Clothes aren't often associated with sounds, except maybe the flip-flop's flop and the squeak of wet leather pants. But neither of these noises (or the things that emit them) come anywhere near the beauty of the work of Chicago artist Nick Cave. In 50 costumes dubbed Soundsuits made from "found" materials, Cave combines his skills in dance, sculpture and needlework to create wildly colorful suits named for the noises they make in motion. Some funny, some scary, Cave's Soundsuits are too haute for haute couture, but all are worth undivided attention.

On display at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts until July, Cave's work is shown in two parts: the visual and the auditory. Each would be incomplete without the other. The first gallery is filled only with the noises of different soundsuits and videos of Cave (a former Alvin Ailey dancer) twisting and leaping while wearing his art. In one small projection (which deserves a bigger spot in the gallery), Cave is shown dancing in a suit of buttons, a clattering abacus instead of a face. He childishly and charmingly toys with his hem, delighting in the clatter of hundreds of buttons.

The sound room is exciting, but the Soundsuits are more awe-inspiring when still and silent. Only then can one examine the extraordinary embroidery and detailing of each costume, energized with the potential of erupting into motion and sound. "Eerie" doesn't do enough to describe the experience of standing in a circle of these towering beings beneath an embroidered hanging orb. Walking through a forest at night is eerie. Finding an off-colored M&M is eerie. Standing amid fifty of Cave's towering creatures beneath an embroidered hanging orb is an out-of-this-world experience. It's like standing in the middle of an alien planet's fabulous and flamboyant San Francisco parade, although the exhibit is titled "Meet Me at the Center of the Earth," suggesting a more subterranean, Jules Verne direction of the paranormal.

Though alien in form, Cave's Soundsuits are made from ordinary, earthly bits and pieces, whether that means twigs collected meticulously from a park or the abandoned cardigans of so many grandfathers. The fact that Cave's materials are largely scavenged should not be overemphasized, however, for this is neither the defining nor the most impressive feature of his art. These Soundsuits are not middle-school bird feeders made out of milk cartons. When reacting to a Soundsuit, one is struck firstly by its entirety, and only later do its tiny parts come into focus, surprisingly beautiful though recycled.

Cave has a talent for creating something clear and cohesive out of the infinitely complicated. Cave calls his work "a means for understanding identity," which could be meaningless artistic drivel if it weren't so true. Like a person's identity, the Soundsuits are made of thousands of different parts and exist in multiple dimensions of sight and sound. Yet as bizarre as they are, when seen as a whole they seem perfectly natural. That towering costume made of old women's beach millinery really needs no explanation. It just is.

Cave also takes issue with assumptions about the shape of a human body. Even if they have the head of a dog, Cave's Soundsuits are undeniably human. One cheeky photo shows Cave in a suit that splits halfway up the torso like a forked tree branch, with one bird-like foot poking out below. Even though Cave is a dancer with the kind of muscular, malleable body that casts a mile-wide radius of shame on the physically unfit, such a suit is still rather confusing. Where could his head be? Doesn't he have arms like the rest of us? Cave's space-bending, Seuss-like creations evoke many such questions that can be pondered for hours in the gallery or in the middle of the night on YouTube.