SIGHTS AROUND TOWN : Reading Art : The wild diversity of a 200-volume exhibit gives new meaning to books as a medium of expression.

Count Joe Cardella among those who shamelessly abide by the bumper sticker axiom “Think globally, act locally.” The Ventura-based artist and founder of Art/Life, a monthly limited-edition art publication, has been linking up with artists around the world for the last decade.

The latest publicly visible result of Cardella’s networking has landed at the Momentum, which also hosted Art/Life’s 10th anniversary show a year ago. “In Transit: An Exhibit of Art Works From Three Continents,” consisting of 200 accordion-type fold-out books, arrives on local soil after having toured Germany and Japan for the past year.

Two hundred is a magic number for Art/Life, composed of a limited edition of 200 artworks. In this case, though, the bookworks are one-of-a-kind variations on a broad theme. Each book is identical in size and format and is marked with the word GOD in both English and Japanese.

But from this predefined format, the artists take off in radically different directions.

The loose thematic connective tissue for the series comes from a poem titled “The Age of Gods,” created by the German organization Art Works. The text itself, suggesting that humanity is moving out of an “Age of Darkness” toward a “New Cycle,” smacks of New Age optimism.

But the artworks themselves follow no single aesthetic or philosophical party line. Approaches to the subject include art for art’s sake, chic cynicism, religious and philosophical questioning and conceptual art’s mental gymnastics.

Some of the artists redefine what a book can be. Some use the format to support a narrative structure, while some insist on strict non-linearity. Some tell stories while others simply set out to paint pictures or tap into the power of a book with blank, white pages. Some of the books won’t open, some have been burned, mock-stabbed or encased in resin.

In short: The exhibit is nothing if not an exercise in wild diversity that can grow out of setting a group of artists loose within a certain set of contextual parameters.

The book art has been culled from Japan, Germany and Italy--coordinated by the organizations Art Works, Eins Hundert and Arte Postale, respectively--as well as a clutch of American artists, mostly from Southern California and brought to the project by Cardella.

Getting to the heart of the art requires viewer participation. Leafing through several shelves worth of these books, while wearing white archival gloves, gives the viewing experience the added dimension of actively delving into the art, rather than taking it in passively. There’s a strange aura of research in the gallery.

Japanese artists account for most of the works on display, and exercise the highest degree of creative expression within the format. In part, this may stem from the venerable traditions of paper-related art-making in Japanese graphic culture.

Often the titles are slyly generic. Mitsuaki Iwago’s “Penguins” is just that: a busy, all-over repetitive pattern of mingling penguins, with a minimalist use of space. Naami Guma’s “Leaves” uses the natural innocence of leaves as a graphic source to depict, among other things, human figures and a swastika. Shiro Tamiguchi’s “Penis” makes delicate, evocative allusions to a controversial topic.

The subject of God is more a reference point than an obsession in the show, but some artists address it forthrightly.

Takashi Serizama’s book, “If God is Here, He Is in the Blanks,” has crude, smudged, burned pages that envelope his essential message: “God is nowhere, God is now here.” Tatsuya Moriyama’s plainly titled “God” contains blank pages and, on the cover, the cracked pieces of a mirror.

Also from the Japanese contingent comes a whiff of celebrity in the form of Yoko Ono’s book. It’s a credit to the show’s presentation that Ono’s work is tucked discreetly into the ranks rather than displayed prominently as a showpiece. As it happens, her book is one of the finer and subtler examples here.

Like a continuous horizontal line, or horizon line, stretched across the “pages,” Ono’s long and simple black image relates not only to calligraphy but also abstraction.

A brief text appears in the first few panels: “Green Mountains/Blue Skies/Will they still be here when I’m gone?” Accordingly, the black mark grows sparser and fainter as we “read” from left to right, evoking a sense of drifting off or thinning out with time.

Some of the most memorable works defy simple analysis. Shinya Fukatsu’s “Baby,” composed of blowups of archival, sepia-toned baby portraits, has a strange and wistful appeal. Hiroko Otomo’s “Blue Sky” is a cryptic, enticing blending of industrial machine Cubist imagery and swatches of idyllic sky, painted with ironically self-conscious wallpaperlike flatness.

On the walls are works by Art/Life regulars from the area. Anthony Askew, head of the Westmont College art department, shows his geometrically ordered abstractions reminiscent of early Richard Diebenkorn. Fellow Westmont teacher John Corlander’s paintings lean in the direction of Stuart Davis’ jazzy Cubism, while his own book deploys long, loose, sweeping brush strokes.

Art/Life veteran Mel Zaid operates at a juncture where words and image collide.

Aside from the uniqueness of the project itself, the exploratory, browsing aspect of viewing the show sets it apart from a typical art gallery encounter. Once your curiosity is piqued, time flies by and you feel compelled to dip into more and more of the books, lest you miss a gem.

And just when you think the creative options have been exhausted, new ideas and images spill out of these deceptively potent volumes. The enlightened subtext of “In Transition” has to do with passing ideas around, from artist to artist, form to form, culture to culture, from Tokyo to Ventura.

Overall, something is gained in the translation.

* WHERE AND WHEN

“In Transit: An Exhibit of Art Works From Three Continents” through May 9 at the Momentum Gallery, 34 N. Palm St. in Ventura. For more information, call 653-0828.