THIS YEAR'S JURIED exhibition at Southern Exposure, "Epic," features works by northern California artists that evoke a sense of heroic adventure and draw on narrative tropes from novels, comic books, and films. The entire show is accompanied by faux superhero theme music from Mark Lee Morris's video Transformations, which repeatedly shows a man suddenly changing into a cape, mascara, hot pants, nylons, and heels. The video's combination of drag and superhero theatrics thematizes the homoeroticism of comic book mythology and makes this otherwise silly piece a sincere celebration of the heroics of coming out. In Mathematics of an Alter-Destiny, Eric Larson depicts the adventure of space travel by drawing a space capsule on a distant planet using pointillism to capture the distortions of digital pixelation. Naomi Miller's posed photographs chronicle the everyday valor in the crew that gathers for Thursday-night basketball at the Potrero Hill courts. In his In Another Desperate Attempt To ..., Engelbert Holden establishes the premise for nearly every noir thriller by simply conjoining that title to the taped outline of a body on the gallery floor, instantly transforming the show into a murder scene. (All that's missing is a reference to a femme fatale.) Kimberlee Austin similarly provides all the essential ingredients for a novel in Four Documents, including photo-booth pictures of a man in a cowboy hat and a woman in a white lace top, an Albuquerque bus ticket, and a book of matches stamped with a birth announcement, "It's a Girl!" In West, Tracey Snelling situates her audience in the midst of a great American novel with a miniature sculpture of a flashing neon "Go West" sign over snow, trees, and a shed. Other noteworthy pieces include Tim Sullivan's Shoot 2004 (Starring George Kuchar and Tim Sullivan), a photograph taken over the shoulder of a man with a rifle pointed at another man who cringes but seems to have agreed to be shot; Immigration 2004, by Yin-Ju Chen and James T. Hung, which presents a terrarium of ants crawling and dragging dirt over a piece of white chocolate cut in the shape of the United States; and Shawn Smith's Newspeak Library: Orwell Records, which includes bound copies of George Orwell's complete works translated into 1984's Newspeak. Tues.-Sat., 11 a.m.-5 p.m., 401 Alabama, S.F. (415) 863-2141. (Clark Buckner)