The Visionaire Gallery in SoHo, in New York, is holding a cool and curious exhibition that marries art and commerce in an oddly amusing way.

The Dunny Show is a bit of a promotions conceit, but this a group show represents a rare and large sampling of designers and artists and is well worth the look.

The "Dunny" in the Dunny Show is a toy, a three-dimensional soft-vinyl figurine that at first glance looks like a futuristic cross between a teddy bear and a rabbit. The figure's shape suggests a character along the lines of those absurdly anthropamorphic creatures one sometimes sees in Japanese anime that manage to be both cute and alien at the same time.

Dunny was created by toy designer Tristan Eaton and entreprenuer Paul Budnitz . You may not know their names, but you may have heard of Budnitz's company, Kid Robot, which designs and sells similar collectible three-inch tall figures and toys at its two stores, one in of which is in New York City, a few blocks away from the Visionaire Gallery. (The other shop is in San Francisco's Haight District.)

The Kid Robot guys came up with the idea of using Dunny as a kind of blank canvas upon which any design can be thrown as a customized "skin." An unpainted and large-scale version (20 inches tall or about the size of a smallish fire-hydrant) of the Dunny was produced. Fifty of them were sent to 50 artists and designers who were assigned to turn their Dunny into an art piece or design a skin for it and given carte blanche.

The list is eclectic and impressive: A sampling: street artist Shepard Fairey, the creator of the Obey/Andre the Giant street logo; Heatherette, a pair of East Village clothing stylists known for outfitting Paris Hilton; the London-based graphics and multimedia firm Designers Republic; graffiti artists Haze and Seen; fashion designer Diane von Furstenburg; and Japanese artist Eishu Yoshida.

The results of their efforts are fifty interpretations of Dunny that are either stark, playful, funny, forgettable or sublime. Whether these works are "art" or "design," is debateable. In any case, they stand individually and collectively as contemporary objet d'art, and they are selling at art gallery prices. The Dunny entry by Joel Smith (designing for Steuben Glass) is priced at $21,000. Most are going for between $2,000 and $3,500. The least-expensive Dunnies, like the one customized by New York-based cult clothing deigner SSUR, sell for $1,000.

--Micropundit

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