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By Dan Leone

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'MISSION DETRITUS' refers not only to the cast-off junk the eight participating artists use as raw material for their work but also to the Mission's art scene in general, which is still a relative outsider (albeit an increasingly important one) in the international art world. Diverse and energetic, with deep roots in graffiti and other "street" art forms, the pieces you'll find in this show might be just as likely to appear overnight on the side of a 16th Street building as in a commercial gallery. Painter Andrew Schoultz contributes almost 40 canvases to the exhibit. His images are cartoonish and Dr. Seuss-like, featuring a friendly-looking but profoundly strange cast of characters: Escher-like buildings that hover in the blue sky and bug-eyed flying birds that carry their houses with them like lunch boxes. James Kirkpatrick shares Schoultz's knack for creating figures that are both cute and unsettling, but he uses a more raw painterly style. The characters in his matched Sir and Madam prints look adorable at first, but they also have a deliberate clumsiness about them – a strangeness in their bodies and expressions. The one in Sir looks to have a grotesque leer on its face, while the one in Madam appears to be in pained silence. Of all the featured artists, Alena Rudolph makes the most literal translation of her urban surroundings into art. Her past works have often been rougher in style, focusing on individual landscape features and incorporating graffiti elements. The images in this exhibit, however, show her stepping back to take in a sweeping, wide-angle view that reduces the cityscape to simple, repetitive geometric forms silhouetted in flat black paint against a pastel-colored sky. Wed.-Sun., 2-6 p.m. and by appointment, 1800 Bryant, Suite 104, S.F. (415) 626-7776. (Lindsey Westbrook)