When the semioticist Roland Barthes came to Japan, he decided to do what many foreigners do, which is to base his impressions of Japan on exactly that, his impressions. His book "The Empire of Signs" is ostensibly about Japan, but the author acknowledged (with no shame) that it actually was a collection of generalizations based on his outsider observations. It is a fabricated and imagined place that he describes.

Perhaps more than any country in the world, Japan is, as seen from the West, a land of projected dreams and desires. Even Japanese are nostalgic for Japan -- they are the biggest group of tourists in their own country. And a tourist is always an escapist and a magnifier of cultural signs. So when Turkish artist Ayse Erkman was asked to hold an exhibition at Galerie Deux, she followed a well-worn path by creating her site-specific installation around her notions of Japan.

"Half Of," by Ayse Erkman, installation, Japanese handmade paper

"[Galerie Deux] had sent me photographs and plans and images of the gallery space, and I thought I should make something for the space -- the gallery being in Japan, in Tokyo. I was thinking of all this, and you know the first thing that comes to mind when I think of Japan is paper -- lightweight and soft. I thought of the paper lanterns," said Erkman.

She was also impressed by certain cultural characteristics.

"They had sent me the plan of the gallery and because Japanese people are so precise in what they are doing, so precise and give so much detail -- they sent me the gallery in three dimensions!" Erkman noted incredulously. "Normally when I am making exhibitions in other places they send me a floor plan, but here they sent me a floor plan as well as the wall plan. So, I just folded it like a child and made it into a room."

This room became the prototype of Erkman's show. Five models were made. The biggest was exactly half the size of the gallery, with the others in ever-decreasing dimensions, half the size of the previous larger one. The models were assembled in Japan, made out of washi (Japanese paper), attached to slim bits of doweling and suspended from the gallery ceiling, the largest hung farthest from the door.

Visually the boxes are calm, simple and serene as they float above the floor, casting soft shadows. The viewers milled under them, permitted to touch them if they could reach -- which they couldn't. All rice-paper white, they defused the light and, as washi does, appeared to emit a dim glow.

"I used Japanese rice paper that is used in Japanese lighting systems. I thought of putting them up, like a lamp, and leaving nothing on the floor because the gallery space is so beautiful," Erkman explained.

The artist thus incorporates Japanese materials, cultural generalizations, the space of the gallery and her particular use of a simple idea inspired by the technical information provided by the gallery staff to make an installation that provoked many comments among the viewers.

"I don't generally like postminimalist sculptural art intervention," said one clever gallery visitor, "but, as far as it goes, this is a very pleasing one."

"It's half of a foreigner's view of Japan," another quipped.

"I like it, especially the rice paper," said a sincere fan of things Japanese.

I liked it too. The beautiful gallery was visually complemented, and the idea was unobtrusively intelligent and simple. But soon I was looking for something more.

I moved off to the lobby to watch the video projected in the window. Accompanied by strange music, six different green shapes did a computer-generated line dance toward the viewer. One type of group would perform for a while, then another lot would roll up for their particular dance.

"They are the images of land mines -- the forms of antipersonnel land mines," Erkman explained. "There are six different forms. I wanted to hide their real ambition and make them into agreeable objects."

Well, initially they did seem agreeable. After I learned their true identity, though, they began to appear ominous and the humor turned black. Repeated on six tiles exhibited on the upper floor, the strange, green forms of the land mines added color and depth to what is an otherwise intentionally airy and light show.