‘Mixup’ Lehmann Maupin Through July 30 BY KEN JOHNSON
"Mixup" proposes that the field of design is giving rise to some of contemporary art’s freshest new growth. Maybe so, but what you have in this interesting, albeit disconnected, show of works by seven avant-garde designers and one fine artist (all selected by the Coneptualist Ronald Jones) doesn’t look much different from gallery art as usual.
Most engagingly, Daniel Jasper has invented an ironic agency called Daddy to market mock commodities to neo-Marxist revolutionaries. Daddy offers for sale things like fine oven-fired clay bricks for rioters and "Auto Critique Pistola," a beautiful, solid sterling silver gun that fires its bullets backward.
Other works tend to be based on new technologies, though it would take an imaginative viewer otherwise to link them thematically. Natasha Makowski presents a line of interlocking, multicolored floor squares made of a gel she invented, along with a gel-filled talking punching bag produced in collaboration with Alexandros Psychoulis. Deep blue, pixelated C-prints by Miko McGinty represent aerial views of watery places where oceans meet.
A setup by Anukam Edward Opara and George Plesko captures viewers on video as they examine distracting geometric wall paintings. Tobias Frere-Jones has produced a hypnotically percussive sound installation, while Richard Massey comes closest to straight design with his writing desk and stationery.
Randall Peacock, who has collected a set of nine-foot-tall electrical towers into an environment called "Forest," is the lone designated artist, but his conflation of art and engineering blends seamlessly with the work of his designing colleagues.
