With the assistance of a powerful steering committee and Kim Heh-kyong, overall coordinator in South Korea, "Crossings" coordinator Tom Klobe, director of the University of Hawai'i Art Gallery, has created an extraordinary itinerary.

"'Crossings' is about art, but it is also about people," Klobe says. The 56 Korean artists and three curators who visited here from Korea have left an indelible mark.

Three years ago, Klobe and several other museum curators and directors traveled to South Korea, met the artists and began a plan for exhibiting the works. As a result, we have the privilege of being exposed to some of South Korea's finest sculpture, photography, painting, drawing, mixed media and high-tech multimedia using video, computers and sound systems, installation works, textiles and contemporary Korean crafts.

For UH, Klobe selected seven internationally recognized installation artists whose work related to global and intercultural contrasts and relationships. Each artist was given a space to work in, and the results are astounding. There is a palpable impression that the artists' works reveal a desire to remove physical, mental and spiritual boundaries. And installation art, since its appearance on the art scene in the late 1970s, has the ability to address these issues in a profound way.

In an effort to advance the

exposure of UH students to well-known installation artists, Klobe invested in new equipment and had students assist with the installations.

"I wanted the students to work side by side with an installation artist," says Klobe, "to see the process and hopefully learn that it is possible for them, too. These young artists from Korea have created opportunities for themselves to exhibit in France, England and New York. More young people need to start looking at how they can expand their horizons and create new opportunities for themselves. It is possible to reach out to the world."

This "world," as you enter the gallery, is sprawled out on the floor in shades of pastel-painted wood.

In "New Map of The World" by Ahn Kyu-chul, 168 countries are correctly shaped but are all the same size. "Each country, great or little, rich or poor, takes the same status and the same worth of being," writes the artist. In the format of a child's wooden puzzle a game ensues. It is a game we play in our heads: bigger, better, more, mine, not enough and surrender.

The only artwork shipped to the gallery intact is Noh Sang-kyoon's "Twin Jesus Christs." The 9-by-9-foot twin statues of Jesus took three months to sculpt and three months (with three assistants working 10 hours a day) to cover with sequins.

"If you wear costumes, you change your image," says Noh. Here, the sacred and profane meet in a big, theatrical way. "Can humanity's arrogance cause loss of direction and distort the image of God?" he asks in his statement.

Jesus appears again in Lee Yong-baek's "Between Buddha and Jesus Christ." Using computer technology and a video camera that projects on the wall, the head of Buddha is transformed into the head of Jesus and back again. The crowd in the room on the exhibit's opening night gave the artist a round of applause. In a mirror-topped cabinet, an image of a baby and the baby's reflection float in space.

For "Twins," sound is generated by the television tube which shows only the static of no reception.

When he arrived in Hawai'i, Cho Sung-mook had to chase down 300 pounds of noodles to complete his installation, "Communication." Cho, who also works in wood, has been working with vermicelli for three years. It took two people three days to set up the metal framework for his boat and to glue the vermicelli vertically to the base and the surrounding vermicelli sea. In his statement he uses noodles as a metaphor for humans: weak yet strong, short-lived and ephemeral. The work is surprisingly exquisite.

In Yun Dong-koo's installation, "Seoul/Jechu (Cheju)/Hawaii" he suggests "freeing oneself can disrupt stability." His space is filled with black, white and yellow smiley-face balloons, a looped video (of the city of Seoul, South Korea, and a trip he took to Jechu Island to release helium balloons to journey, as the Korean immigrants did, to Hawai'i) and display cases. Here, the balloons are a metaphor for the soul and for hope. The cases on the wall display pieces of paper with phrases, "If you think you are free you can't escape," "Surrender to your instinct" and more.

Made of steel powder and closed-circuit cameras, the "Mobile Landscape In Hawaii, 2003" by Kim Jong Ku gave this reviewer a feeling that reality and the imaginary world are closer than most of us realize. Projected across a 35-by-7-foot screen, the steel powder filings on the floor (byproducts from manufacturing his steel sculptures) form a beautiful black-and-white landscape. Upon closer examination, the filings form the same sentence in five different languages: "How can I measure the biggest and smallest in the world?"

If you take off your shoes, as the sign instructs, and walk into the back of the installation, your feet will be projected by the cameras onto the landscape image on the wall. You become the giant amidst the mountains, hills and valleys in a Zen fun house. "It is metaphorically expanded space," says the artist. And definitely worth experiencing.

Embroidery, jewelry, watercolors on display

In a show of three artists' work that seems shuffled together, Patricia Greene's embroidered compositions embellished with beads, paint and fabric stand out. Bright, colorful and whimsical, they explore the realms of consciousness and dreams with figures, insects, animals and plants.

Her themes include the American Indian "Women of Spirit" and "A Moment of Enlightenment," which floats Buddha on a lotus blossom.

Greene has been embroidering since childhood, and although her work has a childlike, refreshing quality (despite its intricate stitching), her jewel-toned colors and concepts illustrate a more evolved consciousness.

In this, Cindy Conklin's fourth addition of her Kahiko watercolor series, she introduces a horizontal format — long and narrow.

Conklin's earth-toned palette of washes and overpainting remains focused on her previous subjects — hula dancers and canoe paddlers.

Linette Arakawa's "Sea Dreams" is a departure from her usual line of jewelry with stones and Asian motifs.