Aamused in Austin, TX

BERKELEY — For the average human, wrapping one's mind around the highly cerebral works of conceptual artist Jonathon Keats is not unlike stretching out a dinky piece of Saran Wrap to encompass an unusually large mass of loose Jell-O.

Not that Keats has, as yet, done any artwork with Jell-O, as far as we know. But he has often tackled the undulating and ever-elusive concepts of society and of life as we don't know it through various mind-flexing projects — things like presenting a display of 242 anonymous fingerprints, or punching a time clock whenever he had a thought, or trying to get a law of logic passed in Berkeley to ensure every entity would be identical to itself.

(He only got 42 valid petition signatures for that one, so Berkeleyans can still be illogically identical to a blade of grass if they gosh darned feel like it.)

His latest work, now on display at the Judah L. Magnes Museum in Berkeley, is no exception to Keats' rule of challenging all the rules. The show is titled "The First Intergalactic Art Exposition," and runs for the next six Earth months.

Yes, intergalactic. No, it's not telescopic photos of comets or nebulae. Yes, it's abstract art from alien beings themselves. Or at least Keats' interpretation of abstract art from alien beings themselves. Or at least Keats' interpretation of radio signals from outer space picked up at an observatory in Puerto Rico that he found on the Internet and has decoded and translated into abstract art from alien beings themselves.

"I like to think of it as the ultimate in outsider art," he said last week as he and museum workers installed the exhibit.

Basically, it's all about the process of communication and interpretation. "I've never been interested in UFOs," Keats said. "But I have a general curiosity about communication and how much ambiguity there is anytime anybody tries to communicate with anybody else."