Trade War on the Art Front : A designer tries to provide a graphic and sometimes irreverent explanation of the trade inequities between Japan and the United States

Entering, you pass under a banner that asks a provocative question: “Have You Made Money Today?” You see a toy train rattling by, yen and deutschemarks waving from its tiny box cars. A Samurai warrior peers covetously at a map of California next to a Japanese Zero airplane wing. A shrine invites you to sacrifice money to stock market gods.

Welcome to Patrick Mohr’s artistic playground at the Santa Monica Community College Art Gallery. The 40-year-old Mohr, a teacher at the Otis Art Institute of the Parsons School of Design, has mounted a graphic and ironic exploration of today’s shifting economics. Titled “Pseudo Trade Theory and Other Dokumenta,” Mohr’s exhibit is composed of three collage drawings and three installations. Although didactic, Mohr’s humorous approach is designed to help us face facts about our national identity.

“I’m primarily intrigued with the cultural and economic trends occurring in California,” Mohr explained during a recent visit to the gallery. “I consider myself lucky to be living here at this time, observing and participating in these tremendous changes, such as the transfer of our economic wealth to other nations. I’m specifically interested in issues of trade as it affects California and the Pacific lake.”

Lake ? Mohr’s method of speech as well as art fragments habitual responses and images to provoke analysis. In a geopolitical world, Mohr is saying, the distance between Japan’s and U.S. coasts is nothing but a sailing trip across a lake.

Mohr, an avid sailor whose sculpture is frequently constructed from marine materials, conceived the show while sailing in the Los Angeles harbor. “I realized that the harbor was full of battalions and battalions, divisions and divisions, of Japanese cars, some off-loaded and some being off-loaded. To me, it looked like an amphibious landing in World War II.”

He began thinking of “trade wars” in literal terms. Previous works evolved out of historical and social concerns. In 1978, while on a Fulbright fellowship to Portugal, Mohr’s research led to several installations reflecting discoveries by Portuguese explorers Ferdinand Magellan and Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo. Watching Japanese cars “invading” Los Angeles, Mohr began thinking of colonialism.

“I’ve always been interested in what results from discovery and trade,” he said. “Usually a synthesis of two cultures occurs. California has historically thrived on a synthesis of extra-cultural interaction. Can it thrive despite the deficit trade imbalance between the United States and Japan? Our failed economic policies, our inability to compete in the world?”

To artistically reflect his concerns, Mohr began acquiring data about Japan. He learned that in a village outside of Osaka, the formal greeting is, “Hello, have you made money today?” Mohr decided it was no coincidence that this village provided Japan with a number of politicians and successful businessmen.

Nor was it an accident that he reprised this question as the formal greeting to his show.

“It’s a question that we should be asking ourselves,” he said. “Maybe the question is, ‘What are you doing with the money you made? Are you willing to make a long-term investment? Or are you in it for the short-term profits?’ ”

Then, Mohr conceived an installation titled “Tools of the Trade.” This keystone of his Santa Monica exhibit is centered on a large airplane wing he purchased from a salvage yard. The American-made plane had crashed, an appropriate metaphor for his show. Mohr repaired the dents and painted the wing in camouflage patterns used by the Mitsubishi-made Zero fighter planes in World War II.

“The Zero was very maneuverable,” said Mohr, an amateur pilot, “an extremely efficient combat aircraft. The wing serves as a metaphor for contemporary Japanese skill in developing materials, in particular heavy machinery, cars and other goods which are equally flexible and equally able to overtake competitors with superior skill, ingenuity and maneuverability.”

He added to the wing a Japanese insignia, the traditional rising sun, but with the yen symbol in its center, reinforcing the idea that militarism is an anachronism while economic warfare is on the rise. His last embellishment was a black-and-white chess board. On it, ready for the game to begin, stand toy trucks and aircraft, and four miniature samurai warriors.

Above the wing, hanging from cables like dead animals, are hand tools “representing our past industrial prowess.” The Long Beach native salvaged the tools from Signal Hill. He wanted hand tools that had been used and discarded or lost by roughnecks working Signal Hill’s oil fields. Among the dangling tools snakes a 26-foot-long rubber hose, also abandoned on Signal Hill.

“I’m trying to compare and contrast the way things were with the way things are today,” he said of the tools hovering over the wing.

These attitudes are dramatically represented by the adjacent work, “NASDAQ Altarpiece.” Named after the New York market that sells junk bonds and over-the-counter shares, this sculpture of galvanized sheet metal resembles a 6th-Century Byzantine altar. An Astro-turf rug leads to ceremonial candles obtained from a Catholic Church distributor. Behind the candles hanging like a Christ figure, is a painted graph of the “Black Monday” 1987 market crash. At the base is a ceremonial urn hand-carved in India. The contents are ashes of burned currency.

“I’ve taken care to protect the ashes,” Mohr confessed in reverent tones. “Originally, I burned yen and deutschemarks. I’d never burned money before and it gave me a very interesting psychological rush. It brought into focus some of the specific content that this show deals with, and that is greed. I was very disturbed and shaken by this act.”

“Patrick Mohr’s work extends beyond the confines of pure aesthetics and formalism,” says Lucinda Barnes, associate curator at the Newport Harbor Art Museum. “Although anybody can make a political, economic and social statement, Mohr also merges these concerns within a very viable work of art. He very effectively involves the viewer in these issues. That’s the most important aspect.”

Mohr jokes that he hopes someday his monument to capitalism will be installed at the New York Stock Exchange, “preferably at the front door. The traders could come in, genuflect, and pray for a profitable day by making a propitious offering to the gods of the stock market. Those with money to burn would prosper.”

Symbolic of this “profits at any cost” mentality is another sculpture titled, “Try Ridding Our Economic Tsunami, or Saturn Devours Its Young.” Toy trains circle three towers beneath banners emblazoned with the outline of a Suzuki Samurai all-terrain vehicle.

“In Greek mythology, Saturn or Kronos, rather than live immortally through his children, felt that the immediate lust for power needed to be satisfied,” he explained. “In an economic context, we’ve always been obsessed with the here-and-now, like Saturn, obsessed with immediate stardom, artists included among the entertainers. I turn a deaf ear to this obnoxious characteristic of celebrity artists that’s overcome the art world.

“One reason we can’t compete globally with regard to the production of real goods and resources, is that most of our large corporations are interested in short-term profits and not making long-term investments.”

The popular Samurai has become a universal image for the new Japanese import “fun car.” Its name, however, is what fascinates Mohr.

“The Japanese had either the foresight or the audacity to name the car after their triumphant warrior. Talk about an invasion of Japanese goods!”

Mohr’s passion for history prevents him from blaming Japan. He points out that it was an American, Admiral Matthew C. Perry, who forced Japan to open up to foreign trade.

“Japan quickly modernized after Admiral Perry gained trade concessions via gunpoint diplomacy,” Mohr said. “So in a sense we’re responsible for Japan’s economic rise. Ultimately, the responsibility for our own economic policy really lies at home. We in the United States are responsible for our inability to compete internationally.”

He wonders if Japan eventually will meddle in U.S. affairs. “We’ve been described as cultural aggressors and colonial exploiters. After all, the Japanese are using us as a prototype for their own expansion, just as we used the British empire as our prototype. There’s nothing new here except we’ve had a fumble and the ball has changed hands.”

And with that, Mohr said “sayonara,” exited the gallery and drove off in his new Toyota.

Patrick Mohr’s installation will be on display at the Santa Monica Community College Art Gallery through Feb. 16. Gallery hours are 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Tuesday through Friday, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturdays, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday through Thursday. For information, call (213) 452-9231.