Microcosm of the Berlins : Viewer Will Step From Opulence to Starkness

COSTA MESA —  These days, walking through South Coast Plaza to the Laguna Art Museum’s satellite there is like crossing the border from West to East Berlin. At least that’s the way Paul Kos sees it.

In November, Kos, an artist from San Francisco who had been asked to mount a show in the gallery, visited the giant mall to decide which of his works would best suit the modest space. The Berlin Wall had opened that same day--and Kos knew immediately what to do.

“People from East Berlin were swarming across to West Berlin to buy things and it’s like walking into this shopping center,” Kos said recently. “There’s nothing you can’t buy here. And this gallery is proportional in size to the shopping center as West Berlin is to East Germany.”

So Kos created an Eastern Bloc island “in the middle of Western opulence” to mirror in reverse the way West Berlin “is an island in the middle of communism,” he explained.

The result is six installations that collectively form “Ber lin” (the title split to symbolize the division between East and West), on view through April 15.

Kos often imbues arrangements of common, everyday objects with symbolic meanings. Here, he used “raw” materials--unpainted wooden 2-by-4s; a harsh, bare light bulb; a black-and-white television; dull gray paint--for his unyielding, oppressive enclave of Marxist-Leninism.

“I wanted to make this place as opposite as I could from all those acres of Tiffanys and Guccis and McDonald’s,” said the artist whose video, sculpture and performance art frequently examine polarities.

At the gallery’s entrance is “rEVOLUTION: Notes for the Invasion--mar mar march,” an installation bathed in red light. Kos said he first created it in 1972-73 in response to the Communist revolution and the Cold War.

The black-and-white television set at the back of the room “acts as a bait,” he said. To approach the lure, viewers are forced to step, awkwardly, on or between wooden 2-by-4s placed horizontally on the floor. The TV emits the sound of a typewriter clacking out the familiar cadence of military marchers--”left--right, left--right--left”--which also forces people to step in time to his beat, Kos said.

“It physically controls the way people walk. It’s like military conditioning almost.”

“It’s a Matter of Time,” in the next room, features a row of 14 cuckoo clocks, all their color and charm masked with gray paint. Their weights have been replaced with hammers and saber-sharp sickles.

The cuckoos’ chirps are meant to represent the voice of change recently heard from such countries as Romania and Czechoslovakia, Kos said. An element of unpredictability and chance is built into the work, one of three created specifically for the exhibit: The clocks look identical but chirp for political reform at different times because each one is weighted differently.

“I have no control of when the cuckoo comes out,” Kos said.

Another work, “Silenced Tongues,” also refers to voices of reform. In this case, though, the “silenced” voices belong to Chinese pro-democracy demonstrators who were hammered into submission by the Chinese government during last May’s Tian An Men Square massacre.

The 1989 piece includes a long metal pole with a bright, white light bulb at its base that swings back and forth like the internal “tongue” of a bell. The pole’s pendular movement, which causes no sound, is intended to symbolize a bell ringing silently.

“It’s about what went on in China, when they silenced all the students” and other demonstrators, said Kos, whose other three works in the installation (“Trotsky,” “Rift” and “Ber lin,” a sign that spells out the word in neon) are meant to further establish his theme of contrast between East and West.

“I’m not saying that one is better than the other,” said the 47-year-old artist, whose work has been shown around the world. He was quick to add, however, that perhaps the juxtaposition of his Eastern Bloc island and Western ways, epitomized by the “capitalism and opulence” of South Coast Plaza, will cause viewers to “compare the difference between (Easterners’) need and our greed” and to see that life isn’t necessarily so perfect “on our side of the fence.”

“We have a lot of problems too, like homelessness and health care,” Kos said. “Welcome to the U.S., but don’t get sick. Only the wealthy can afford health insurance.”

“Ber lin,” a set of installations by Paul Kos, continues through April 15 at the Laguna Art Museum South Coast Plaza satellite, 3333 Bristol St., Costa Mesa. Hours: 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. Mondays through Fridays; 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturdays; 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sundays. Admission: free. Information: (714) 662-3366.