Southern Exposure presents the premiere of Jesse Sugarmann's We Build Excitement. This ambitious ongoing project by the Central Valley-based artist is a series of performances and videos examining the evolution of the American auto industry as a parallel to shifting American identity.

Starting two years ago, Sugarmann opened (and plans to continue opening) unsanctioned Pontiac dealerships in former Pontiac dealership locations across the United States. He activates these dealerships as sites of celebration, honoring both the American auto worker and our fraught, intimate relationships to cars themselves. Assembling temporary modernist monuments with Pontiac cars, Sugarmann gives form to the precarious nature of the auto industry. And in video works, he documents laid-off assembly line workers and car accident victims recreating the movements of their former jobs and crashes, respectively. Their deadpan choreography forms a moving homage to the mundane and the traumatic moments in both the birth and death of the automobile.

At Southern Exposure, Sugarmann shows video installations of these parallel gestures alongside footage from an unsanctioned Pontiac dealership in Pontiac, Michigan. We Build Excitement will also feature one off-site event in Fremont on Sunday, May 4, 2014. Check back for updates and additional details.

We Build Excitement is a project of Creative Capital.