Ron Arad: Restless

Busy, busy, that's Ron Arad. As illustrated by this coruscating retrospective, he has been perpetually on the go for 30 years, creating everything from spoons to shopping centres. The restlessness extends to the work itself. Attached to motors, furniture fidgets - bookshelves slide on steel tracks, or, in the case of 'This Mortal Coil', judder like they're enjoying a private joke. A corresponding jitteriness is instilled in the viewer. You can send a text message to the 'Lolita' chandelier and have it displayed in twinkling lights and, in the rumpus area that closes the show, play ping-pong on a polished steel table curved at each end like the wings of a jet - to slow the game down, apparently - or fold yourself into an array of Arad's (less ritzy, it has to be said) furniture.

It's a dazzling, endlessly distracting experience but in the end, the ideas and references are what make Arad's work truly restless. Visual quips and punning titles aside, from the Duchampian 'Rover Chair' with which he made his name, he has ceaselessly pushed the potential of objects, so much so that his abiding obsession with the humble chair becomes something of a running gag. There are moments, particularly with his many mirror-finish, 'Terminator 2' meets Henry Moore confections, when it looks as though Arad would rather have been a Lisson sculptor, entirely free to exercise his imagination, than a designer with practicalities to consider.

Perhaps a part of him still yearns for that freedom, even though we're far less sniffy about the hierarchies of art and design these days, and his own reputation - and prices - are comparable with the big boys of contemporary art. Yet the enduring impression is of a man happy with his lot and endlessly energised by his work's potential. In short films that act in lieu of gallery texts, Arad's openness and humour shine while the art versus design arguments recede. He has also made excellent use of the Barbican's rather awkward spaces, which makes him less of a designer and more of a miracle worker.