VALLEY WEEKEND : SIGHTS : ‘Sampler’ Substitutes Surreal for Sentiment : Holiday group show at Mythos Gallery avoids standard yule fare by challenging conventions.

The group show at Mythos Gallery in Burbank is advertised as “A Holiday Sampler.” But don’t come expecting doses, or even dollops, of standard yuletide fare. There are no detectable signs of reindeer, ornaments or other seasonal feel-goods.

In fact, the only overt Christmas references, in the religious sense, are Jill Ansel’s paintings tucked away in an alcove in the back, and they are fueled by biblical irreverence--or at least surreal revisionism.

In Ansel’s variations on Christian iconography, dealing with the Nativity and the Crucifixion, deconstructionism runs amok. Gender roles are reversed or distorted from convention, and, in one image, we find the Madonna on the cross.

In other words, come to the Mythos Gallery expecting art of the archetype-challenging type, not idle diversion. The quality and vision ranges widely throughout the exhibition, but there is enough strong work here to warrant a good look.

This gallery, a sizable venue in Burbank, is run by artist Glen Doll, with an acknowledged penchant for spiritual art. Lest this would be translated and dismissed as a New Age sensibility, though, much of the art here explores the spiritual through the prism of contemporary art issues.

In this diverse sampler, no apparent stylistic party line guides the artists. Gilah Yelin Hirsch creates dense, ornate thickets of pure design, while Lucinda Luvaas works with a crude, gonzo comic figurative style, dabbling in topical social neuroses and smacking of pop culture hipness.

Midge Lynn’s precise, realistic pencil drawings present everyday scenes dislodged from logic. In these collage works, Lynn’s shuffling of images, and courting of non sequiturs, erases the potential sentimentality we expect from, say, a picture of a walrus or little girls in raincoats.

The mysterious vocabulary in Allison Kendis’ work suggests muted images of religious martyrdom. Hamid Zavareei, meanwhile, shows some of the strongest paintings. Objects in space are seen in a strange, metaphysical ordering, with a coating of surrealism.

In some way, Zavareei’s art parallels that of Bogdan Dumitrica, whose oddly simple, compelling paintings take on the secret life of “Primitive Objects.” These objects, painted with a vibrant roughness, resonate with symbolic portent.

Overall, this is a seasonal sampler with a very broad definition of the term “holiday.”

* “A Holiday Sampler,” through Saturday at Mythos Gallery, 1009 W. Olive Ave., Burbank; 818-843-3686.

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Screaming Gently: One wouldn’t expect much in the way of subtlety from a group of artists taking the name “Screaming Easels--a Bunch of Women Artists.” But there are things to be savored in “Reassembling the Bones,” the ad hoc organization’s exhibition at Artspace in Woodland Hills.

The show is a conceptual exercise, encouraging the artists to explore societal and archetypal roles as women. Each artist began work with a common template, a life-size body print on a scrolling fabric, to be adorned and accented, personalized with objects and themes. While some pieces barely register beyond the frivolous, others assert artful, pointed statements about female roles, usually with humor and decorative splendor.

“Seduction,” by Margery Mercer, addresses the subject of the titles, replete with an image of the Apple that, by biblical accounts, launched the subject initially.

Kimberly Garcia’s “Country Girl” is a rustic assemblage in which a sculptural figure made of found objects is placed within the nude two-dimensional figure. Jannine Wilensley’s “Miraculous Conception” offers an analogy between procreation and artistic creation.

Appealing, if less discernible, is “Secrets” by Loretta J. Uriarte. With its torn and treated fabric and Cornell-ish box of burned and enigmatic objects, the work evokes a sense of tantalizing things unrevealed.

Stretching definitions just a bit, “Reassembling the Bones” boasts its own incidental holiday quality. Like symbolic Christmas trees, these are artworks fancifully decorated with ornaments--spangly things which, at best, are pregnant with personal meaning.

* “Reassembling the Bones,” by the Screaming Easels, through Saturday at Artspace Gallery, 21800 Oxnard St. #110, Woodland Hills; (818) 716-2787.

Josef Woodard is an avowed cultural omnivore who covers art and music.