There is something about novelty that awakens the senses. A novel experience rivets our attention and burns itself into our memories. One of the many reasons we look at art is to experience novelty. 

No exhibition in this area in the past several years has presented novel experiences with as much verve and imagination as the current exhibition in the Max vonIsser Gallery of Art at Elgin Community College. The exhibition, titled "Out of the Ordinary," is a group show with works contributed by Rita Grendze, Mark Arctander, Michael Hoag, James Garrett Faulkner and Jiro J. Masuda. All of the artists are from the Chicago area, and at least two of them (Arctander and Faulkner) have had works shown in major art galleries. There is neither an exhibition catalog nor any notes, so it is difficult to glean much information about the artists, but that is more than compensated by the quality of the work.

Each artist takes a different path out of the world of the ordinary. The works are quite varied, but the show holds together in the small exhibition space. The artists' efforts share a tendency to explode the mundanity of common things in manners that create visual confrontations filled with compelling novelty. Out of ordinary things, they have created the extraordinary. The collective effect of the exhibition is to cause one to begin to see the ordinary things about us with greater acuity and imagination.

 Grendze presents some very unusual objects that have their geneses in the most common of things. For example, there is a wonderfully intriguing construction made of whiskbrooms and a bed sheet. The brooms are standing, arranged in a circle with their axes parallel to the radii of the circle they form. They are held in place with the binding of the white sheet. They never cease to be whiskbrooms, but they also metamorphose into a most uncommon object. Possibly because of the ubiquitous and familiar nature of the whiskbroom, the work, in spite of its surprising configuration, has a deeply familiar quality to it. The viewer might well sense the mediation from knowing to unknowing, and then back again. This dynamic is precisely what the work is about: a movement from the ordinary to "out of the ordinary."

 Grendze has several objects in the exhibition, and all hearken to early work by the European Dadaist artists of late 1920s and early '30s. The overt aim of the Dadaists was shock. Meret Oppenheim's "Fur Covered Teacup" is a case in point. Another example might be Man Ray's "Flat Iron" with nails soldered to the ironing surface.  In their time, these works shocked and outraged.  They were profoundly iconoclastic.  There were meant to violate of art.  But they also began their own traditions, and Grendze operates within this realm. The contemporary works do not halve the same level of shcock value as the Dadaists' efforts, and for that very reason we can move quickly to a more careful study. These works were not intended to infuriate or offend, as were the Dadaists' works.  Thus, we can enjoy the stimulation of our vision and imagination.  We can respond to the humor and the magic of Grendze's improvisations.

Hoag presents a small work also in the vein of the Dadaist movement.  In a small display case rests an Illinois license plate.  However, this one is folded into the form of a paper airplane.  We have seen such a license plate so many times our vision blurs into non-seeing. We have seen the paper airplanes of our youths so many times they cease to be  interesting. But we have not seen the metal of the license plate trans­formed into an object that seems as if it could float on air. The inertia of the metal plate is transformed by the structure of the child's airplane, and the lightness of the child's airplane is belied by the weight of the metal. Both plane and plate are real, and both coexist in the same space and time. That is out of the ordinary.

 Faulkner, a longtime and distinguished presence on the Chicago art scene, presents some very elegant collages that bring together, in a fashion like photomontage, various images and forms of diverse nature. This is a technique that was developed by Picasso and. later, taken up by the Dadaists.

 Faulkner, as with the other artists in the show; does not wish to offend with his visual shock. Rather, the intent seems to be to create a visual poetry that startles to the extent that the senses are awakened and sharpened. One is reminded of the deeply elegant and provocative collages of the late Chicago artist Robert Nickle. However, the problem with Faulkner's works is not with the works at all; but rather, it is that we have been so inured by the facile techniques of contemporary advertising that much of what he attempts has been co-opted by the advertising industry. While elegant, they rarely present the surprise other works in the exhibition provide. Still, if one brings the necessary acuity to the work, they will open into curious secrets and surprises.

 Arctander has borrowed a posture from the descendants of the Dadaists: the Surrealists. The Surrealist painters were very interested in what we might call chance. The Jungian notion that there are no accidents was an intriguing thought to them. Accident seemed to stir images of the unconscious, which was of vital interest. Even today, a psychiatrist might use selected, accidental inkblots (Rorschach tests) to aid in a diagnosis. Arctander has placed various fireworks on sheets of paper. The subsequent ignition and explosion of the fireworks have left marks and trajectories on the paper. We are presented with an artifact of the event. Chance, even fate, has been given first place. Then, the pyrotechnics of the human mind engage in the reconstruction of systems and orders that have their origin in chance.

The work of Masuda lies in the direct lineage of Marcel Duchamp, a figure central to the Dadaist enter­prise. Among the many things Duchamp did was to create what he termed the "ready-mades." These works would be made up of found objects: sometimes they would be barely altered, and sometimes they would be combined with other objects in a manner that was surprising. Masuda does exactly this. There is, for example, a series of glass hypodermic syringes. They appear to be in perfect condition, but there is an antique quality about them. Instead of gleaming, stainless steel needles there are gleaming, sterling silver eating utensils sticking out of the ends of the syringes. The medical instruments have been surprisingly and skillfully turned into dining instruments.

 There is a visual shock from such an encounter, but in a world where an artist has had himself shot (he lived), or another has amputated his own arm (he died), these visual shocks are rather tame. We are hardened. The wild and unpredictable juxtapositions that a standard evening in front of the television set provides has accustomed us to such visual shock. In place of the fleeting anachronisms of the television, these objects of Masuda’s linger in front of our eyes for contemplation. They challenge their own identities and create, even as we watch, new identities. This metamorphosis, which happens so often in this collection of work by the five artists, can lead the thoughtful viewer into ruminations about the nature of reality and the uncommon nature of the common — a trip out of the ordinary.

 The exhibition runs through Oct. 8. Hours are 7 a.m. to 11 p.m. Monday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday.