VROOM, VROOM: CARS AS ART AND ART ABOUT CARS AT THE ICA

American popular culture has always beheld the automobile with great reverence. Think of the exhilarating car chase scene in Bullitt or pop song homages like the Beach Boys' "Little Deuce Coupe." Today, car companies pay to have their latest sleek models wrecked up in blockbusters. The daredevil protagonist tears through incredibly busy traffic and emerges unscathed, while the villain's car always ends up in either an accident or a heap of manure. Although a BMW will never be a good substitute for an Aston Martin, it is crucial to remember that man's (and I do mean man's) adulation of cars began with the not-so-humble hot rod. With souped-up engines and radically modified exteriors, hot rods have been the definitive ideal for generations of young Americans.

The exhibition Customized: Art Inspired by Hot Rods, Lowriders & American Car Culture at the Institute of Contemporary Art explores the idolization of the automobile. Hot-rodding began in the '40s and '50s, when roadsters were stripped down to be lighter and faster, while their engines were made more powerful. To top it off, they were painted with flames, stripes and other graphics. Lowriders came into the picture later and they were even more painstakingly ornamented, with multiple hues, elaborate upholstery and decorative effects. These cars were made to be driven slowly, so all their details could be admired. For the mostly Latino enthusiasts who made them, the cars represented their pride and cultural awareness.

Fiona Banner, Sylvie Fleury and Richard Prince treat the hot rod following the well-established Pop Art tradition of reusing familiar icons and images. Banner uses written text in the form of "wordscapes" in "Car Chases" (1998.) She describes the chase scenes in French Connection and Bullitt and, as her paragraph progresses, she gradually decreases the spacing between the red words for an effect of velocity and acceleration. The blurred-up effect towards the bottom of each piece gives you a feel of the rush of a hot rod screaming by and definitely disrupts the usual static nature of written text. Prince uses mail-order car hoods to create spare sculptures. They are painted with smooth, pastel shades of lime green and orange, giving the pieces a quiet sense of prettiness that subdues their actual use as parts of flaming hot rods. The contrast is striking and evocative. Finally, Fleury's pieces are attempts at destroying the car as a male icon. Her piece "Skin Crime #5" is a pink chromed Camaro cut right through the middle, violently sawed through most of it, but neatly cut in the front. The visceral image of a beautiful car wrecked and painted pink is supposed to be symbolic of her rejection of the masculinity of the car. Yet somehow, it actually seems to be more masculine than ever; having survived the wreckage, the car seems all the more heroic and male, in a chicks-dig-scars sort of way.

The most striking pieces of the exhibition were the photographs by Meridel Rubenstein, Craig McDean and David Perry, which capture the people behind the cars, the lives they lead and the pride they take in their cars. McDean focuses on car races, distilling the essence of their carnival atmosphere. The loud colors of the cars, spectators and race team members create a visual spectacle that allows you to hear the noise at the race pit and smell the exhaust fumes from overheated engines. Perry's photos are the most cinematic of the exhibition; he masterfully creates pictures that evoke the grit and heat of desert races. The pictures are terribly grainy, but that only makes the heat more searing and the intensity of the car race more exhausting. He works well with light and presents the hot rods in the desert as machines of lasting endurance and infinite speed. The image of a potbellied and shirtless racer in between two coupes, his arms hanging loosely as he surveys the landscape, is both quiet and loud. The picture is still and yet the buzz of the heat bears down on the viewer, screaming its aridity.

The exhibition is an interesting blend of various mediums and an intriguing juxtaposition of the loud images of hot rod art and the more subdued and serious pieces on car culture today. There aren't many questions raised, but, in the end, you get a balanced experience of the history of car art and the images and interpretations of cars in our society.

Customized: Art Inspired by Hot Rods, Lowriders & American Car Culture is on display at the ICA, 955 Boylston St., Boston, through Dec. 31. For more information, call 266-5152.