Super Heroes Return mixes high and low tech mediums along with childhood influences from both the United States and Japan to create a whimsical full spectrum installation to carry you away to Mumbreeze’s Pop Neverland.

A large staircase stacked with papier-mache dolls is their version of “Ohinasama”, a Japanese family tradition to celebrate the holiday Girls’ Day. Instead of fancy porcelain figurines representing the Emperor and Empress’s court, they’ve replaced them with multi colored abstract figures that remind one of super heroes such as Ultraman, the bad guy monsters in Godzilla movies, and more recent anime robots like Evangelion. Their slightly awkward, stiff stance and blank facial expressions take their influence from older icons like that of the Haniwa clay figures buried in funeral mounds in ancient Japan.

A video collaboration with artist/musician E*Rock presents us with a super hero whose only “power” is the ability to exchange different heads with the touch of a button. He walks around town with nothing to do, and then just falls asleep. Interdispersed through the video are rainbow swirly “heroes” who seem to be trying to hypnotize us into happiness. Are they trying to tell us that our childhood ideas of super heroes who come to save the day don’t exist? That the people who we idolize as heroes are just facades? Or is it a wish to return to a time when we really thought a costumed savior could rescue the world from catastrophe?

The show is topped off with drawings in colored pencil, marker, and gouache, as well as sewn, plush dolls. Both are made with a juvenile feeling which recalls a youngster’s bedroom; scribbling and doodling while lying on the floor, listening to the radio, in a room filled with stuffed animals; a time when we all still felt safe and protected.