Within various artistic traditions, dreams have been touted both as sources of divine inspiration and as reflections of the latent drives of the unconscious mind. In these scenarios, the artist takes center stage as part of an attempt to decipher the dream's revelatory or diagnostic message through the construction of a private symbolic language. Spread across two galleries, Dream On! the fifth annual juried exhibition at Mission 17, brings together a diverse group of works that treat dreams less as a way of connecting to the divine or plumbing the inner depths of the individual psyche, and more as a means to position oneself in relation to a broader social and political context.

The jury, including curators Joseph del Pesco (Artist Space) and Susan O'Malley (San Jose ICA) selected works submitted in response to the questions, "Is it naïve now to dream--a disavowal of the conflicts that in fact define our condition? Or has the need to dream become more urgent than ever?" As one might expect, the selections in Dream On! frame dreams in terms of their political content: as complex sites of contestation, asking in effect, what is to be made out of this sticky, difficult patchwork of convergent ideologies, histories and power relations. Neither simply the envisioning of possible alternatives to the present situation, nor smug critiques rooted in sarcasm and irony, these works approach dreaming in a conflicted manner, invoking humor while creating a sense of unease; questioning ideological constructions without being didactic, they are formally playful and often, fairly inscrutable. Yet the works never become entirely self-referential and instead turn a critical eye to the world at large.

For example, in Piero Passacantando's video Bury My Head in the Sand, the artist takes the turn of phrase and turns it into a visual pun, literally burying his head in the sand for seven minutes while a minor familial drama unfolds on the beach behind him. Skye Thorstenson's Gunkland combines animation, puppetry and live action to create an absurd and angst-ridden parody of a children's television program. Amerika, another video by Thorstenson and collaborator Travis Matthews takes as its subject a SWAT team training drill open to the public where amateur actors play the roles of terrorists, hostages, paramedics and reporters, while onlookers in the stands cheer (albeit sedately).

Amy Wing Fong Lee, Wingwall Lamb, Cardboard, 2007.

Like a deadly version of tetherball, Liz Maher's sculpture Teatherknife, is a disembodied hand partly concealing a sharpened knife behind the free standing plaid cone to which it is tied. Amy Wing Fong Lee's Wingwall Lamb, is a meticulously crafted wall-mounted bust of a chimera made from cardboard that stares ahead lifelessly, a hybrid creature from a distant past come to bear witness to the end of days. Less menacing than these works however, are several small drawings in crayon, graphite and marker by David Cicerone, a self described psychedelic folk song writer, which form a collection of idiosyncratic narrative images that call to mind doodling through history class. More subtle contributions to the exhibition include images from Marissa Aragona's Alone At Home series and Jason Hanasik's photograph Steven in a Bed of Flowers, both of which are elegant interrogations of how the normative representational codes of masculinity and femininity are overlaid/inscribed on bodies.

Jason Hanasik, Steven in A Bed of Flowers, C-Print, 2008.

With all the sarcasm and sincerity that the phrase implies, Dream On! points to the urgent task of re-interpreting what is given in a history or a form. It is a process of trying to make the world work differently, a way of playing the same game but with other rules and different trump cards. Far from a disavowal, dreaming conceived as such is a difficult recognition of the shortcomings and injustices of prior "dreams" and our own culpability in perpetuating or amending them.

Dream On! is on view at Mission 17 through January 31, 2009.