her video and photography whose beauty is as deceptive as it is seductive. In DCG.BR Brookbank performs as bear/clown and becomes a reluctant guide through her private realm where makeup and costumes cannot mask an underlying longing and sadness at the discrepancy between truth and act. Brookbank is a Los Angeles-based video artist and photographer and has exhibited her work in the Meridian Gallery, San Francisco, Echo Park Film Center, Los Angeles, and 31 Grand Gallery, New York, among many others.

MIRROR AS DISSONANCE: In Michael Deane's new installation work Decorative Curtain the artist has placed a mirror perpendicular to a monitor playing a video that represents "a digital memory of recent months of collecting moments." For Deane the decorative curtain represents a coping mechanism to deal with the dissociation resulting from social behaviors we maneuver through that contradict our personal ethics. Pairing the video with the mirror, Deane asks if we can better see that separation now or is it just another false reflection? Deane has shown extensively, including most recently at Hatch Gallery, Oakland. Deane was a recent recipient of the San Francisco Art Council's Construct 3 installation award.

MIRROR AS CONSTRUCT: Cybele Lyle has created an installation in the project room which incorporates a video she made of scenes in the bar in Florida that the serial murder Aileen Wuornos (portrayed in the movie Monster) used to frequent. Lyle has brought us into the space by recreating the bar, complete with pretzels, dart board, and mirrors. With an economy of gesture, Lyle has transformed the space completely, and we are leaning in, listening live to the bartender's commentary about this small Florida town and its most famous resident. Lyle holds an MFA from Hunter College in New York City, where she received the Tony Smith Award in her final year. She has shown at Artist's Space in New York, Artists Television Access Window Gallery, San Francisco, and will be an artist in residence at the prestigious Bemis Center in Omaha, in 2010.

MIRROR AS RITE OF PASSAGE: In Shana Moulton's video Sand Saga, Moulton plays Cynthia, an alter ego of sorts whom the artist first developed in a series of tongue-in-cheek soap-operatic videos she titled Whispering Pines. In this work Cynthia undergoes a ritual passage and ceremony while staring into her bathroom mirror after having put on a beauty facial mask. Humorous and moving, Moulton's video opens up a new domain in this medium. Moulton has had numerous exhibitions nationally and abroad including most recently at Art In General, New York; PS1 Contemporary Art Center, Long Island City; and the Migros Museum in Zurich.

MEMORY AS MIRROR: For his piece I Love U, Andrew Wilson reviewed years of footage from his family's old video camera and photographs from family albums and edited his cull into a compelling treatise on how memory and identity is shaped by these mediums. His conclusion is profound: personal history and self-reflection can no longer be separated from them. Now based in Chicago, Wilson has both shown and programmed at Artists Television Access in San Francisco, and his work has been shown at Receiver Gallery, SF, and Show Cave, Los Angeles, among other venues.