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Remember how you first found out about DC Shoes? You found them in your CCS and they were the coolest sneakers in the entire catalog. That small sneaker company, among a litany of other achievements, just became holder of the title, “10th most viewed viral video.”

“Production company Another Company commissioned street artist KAWS for this video teaser for Cerveza Dos Equis. The video documents the artist creating the brand identity for the new Dos Equis packaging featuring the iconic KAWS double X. The pairing between artist and brand is almost a perfect match as the double X is a shared element in both the existing brandmark, and well as a key element in most of the artist’s works to date.” via Hypebeast

Sometimes the best way to describe something is by its absence. It gives the thing shape, a construct zoned by everything it’s not. Yesterday art took form at Artexpo New York but only by not being there.

Squatting at Pier 94, a space that just weeks ago hosted the Armory Show, Artexpo was filled with galleries setting up camps of wall-hangings where there should have been paintings and statues where there should have been sculpture. All the area airport Marriotts must have been booked.

Row after dizzying row of horses running on beaches, tourist-targeting city scenes and photography that gave lie to the aphorism that any photo blown-up can pass as art. For those who have trouble discerning nude from naked, they need only have viewed the Playboy-pose-based paintings that formed their own category at Artexpo. Soft-focus soft-core that even had sub-genres: religious (Da Vinci’s “Madonna of the Rocks” huddled in one corner of a painting that could only appropriately be called “Madonna on the Rocks”), fantasy and with koi.

Legitimate artists were bastardized and it was impossible not to conjure their presence in the crowded cubbies. Andy Warhol might have wandered through, dazzled by the commercialization of it all; forty of the same painting being sold like so many cans of soup. Monet may have called the authorities when he discovered the actress Jane Seymour had been prancing across the bridge in his garden at Giverny. The tiger may have lost its place as muse to Henri Rousseau if he’d seen the close-up of one clutching a rose in its teeth. Picasso, who wouldn’t allow out of his possession so much as a scrap of paper with his handwriting on it, would have sued for the white canvas bearing a replication of his distinctive signature. In the end, what I would have liked to have seen most would be Jackson Pollock rushing in like a fanatical PETA protester and violently drip-painting everyone there.

Of the primal elements, water is the most intimate. We intake it, expel it, ablute in it and have lived in it. As with any intimacy, the relationship breeds careful knowledge. So visitors to “Leandro Erlich: Swimming Pool” at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center may be startled when they realize that the physical reflective property of water that they know so well has essentially been removed and replaced by a philopsophically reflective one by Argentine artist Leandro Erlich. Surrounded by fresh, sweet-smelling decking that runs the entirety of the duplex installation, “Swimming Pool” is a 20’x10’x10’ recreation of the real thing, with the exception of a shallow acrylic tray that holds a few inches of water at the surface. This allows for the illusion that the visitors who enter the pool from the sub-level are submerged – fully dressed, feet firmly planted on the pool bed. It’s a surreal experience from either vantage, the watery depths or the deck above.

“Leandro Erlich: Swimming Pool” through March 1, 2009 at P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center.

By now the tale of Shepard Fairey and The Associated Press photo that he appropriated for his famous/infamous “HOPE” painting of Obama is well-known. Just as the last embers of the debate seem to be burning out, artist Gordon Cheung reignites them with “HOPE (Red/Blue).” As the positive and negative images suggest, Cheung has turned Fairey’s work inside out. Fairey’s (Mannie Garcia’s? The AP’s?) image is superimposed over stock listings and printed on sailcloth. His indication that our hopes are just blowing in the wind? And who sues Cheung now?

That Ron Arad never descends into gimmickry says a lot given that some of his work can be cutesily manipulated by text messages. In “Ron Arad: No Discipline” at The Museum of Modern Art, you’re never far from a view of the courtyard and the polycoated chairs scattered about in it that are a reminder that simplicity is where iconization often lies. Where Bertoia turned a few pieces of bent wire into both a meditation on the space-time continuum and a comfortable place to sit, Arad has expanded on both concepts.

Chairs form the bulk of Arad’s oeuvre. Serpentine and inviting, they often look like they could be turned on any side and still function. One particularly dazzling display lies under a chandelier that resembles nothing so much as beakers that swallowed LEDs: Two highly polished but pocked chrome chairs, looking like they’ve been extruded one out of the other, form a futuristic throne room. Arad riffs on many of his chairs, forming the same design out of carbon fiber, resin, compacted cardboard, upholstery and even takes what seems to be one of his favorites – an infinity symbol with its points tweaked upward – and wraps it for a tea cosy effect.

Beyond his chairs, Arad still seems to have a thrill for the common objects that inhabit our everyday lives, whether it’s a turntable system that seems to have survived a concrete bath or a bookcase that can function as an everchanging mural.

Most of the exhibit is encased in or resides in the outside nooks of what looks like a Mobius strip that has broken free of infinity. The structure is formed of chrome and mirror but those reflective surfaces are forced to look inward by a sheath of slinky white fabric that dampens their powers but casts the entire room in an underwater vibe, luminary echoes of his work playing on the walls and ceiling.

Ron Arad is only at MoMa for another week. Visit now or risk never seeing an inverted camera obscura disco ball that looks like it may be spitting prophecy.

“Ron Arad: No Discipline“ through October 19, 2009, at The Museum of Modern Art, New York , NY.