Drug denizens: Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe move into their black acid co-op.(NWS PRNT)

*Of all the decrepit nooks and crannies in Jonah Freeman and Justin Lowe's Black Acid Co-Op, the charred remains of a trailer blackened from the inside out might just be the scariest corner of them all. Consider the adjacent rooms, though--the seedy China Town bazaar, psychedelic geodesic dome and hippie kitchen-and visceral reactions at all ends of the spectrum become part of the furniture. Brooklyn-based artists Freeman and Lowe built the first of their intricately woozy labyrinths, "Hello Meth Lab in the Sun," at Ballroom Marfa in Texas last spring. The installation's exact replication of a haggard crystal meth lab in a suburban home was a modern riff on the age-old practice of alchemy, showcasing the production of the drug in monstrous detail, while exploring the architecture and ritual practices of infamous '60s hippie communes.

After Morfa, Freeman and Lowe created a version of "Hello Meth Lab" in a high-rise apartment building in Miami during Art Basel, and with more cities on the horizon, their drug den project is morphing into a depraved movable art feast. "With each version we're able to progress it a little further and hone it to the area that it's being produced," says Lowe, who alongside Freeman is installing the Co-Op this July and August in New York at Deitch Gallery. "I always sort of joke around about this being a macrobiotic installation."

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For all the paraphernalia and drug speak, both artists claim to have never been to a drug den or spent a blissed-out summer in some neo-hippie compound--Freeman and Lowe rely almost entirely on internet image searches for their authenticity. Describing personal dalliances with drug culture, their most vivid tales are of boarding school raves in New England and Grateful Dead encounters in suburban Ohio. "It's funny because the Grateful Dead is such a no-no in the art world," Lowe says and chuckles. "It's joy Divison or nothing."

Though he has been exhibiting his "environments" since 2000, Lowe's previous spaces were more sterile, including a meticulously stocked bodega and a Mister Softee truck. The latest series of collaborations with Freeman seem to make for a perverse--if not odd and evenly satisfying--twist of fate. As he speaks about his soft past, a couple of art assistants assemble spoofed Chinese condom packets splashed with drug slang in the far corner of the studio, none the wiser.

deitch.com

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