Contravention to perceived realities is a tried and true Los Angeles staple. It is a city that was founded on alternate metaphors and narratives. In Contraventions, Los Angeles based artists create multi disciplinary work countering the expected and banal. Meg Madison’s black and white photographic diptychs show two unrelated scenes from disparate locations, such as Berlin and Los Angeles. The viewer cannot fight the urge to create harmonious narratives. Mike Mollett, a performance artist and sculptor, founded the L.A. MUDPEOPLE, a tribe that chooses to live a simpler slower existence, a meditative one, amid the surrounding urban tumult. His sculptures reuse local ground materials , earth, mud, bone, steel, detritus and garbage. He places them in pristine environments that belie and/or emphasize their modest beginnings. Neal Taylor creates abstracted, velvety baroque sublimations of moisture and sex . Jason Locklyer’s photographs, drawings, and films have the feel of the wide spaces of Los Angeles, and intermixes these mediums with a mixture of humour and ominousness. Is it environmental catastrophe or just Hollywood? Abel Alejandre’s woodcuts and drawings originated in the streets and graffiti, and still have the feeling of deep humanity mixed with grit. The work is at once delicate and painstakingly rendered, and rough hewn. They remind us as much of the ancient Maya as the contemporary Los Angeleno. Martin Gantman’s photographs and “events” are at once a serious and tongue and cheek commentary of people, places, and things. They have a dead pan quality to them, challenging the viewer to ignore references and layers. Mei Xian Qiu’s inter and intra cultural melange create fantastical notions of self, society and future perfects. Elaine Park’s ephemeral sculptures are puzzles that can be altered continuously.

In all the works in the exhibition, there is always the sense of a changed or more intensified reality. They are new narratives from a city that shapes the real through the unreal.