ELEPHANT DREAMS & CHILDREN WITH WINGS

By Maya Alarcon

I must resoundingly applaud myself for the wisest decision I made last week: to play hooky from work on a rainy afternoon. For what could be better than liberating myself from the beige-colored world of my corporate cubicle to soak in a bit of sepia-stained culture?

I’d been dying to get down to the Santa Monica Pier ever since I first noted this so-called Nomadic Museum while cruising down PCH. A structure so foreign in a vista formerly so familiar to me (for 3 heinous years I drove it up and down, to hostess at a frou-frou restaurant overhanging the sea), so it was impossible not to notice. Intrigued! What could it be? Cirque du Soleil’s yellow and blue this was not. I must know what’s inside. Desirous of sparing myself the fatal death-by-curiosity, I fabricated a “˜doctor’s appointment’ and headed down to personally experience artist Gregory Colbert’s critically acclaimed “Ashes and Snow“ exhibit.

Architect Shigeru Ban’s impressive structure housing the exhibit was itself a work of art comprised of 152 sea containers and recycled material. Sea containers are generally seen as utilitarian, lining the docks in San Pedro or harboring all sorts of illicit goodies (hijacked narcotic shipments, stolen antiquities, Southeast Asian refugees, you get the idea) in many a Hollywood action blockbuster, but seldom do you view them in any other context. I was very surprised to see that sea containers could be transformed into a thing of beauty, a work of art. Who knew, right?

Sponsored by The Rolex Institute, the Nomadic Museum kicked off in Italy a few years back, emigrated to New York’s Pier 54, then commuted to sunny California. For now, its next whimsical destination is unknown, but its home remains the sea containers which contain no sea.

Inside the containers, a 56,000 sq. foot structure, Colbert’s evanescent art exhibition greets me: levitating photography on ancient papyrus, filmic images, a fictionalized novel of a year-long journey revealed in 365 letters from man to wife (that would be one a day by my calculations, unless it’s a leap year).

In the dimly lit first room, I am literally transported to a world so opposite from the beach parking lot I just left behind outside. I am greeted by ethereal music emanating from recessed speakers and hanging curtains of one million pressed tea bags (how long did it take to drink that much tea, I wonder) resembling one-dimensional bamboo prints. The gallery walkway is cobbled of old wood planks, winding its way through the pebbled floor in a manner so nostalgic of cavernous caves I spelunked through in Cancun (anything reminder of Cancoon is soo gooood). I was much relieved that this time, a gigantic winged creature did not swoop down from the ceiling to scare the bejesus out of me. Winged creatures tend to detract from the art viewing experience, as do strafing bugs with prop plane wingspans.

Colbert’s floatily suspended sepia stills are beautifully serene and welcoming. They depict humans and animals (some predatory) cohabitating peacefully in mostly natural settings, seemingly an entirely different plane of existence. It was all extremely”¦ dreamy”¦ sort of outside of space and time effect. I wondered if any other viewers felt similarly fantastically skewed.

A 60-minute film, narrated by Mr. Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) and a 9-minute “film haikus” are beautiful to view, once I got over the initial creepy feeling that I was watching a (only slightly) less disturbing version of the video tape in “The Ring.” Freaky! The distinctly abstract Japanese filmic techniques of wandering music and surreal cuts from one slow-mo scene to another further elicited the horror pic; and at one point, a dark-haired little girl does make an appearance, but luckily for the audience, she stays well within the confines of the screen, as a good little girl should. The films are dynamic, thought-provoking eye candy eliciting the viewer’s mind back to a simpler time, when man and beast were as one”¦ or something suitably philosophical.

My overall enjoyment of the exhibit was only slightly hindered by the sound of circling helicopters (gotta love LA), and I did find myself wishing I’d brought a thicker sweater, since apparently sea containers don’t make the best heat insulators. But as I exited the world of the Nomadic Museum and glanced up at the rainbow appropriately arched overhead, I congratulated myself all over again for being too cool for school and partaking of “Ashes & Snow“.

This netherworld will remain at the Santa Monica Pier through May 14th, so if you haven’t already checked it out, you’d better get a move on. A word to the wise: go during the week, as the weekend crowds often guarantee you’ll view more of the person in front of you than the art itself, which would be a sepia-colored shame.

For more information go to www.ashesandsnow.org