According to Bill Pierce, who founded this artist's collective at the turn of this century, words like corporate government, thought crimes, a police state and militarism best describe what they regard as our destination to a socially toxic future. Sounds a little like the politically paranoid musings going on in college campuses the world over, right? Well, check your cynicism at the door of any one of the collective's temporary exhibits and you'll begin to get the picture. Rather than trying to stand in the world's way, grabbing it by the shoulders, screaming, "Look where we're headed!" the work of these artists simply seems to suggest, "look where we're at." There to drag you kicking and screaming out of complacency, Radioactive Future paints a surreal picture, simultaneously eerie and cheery, that'll shock, amuse and enlighten audiences.

The coalition artists, starring San Diego's poster child, Shepard Fairey and Douglas Thompson, Tim McCormick, Bill Pierce--to name a few--share more than ideals. Like their more famous contemporaries, Georganne Deen and Jim Shaw, the artists present elements of chaos grinding against the mundane in a style akin to graffiti that dips into animation.

As Edward Weston, Maurice Braun and William Wendt, painted (and photographed) SoCal as a landscape, this batch of young artists captures a state of mind. A movement? Perhaps. Radioactive Future effectively brings these artists out of their studios, gets them talking and grows their work out of adolescence into creative adulthood.

Deconstructing conventional wisdom of exhibiting art, these seemingly slapped-together shows in San Diego's coffeehouses and vacant industrial spaces, create a witty incursion from the proliferation of traditional and unimaginative exhibitions downtown. There's something Bauhaus about it. Like the letters between Wassily Kandisnky and Joseph Albers, let's just hope that these young artists are saving their e-mails and leaving future generations clues to what their work was all about.

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