Everyone has the capacity to appreciate art, just as most people have capabilities for using language and enjoying music. Why is it, then, that so few go to modern-art museums for fun? Why does fine art repel people in ways that, say, commercial design does not?

Answers beget more questions, of course. Why do so many assume that "fine art" speaks only to those who have been initiated into its secret codes and private languages? Why do those who stay away from museums assume that art is only for the arty?

"Alimatuan: The Emerging Artist as American Filipino," The Contemporary Museum's new show, addresses some of these questions about artistic accessibility by reminding everyone that people will occasionally miss out on amazing experiences if they allow their preconceptions to keep them from visiting art museums.

"Alimatuan" is so well conceived, so playful, so provocative, and such fun to interact with that all who see it should be captivated regardless of whether they have what is commonly referred to as an "art background."

Art is in everyone's background, after all, and this particular exhibition focuses on work by young Filipinos in America. It's difficult to figure out the best way to describe "Alimatuan."

The title derives from an indigenous tribal dialect in the mountainous regions of the Philippines. Loosely translated, the term refers to "the soul of the spirit," and it would certainly make some kind of sense to describe the show in ways that merged matters of identity with metaphysics and philosophy. Maybe. The show catalog instructs that "the lens of Alimatuan is both one of Filipino-American-ness, but also one of emerging-ness." OK. Probably true, but while viewing the show through windows of art criticism and identity politics is not exactly missing the point, neither is it entirely apt.

The work in this show seems born of the everyday way people speak, eat, flirt and mess with one another. References to hip-hop, '80s movies and processed lunch meat mingle with evocations of Cindy Sherman (see Maria Dumlao's "Verging"), Jean-Michel Basquiat (see the graffiti-inspired work of Kanoa W.H. Baysa and Marlon Sagana Ingram) and Jeff Koons (see the prefabricated, toy-like work of Michelle Lopez and the use of pop art and gold fish in the installation by Maureen Catbagan.) High culture mixes fluidly with low culture until such distinctions stop meaning anything. Perhaps it makes most sense to borrow from the artists their elevation of slang: "Alimatuan" kicks ass, and if you don't drive halfway up Tantalus to see the show, you're missing out on something super-cool.

Walking through the heavy, Plexiglass doors at the museum's entrance, visitors are first confronted with the raised fist at the literal center of one of two large-scale, untitled paintings by Kanoa W.H. Baysa. Painting in layers of dripped, shadowy gray, Baysa forces viewers to look simultaneously at surfaces and backgrounds. Images of skeletal heads, sparkling crosses and racial slurs appear foremost on the large canvases, then recede into fields of blacks and whites. Behind images borrowed from tattoo flash and graffiti tags, beneath words shouted on streets and scrawled on walls, there are depths to be fathomed.

Michael Arcega juxtaposes the familiar with the abjectly weird as he inverts the word "maps" to reveal the word "spam." Yes, in "Spam/Maps: World" Arcega has created a detailed map by sculpting processed lunch meat. The work succeeds simultaneously as a comment on globalization and marketing, as a display of expert technique, and as one big joke which turns both stomachs and frowns.

In "El Conquistadork," Arcega's large installation on the bottom floor of the museum, Arcega displays the seaworthy sailing ship he built from actual manila folders. (Get it?) To listen to his account of the ship's launching, visitors must interact with "The Captain's Log," a listening apparatus fashioned to look like, um, a piece of talking feces. These works by Arcega typify much of the art displayed by the young Filipino-Americans featured in "Alimatuan." The serious merges with the hilarious, the personal with the political, the verbal with the visual, and the sacred with the profane.

Entire articles could be written about each work on display, and while people's individual senses of taste may point them more in one direction than another, not one work of art in this show is anything less than enthralling.

In "Raw Series," Tomiko Pilson imagines what might happen if Siegfried and Roy's Vegas sensibilities were suddenly mauled by Paul Gauguin's idealized Polynesian beauties.

Marlon Sagan Ingram brings to mind the art-crit term "pop surrealism" as he creates paintings and assemblages on wood that suggest a mash-up of R. Crumb cartoons, old Sugar Hill record icons and antique portraits of a Filipino grandmother.

In Hannah Israel's "Cream, Ivory and Eggshell," viewers are asked to consider how variations in colored cloth resemble the ways people from similar ethnic backgrounds place significance in even the slightest gradations of skin pigment.

"Alimatuan" seems perfectly curated, as one amazing work responds to or connects with the next piece on the neighboring wall.

The effect is of full immersion without feeling confined or confronted by clutter. The artists employ a variety of media and engage all five senses.

This is art to consume and be consumed by. You should probably stop reading about it and just check it out for yourself.

Timothy Dyke is a teacher at Punahou School.