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THE GRAND OPENING of Oakland's new Mama Buzz Cafe (featuring organic coffee, pastries, soups, and gourmet sandwiches) was also the grand reopening of Door.7.Gallery in the adjoining space. Part of a neighborhood gallery cluster that includes 21 Grand and Ego Park, Door.7 is the brainchild of local artists Jeannie Lydon and Ivan Blackshear. Its re-inaugural exhibition, "Pre-View," features works by a few carefully chosen local up-and-comers whose names you may recognize from shows at like-minded art spaces such as 111 Minna Gallery and Culture Cache: Matthew Hart, Chris Pew, Alex Kopps, Christopher A. Ruess, and Andrew Schoultz. Pew's painting is a vaguely nightmarish sci-fi montage of humans fitted with protective gas masks that make them look like monstrous robots. A couple of small animals – birds, monkeys, etc. – pop up here and there, perhaps intended to remind us of lab-experiment subjects. Ruess and Kopps collaborate on a shrine made from desiccated bits and pieces of nature. Polaroid images of discarded Christmas trees, dead leaves, sod, and used-up pine air fresheners make a mournful tableau. On an adjoining wall, Schoultz's painted birds seem to be evacuating rather than merely flying by this unsettling display. Lydon and Blackshear probably didn't intend their show to comment with such seeming directness on this uncertain point in American history. Even so, "Pre-View" is still open to that interpretation, as well as a powerful demonstration of what these artists have in common: not only a fairly ominous view of contemporary urban life but also a means and style of expression that is playful and unapologetically complex. Mon.-Fri., 7 a.m.-7 p.m.; Sat.-Sun., 9 a.m.-5 p.m., 2316 Telegraph, Oakl. (510) 653-9529. (Lindsey Westbrook)