America has become a society obsessed with its obsessions; a tribe of people for whom 12-Step Programs are themselves the addiction. Any predilection for altered states automatically makes you a substance abuser in denial about your dependency. Slowly but inexorably, we are sanitizing our minds and bodies, transforming them into hollow sanctuaries dedicated to “normalcy.” A recent exhibition “Narcissistic Disturbances,” curated by Michael Cohen, takes our self-obsession and reinvests it with its neurotic edge. In the curator’s eyes, the work of the 16 artists shown here challenges the notion

David Levinthal’s strange, ambiguous narrative scenes—photographs of miniature dolls (toy soldiers, female pinups, cowboys, Roman gladiators, etc.) arranged in suggestive tableaux-hover somewhere between fact and fiction. In his series of photographs entitled “Modern Romance,” 1984–86—miniature scenes of city streets, hotels, and seedy characters in questionable environments—Edward Hopper meets film noir. Blurred and deliberately out of focus, these images seem almost real, as if they had been captured on a surveillance camera.

In his most recent show, he presented two bodies of work whose subject

Jory Felice’s exhibition was one of the raddest shows in the first half of 1995. In a universe of either the “anal retentive control freak show” or the “super ‘fuck it’ slackfest installation,” Felice has quietly gone about the business of making amazing pictures. Retreating into the lush imagination of tender boyhood, Felice conjures a to-scale cardboard model of his own ’83 Toyota Corolla. Held up by strings from the ceiling, the fragile auto sat in the middle of the gallery like a big, shy fool in gorilla drag.

Felice took the quintessential L.A. emblems, the car and the freeway, and built a