Dead City Punx and a generation of artists channel chaos, survival, and DIY rebellion into a raw, unfiltered redefinition of punk through contemporary art, fashion, music, and mayhem. PUNX is an exhibition bringing together visual artists, musicians, and cultural renegades who embody the spirit of punk today, transforming raw energy and street-born resistance into powerful new forms of creative expression.

Dead City Punx have reimagined punk not by reviving its past, but by tearing through it with their own volatile, unapologetic version of DIY and street-level activism. What began simply as friends playing music for friends became the chaotic soundtrack to a generation locked down, shut out, and ready to burn. During the peak of the COVID-19 lockdowns, Dead City erupted across Los Angeles and beyond with illegal shows marked by bonfires, graffiti, fireworks, fistfights, and riot police. These spontaneous eruptions of resistance, captured by news crews, cell phones, police body cams, and disposable cameras, unintentionally produced a string of viral moments and permanently altered the punk landscape.

Born from a tight-knit punk crew formed in early ‘90s LA, Dead City Punx founded in 2020 by younger members Grumpy and Meka, quickly joined by Adrian and MIKER— carry the legacy of their scene forward. Each member of Dead City Punx is a survivor. Vandals, yes but also witnesses to a city that nearly swallowed them whole through addiction, incarceration, and homelessness. Music became their lifeline. Raised on hip hop and rock, they funneled trauma and rage into a collective expression that replaced self-destruction with something louder, messier, and more\ meaningful. The band became their chosen family, and the fans their fuel.

This exhibition merges artifacts from the band’s brief but explosive history with historical punk ephemera and works by cross-disciplinary contemporary artists including Abe Garcia, Ade Ogunmowo, Albert Reyes, Angela Nguyen, Atiba Jefferson, Chuy Hartman, Ed Templeton, Estevan Oriol, Hannah Vandermolen, Isaac Psalm Escoto (a.k.a. SICKID), Jason Dill, Jimmy Bonks, KC Ortiz, KRAB, Kill Your Idols, MASS TURD, Nadya Tolokonnikova, Ocho Ojos, Oginee Viamontes, Ozzie Juarez, Rory James Toole, Steve Olson, Sydnie Jimenez, Suitcase Joe, Tomas Tumbleweed, Tim Armstrong, Valerie J. Bower & others. These artists share a common impulse: to reject the sanitized and commodified in favor of raw, urgent expression. Rather than existing as a backdrop, these contributions stand as independent yet interconnected statements, each rooted in lived experience and shaped by the urgency of the present moment. Moving between visual art, object- making, and installation, the artists blur the boundaries between documentation and creation, chaos and intention. Their practices reflect a refusal to conform, embracing risk, instability, and contradiction as essential tools. In this context, the exhibition becomes not just a reflection of punk’s evolution, but an active, collective expression of it, where multiple voices collide, overlap, and ultimately redefine the contours of contemporary rebellion.

Spanning multiple disciplines, the exhibition highlights voices that resonate with the same ethos Dead City lives by anti-establishment, anti-authoritarian, fiercely individualistic, and deeply rooted in the DIY spirit. These artists included in PUNX use their mediums as tools of resistance, drawing from personal histories, subcultures, and underground networks to challenge dominant narratives. Whether through painting, sculpture, zines, photography, or performance, their work embodies the same urgency, volatility, and raw authenticity that pulses through Dead City’s music and story.