“Graphic Design—Now in Production”

A low-ceilinged space in a former warehouse is an odd place to witness the assembled forces of contemporary graphic design; it’s nonetheless the site of “Now In Production,” a survey on Governor’s Island organized by the Cooper-Hewitt and the Walker Art Center. Inside, ingenious commercial campaigns arrange themselves behind works by a scrappier avant-garde. But since such vanguardists often train their sights on the modes and mind-set of the advertisers, the show has the air of a cease-fire. In a hallway visitors are invited to vote (with poker chip–like counters) on whether they prefer the Starbucks logo in its present or previous state, a trick recalling Dan Graham and Hans Haacke—and also Gawker. Across the room, in an installation by Boston studio Sosolimited titled Set Top Box, 2010, typographic interpretations of closed-captioning from a television signal are projected on a wall. (During one recent viewing, a perturbed Rory Gilmore—from the television show “Gilmore Girls”—dissolved and reassembled, babbling in her particular style throughout.)

There is a mute sublimity in this clearinghouse of contemporary graphics, from magazines to merchandise to movie titles: humble newsprint (with the New York Times’ mighty infographics breaking down the 2011 earthquake in Sendai) next to sleek tablets (one displays Nicholas Felton and Ryan Case’s Daytum software, which encourages users to make elaborate charts of their daily habits). There’s a magazine rack showcasing glossies typically found at upscale newsstands (Apartamento, Fantastic Man), but also, opposite these publications, Dexter Sinister’s stylish, gnomic pamphlets that brood on the complexities of communication. (The brochures’ tight-lipped detachment finds its place in the lineage of English Conceptualists Art & Language, and sure enough the works are grouped underneath a neon sign shaped like a Minimalist coat of arms.) In one claustrophobic alcove, Metahaven has installed the branding program—posters filled with slogans—for Facestate, a future government that seems to have ingested an already engorged social network. It’s pretty creepy.