IN THE BEST SENSE MOCA'S TRIPPY 'VISUAL MUSIC' TURNS SIGHT AND SOUND INSIDE OUT.

Byline: Steve Rosen Correspondent

For its new ``Visual Music'' exhibition, the Museum of Contemporary Art uses an unusual word to describe the effect of the work: ``Synaethesia,'' or unity of senses.

That means the viewer of an abstract painting, for example, is able to ``hear'' a symphony or jazz solo reflected in the shapes and colors. Or a concert listener can ``see'' specific dark, rich colors when a guitarist holds a sustained, melancholy chord. (Is that why they call it the blues?)

But there's another word to describe this show: ``trippy.''

The artists here - especially those using short films and other projections, often with music - seek to distort and expand our consciousness in ways reminiscent of the old psychedelic light shows of the 1960s. (Joshua White's 1969 ``Joshua Light Show Liquid Loops'' film is featured in one of the screening rooms.) At times, all that's missing is a hologram of the Grateful Dead playing ``Dark Star'' - and somebody's probably working on creating that, somewhere.

This thoroughly engaging exhibition is playful and fun and sometimes gloriously transfixing. At its core is a creatively intellectual thesis that deserves seeing and hearing - a parallel history of 20th-century abstract art.

It holds that, rather than always drawing a straight line from pioneering European abstract painters like Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee to the New York abstract-expressionist painters of the 1950s, you should factor in those who experimented with movement in their art.

Animated films, color organs, light machines, computer-generated imagery, sound-and-light installations and immersing environments. Those are responsible for some overlooked milestones in 20th-century abstraction.

``That lineage winds up on the West Coast,'' said ``Visual Music'' co-curator Kerry Brougher, chief curator of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C. ``This is a great town for visual music.''

Brougher spent several years working on this exhibit with MOCA director Jeremy Strick, who brought the idea with him to L.A. in 1999 when hired from the Art Institute of Chicago, where he was curator of 20th-Century Painting and Sculpture. MOCA and the Hirshhorn combined forces when Strick learned both were working on similar ideas.

The show aims to have a historical, chronological focus. The first section is devoted to the crucial initial forays into abstract painting and photography by artists who came of age in the early 20th century and tried to emulate the highs created by stirring music. Both Kandinsky and Klee are well-represented with works on loan, as well as Americans Marsden Hartley, Georgia O'Keeffe and Arthur Dove.

The underrated Hartley's large oil painting from 1912-13, ``Musical Theme (Oriental Symphony),'' is a knockout of explosive shapes and colors, with musical-notation symbols emerging from the cornucopia of images with the force of crashing cymbals in an overture.

The exhibit's other two sections are devoted to films, videos, color organs and light projections, and contemporary installations that often use digital media. The truth is that the second section overpowers everything else in the show, although the curators try to compensate with music-programmed iPods installed near the paintings for listening pleasure.

But even such a master as Kandinsky has trouble holding his own when an entire gallery is devoted to the mesmerizing early computer-animation films of James and John Whitney. The experience of watching James Whitney's 1963-66 ``Lapis,'' projected in such crystalline high-definition video that every little pixel glows like a floating orb, is simultaneously humbling and mind-expanding. It's like watching a living mandala, especially with the accompanying Ravi Shankar soundtrack.

And for true bliss, there's Jennifer Steinkamp's 1995 ``SWELL,'' a computer-generated installation displayed on back-to-back walls inside a gallery. Zooming in and out, from close-up to long shot, the abstracted imagery travels through a galaxy of swirling lights and bright colors while gurgling sound effects fill the room. At times, it's like being inside a storm; at others it's as cheery and poppy as one of Andy Warhol's paintings of flowers. To use a musical term, it rocks!

``Visual Music'' does the best job I've seen of showcasing art films and related projections in a gallery context. Overall, this show even makes a good case for a museum devoted to such work. Maybe that can be MOCA's next expansion?

Indeed, the museum's large first gallery is empty save for a giant screen, speakers and some couches to allow visitors to relax while watching a reel of historic early animated films, which have the power of a giant Jackson Pollock canvas.

What would Harry Smith, the bohemian artist who struggled outside culture's mainstream all his life, have thought about seeing his jazzy 1949 color short ``Early Abstractions: Film No. 3 (Interwoven)'' given such a canonical presentation? For that matter, what would Dizzy Gillespie think? His music accompanies Smith's film. I know what I think - this is the way it should be.

VISUAL MUSIC

What:

Where: MOCA Grand Avenue, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday and Friday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and Sunday, 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday; through May 22.

Tickets: General admission is $8; free on Thursdays. For more information, call [phone] or visit moca.org.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- color) no caption (part of ``Visual Music'' exhibit)

(2 -- color) ``SWELL''