It’s hard to believe Thomas Buildmore when he says that ‘Paint It Now’ is not about street art. The fluctuating collage of wheat-paste characters and graffiti stencils plucked from Boston’s alleyways and transported into South Boston’s Distillery Gallery has, at the very least, an urban aesthetic.

But Buildmore insists the cadre of young “street” artists who contribute to the project can’t be pigeonholed by the medium they work in.

“What we’re trying to show is a juxtaposition of styles of painting,” he told the Boston Phoenix. “It’s a collision of all of the different influences we draw from. It’s like bringing all of art history right to the surface.”

Walking through the gallery, his point is taken: the spectrum of work displayed across the two-story canvas cannot be reduced to a single movement. The group’s paintings address classic “street” themes, but the idiosyncracies of the contributors are laid bare across the black-and-white walls.

More importantly, labeling the project as “street art” elevates the work of uninspired taggers, like Boston’s prolific Lifer!, to the same playing field as artists like Kenji Nakayama, whose photo-realistic stencil work requires months, even years, of painstaking work to produce.

Where the group does coalesce, however, is an urban motif that Buildmore calls, “the end result of too much TV … the overkill of media influence.” Cultural icons appear throughout the room, hijacked and subverted to reexamine their traditional roles. An all-too-apt example is the “Rich Uncle Pennybags” character who shrugs against the wall, pockets empty and out of answers.

‘Paint it Now’ features work by Overkill Studio’s Buildmore, Morgan Thomas, Evoker, and Kenji Nakayama, as well as contributions by Boston artists Dark Clouds, Noir Boston, Hargo, Alphabet Soup, Josh Falk, Enamel Kingdom, and Dana Woulfe.

‘Paint It Now’ is on display until Oct. 2 at the Distillery Gallery, 516 E. 2nd Street, South Boston, 617.269.8430.