February 15, 2005 - The Rotunda Gallery boldly asks Are We Having Fun Yet? during the kick-off exhibition of PROJECT DIVERSITY. The exhibition opens Thursday, March 17 from 6 to 8 pm. Exhibitions at 15 additional galleries will open throughout April and May.

Are We Having Fun Yet? explores fun, a uniquely American pathology, from the unapologetically joyful surface to the dark, deadpan underbelly. Smiles take on frightening proportions, nuns enjoy cigarette breaks, and artists get hit in the head by flying objects. Straightforward and sublime, subversive and perverse, Are We Having Fun Yet? invites you to have the last laugh.

Artists include:

• Donna Alberico captures the quiet desperation of a night on the town in 4 Truckers at Bar, a c-print from the artist's photo documentary project on American truck drivers.

• Mark Lee Blackshear dares viewers to suffer the sting of a day at the beach in his photocollage Gang of West Coast Nettle Jellyfish #1, taken at the Brooklyn Aquarium at Coney Island.

• Uli Brahmst embraces the whimsical and indulgent in Vanitas and Drop. The objects are sewn out of latex, nylon, cotton, felt and then filled with polyester stuffing. Reminiscent of childhood toys all grown up, they are at once innocent and seductive.

• In Amy Chan's painting Norwegian Wood, suburban model homes float in a faux utopian landscape inspired by the artist's childhood in middle class New England.

• Ernest Concepcion celebrates the artistic impulse in his ever expanding series of drawings, The Line Wars. Out of scribbles, doodles and lines arise everything from cowboys, aliens and squirrels to cookies and milk engaged in an ongoing war of all against all.

• Mira Asli Friedlaender's obsessively nostalgic video I Love My Classmates catches the artist in the act of kissing an endless series of photographs of her fellow M.F.A classmates.

• Heather Klinkhamer's Turquoise Nun and Jolly Green Nun depict nuns enjoying transgressive meditation.

• Kristy Knight weaves cardboard labels for synthetic hair into a witty feminist meditation on the transformative power of beauty parlor rituals in Red Carpet.

• Painter Jennifer Camille Laoang invites viewers to enter the whimsical world of Township, where cats perform tightrope gymnastics and castles really do grow on trees.

• Jason Lujan introduces viewers to the art of fansub - Japanese animation translated by fans of the genre and made available to a global audience through internet distribution. Lujan has created a series of fansubs for an American Indian audience, using Native languages with their own letter systems.

• John Monti's sculpture installation, Fancy, made of simple forms and minimal arrangements in cast rubber and plastic, is an unabashed celebration of fun. Rosettes, arabesques, beauty spots and smiles cover the walls and the floor in an explosion of candy colored pop design.

• Christopher Moore plays cross gender dress up in his mixed media series, 5 Dress Collages.

• Lori Nix's tableau photography features meticulously detailed, miniature American landscapes. Black humor and melodrama merge in Nix's detached analysis of the fine line between pleasure and terror.

• Chris Oh captures the ecstasy of entanglement in the playful Join, part of a series exploring connection.

• Marie Roberts celebrates her childhood in Coney Island in a series of hand-painted banners depicting glass eaters, escape artists and fire walkers. Joyful and nostalgic, Robert's work pays tribute to growing up in Brooklyn with sand in your shoes.

• Ron Taylor's riotous abstract paintings explode like fireworks.

• In Some People Never Learn, artist Traci Tullius is hit in the head by a variety of flying objects in a continuous stream of endlessly looping clips. The work calls to mind the silent farce of French comic genius Jacques Tati, but with a distinctly Brooklyn punch.