"You Complete Me" at Western Bridge Gallery invites visitors to interact with the art

I'm going to go back to the new exhibition at Western Bridge, and I'm going to bring a friend. It is, mostly, a playful show that should be figured out by talking and walking and even jumping through it. The exhibition of works by 14 local and international artists is titled "You Complete Me," as if each work of art is intimately speaking to us, requiring our involvement.

In a sense, all works of art are interactive; we bring meaning to a work by our acts of looking, feeling and thinking. But, as the exhibition guide states, about a century ago, some artists sought actively to break down barriers between viewer and object, feeling that our responses had become too passive. "You Complete Me" explores this more avant-garde relationship with art: one that isn't content to present self-contained bundles of artistic expression.

Most of the pieces at Western Bridge do this in ways that puzzle and beguile. Immediately upon entering the show, a big circular mirror guides your eye up to another mirror, which leads to another. The intention of going to an exhibition to "see some art" is amplified in a slightly anxious way — what exactly are we being directed to see? What has this circuit of lines of sight done to the idea of looking at a work from a fixed point of view? This installation of mirrors and lenses was created for the show by artists Eli Hansen and Oscar Tuazon, who were asked to make a periscope for the entryway; instead they made what they call a "para(noid)scope."

Andreas Zybach's installation also invites participation. The accordionlike tunnel of wood and bright yellow fabric asks you to walk through it; it then jiggles and shakes with your weight. Emerging from the other side, you notice streams of inky paint dripping ever so slowly down the nearby walls of the main gallery space — and, eventually, you figure out that the paint is being released through a series of tubes and hydraulics that are powered by people's movements through the tunnel. We are completing this work of art, becoming part of a sci-fi machine that generates Morris Louis-like wall paintings.

There are many "ohhhhh" moments in the show, as you figure out the conceptual plot devices that unfold as you interact with the works of art. Largely missing from the show are overtly political and ideological gambits, which underpinned the interactive works of the early 20th century. During and after World War I, Dada artists attacked the passive relationship between art object and audience in order to "shock the bourgeoisie," and the entire conventional culture that they felt had caused the catastrophic war. Rather than jolting us out of a mindless acceptance of culture, the Western Bridge exhibition cajoles us into exploring the nature of art, allowing more convivial, open-ended and, perhaps, safer experiences with it.

The one work of art that quietly holds forth political implications is Alfredo Jaar's installation of three black archival boxes that hold photographs that can't be seen. Text on each box describes a scene: a church in Rwanda where a horrific massacre has just occurred, a view of the endless tents in a refugee camp in Zaire and a closer view of a man and woman living and working in that camp. The descriptions are brief and evocative and require us to form the images in our minds' eye. It's a simple and powerful piece.

But most of the revelations in the show are more specifically art-related. In "Skyspace Bouncehouse," Mungo Thomson seems to be taking a playful jab at self-important, puffed-up art forms and ideas — the primary colors and fun-house details of typical bouncy houses for kids are stripped away, replaced by shades of gray and a minimalist cube structure. The rectangular space cut out of the roof, the title of the work, and the inflated bench for "active contemplation" gently mock the kinds of heroically introspective experiences found in James Turrell's light and space works.

The whole exhibition does a nice job of not taking itself too seriously, although there are certainly opportunities for reflecting on questions about the function of art and our position as receivers or makers of meaning. The very nature of this ever-changing, sometimes large-scale, hands-on art complicates a simple art-consumer-meets-art-object relationship.

Like the avant-garde art of previous decades, an anti-conventional stance is generated through experiences that are both amusing and unnerving. Martin Creed's installation is a good example of this — be sure to seek it out upstairs; I almost missed out on an enchanting and claustrophobic experience with a lot of big silver balloons. But I'll leave the rest for you to realize on your own, possibly with a friend.