As a critic and historian I feel a burden as I try to weigh and stamp "The American Trip"'s cultural significance. This exhibition presents "the outlaw," a theme representative of a long-standing seduction of both artists and viewers by social rebellion. The show's premise rests upon a dichotomization of culture: mainstream versus margins, a polarization necessary to uphold the mystique of the outlaw. And yet, by virtue of his assembly of this exhibition, curator Philip Monk has brought to the fore the ambiguous nature of social constructs such as outlaw status.

Including works by Richard Prince, Nan Goldin, Larry Clark and Cady Noland, "The American Trip" has visual and aesthetic affinities with popular culture: Clark's photographs of young boys from the seventies and Calvin Klein's recent advertising campaign (pulled for inferences of child pornography); Nan Goldin's images of drag queens and movies such as Priscilla Queen of the Desert and To Wong Foo; and Richard Prince's blowups of biker women and contemporary fashion spreads such as a recent article in Interview in which bikers (male and female) modeled designer sportswear on Florida streets.

"The American Trip" can be split into two sections: photography and Cady Noland. Clark, Prince and Goldin all work with photography as a nostalgic medium, playing on their abilities to capture identities for posterity, identities that exist only through their reification by the camera lens. Placed within this exhibition, they become signifiers of cultural trends, not of individual experience. Noland's recycling of press images, on the other hand, offers viewers an opportunity to reflect upon the acts which moved certain individuals from anonymity to...