Untitled lives -- In Beijing!

Hi there. Been a while. Sorry for that -- I've been busy, meeting, it seems, every significant artist, curator and dealer in Beijing, of which there are so many, you couldn't possibly imagine. So many stories to be told, I'm not sure where to begin, so let's keep it simple, and go backwards: 

Last night, we went to the opening of the new space legendary New York gallery Pace Wildenstein (Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman, Andy Warhol and the like) opened here in Beijing's 798 art district in a former government munitions factory. At 22,000 square feet, it's the biggest commercial gallery in the world, and the space is nothing short of spectacular. I'd love to show you some images, but it appears that various government firewalls are preventing me from both uploading pictures and even reading my own blog, but such is life here, it seems.

In any case, the inaugural exhibition is of Zhang Xiaogang's work; Zhang, who is top-dollar among China's multi-millionaire artists, made his name as a painter of oblique family portraits, culled from his memories of photographs of his own family that were destroyed during the cultural revolution here; the new work is his first foray into sculpture and installation. 

Speaking with Arnie Glimcher, who's been running Pace for 50 years, the show sold out in less than four hours. Given that Zhang's work typically sells for millions per piece, you can try to do the math on your own. 

What slump?

More later ... 

Next stop: Beijing

I'll be signing off on Toronto art for a while, turning my attention to China, where I'll be as of Wednesday. I'll be blogging as much as time, technology and general exhaustion allows, so please, bear with me.

One last General Idea

I was at the AGYU this week to preview Philip Monk's, ah, reconstruction of the 1984 Miss General Idea Pavillion, which, as we know, was destroyed by a pernicious, suspicious fire (thank heavens they escaped!)

Now, those of you who know better will understand that it's an exercise in creative fictional subterfuge meant to mirror the group's own self-aggrandizing myth-making, which, in their early years, was nothing short of genius. I've already written my piece on it, so I'll spare you the comprehensive rundown; but suffice to say that, for those of us whose age meant discovering General Idea at the height of their AIDS-driven work in the 80s and 90s, the re-presentation of the ideas contained by the Pavillion is nothing short of a revelation.

Set against the AIDS work, which is significant both socially and creatively, General Idea's early self-generated fictions of their own significance seems so much sharper, more incisive, and broadly aware of the shifting world they inhabited.

I had to ask why my memory needed such a jog, and I guess it's because the excellent General Idea editions survey, mounted at Blackwood in 2003 by then-curator Barbara Fischer, never got greater play in this country. It took in the entire span, from 1967 to 1995. Nevermind it traveling worldwide, which it did -- Blackwood, an excellent small gallery, was its only presence in this, the group's home town. National Gallery, and the AGO especially, which holds such a significant collection of their work, where were you on this? I guess we'll never know.

The Toronto International Mark Lewis Festival

In case you hadn't noticed, it's Mark Lewis month in Toronto. Hamiltonian by birth, Torontonian for a while, and now a devout Londoner, Lewis, who represented Canada at the Venice Biennale this year, has -- count 'em -- three exhibitions on the go at the moment: A show of his Venice suite of films, Cold Morning, at the Justina M. Barnicke Gallery, which enjoys a promo tie-in to TIFF's Future Projections; an exhibition of older works at the Art Gallery of Ontario, Algonquin Park (2002), North Circular (2000) and Prater Hauptallee, Dawn and Dusk (2008), which are folded into the larger survey show, Beautiful Fictions); and a presentation of another pair of films at his Toronto dealer, Clark + Faria.

One of them, Hendon F.C. (2009), named for the soccer team that once occupied the pitch in the film, is a brand-new work, completed after the hubbub of Venice died down. Which, you can guess, must have been overwhelming; on top of the three films that comprised his Venice entry (Nathan Phillips Square, A Winter’s Night, Skating; Cold Morning; and TD Centre, 54th Floor, above), Lewis also assembled a  documentary, Backstory, also showing at TIFF, about the kitchsy archaic film convention of rear projection.

Remember James Dean driving his convertible, a jerkily-unreal background trembling behind him? That's it. Lewis was fascinated by the technique so much that he not only made a doc on it, but used it in Nathan Phillips Square, in which a cutely romantic couple twirl against a pre-shot false backdrop of  our city square.

There's something to be said for Lewis's meditative techniques, his apparent fascination with the cool, ultimately futile civility of late Modernism (Nathan Philips Square and the TD Centre aren't enough proof?), and his devotion to tying them together. For most part, I find the work (that I've seen, at least) more chilly than contemplative, more detached than engaging.

I don't expect I'll make many friends for this, but I'm a little underwhelmed; I connect with TD Centre, its precarious perspective on the futility of the urban ant farm we live in chillingly profound, without being ham-fisted (a chore, to be sure).  For the rest, I'll defer. But I'll keep watching.

Thur, Fri, Sat, Phew

It's been a busy time for openings  -- and unfortunately so, if you want to see any of it in your daily newspaper, because procuring more than a postage-stamped bit of newsprint is nigh-impossible in these film festival frenzy days.

On the fortunate side, I have this blog, where time, not space, is the only issue; there's still a shortage of the former, but not quite so dire. In any case, the quick tour of recent evenings goes something like this:

Thursday 

5:30 pm: On my way to China this week, I stopped at Nicholas Metivier to have a quick chat with Xiaoze Xie, whose new work is nothing short of sublime. His oblique realist paintings, of books, archives, and music, are beautiful, formal works, and suggestive of the ephemeral. And an exceptionally lovely guy, to boot.

6:30 pm: I stopped off at Red Bull 381 to check out Cedric Bomford's site-specific installation, Tower Block (that's not it, but an approximation, from an earlier work, above). This is "intervention" with a capital "I;" true to form, Bomford construction of an array of rough hewn-forms -- a bleacher, a shed, and most imposingly, a 20-foot watchtower -- is arresting and imposing. The best part, though, is its context; we all know 381 is an art project space, but it's still an office (for Red Bull, of course); the company deserves credit for fundign Nick Brown's clever curations, to be sure, but this is not peripheral decoration. The fact that people come here for work, for meetings and whatever other corporate what-have-you takes place there makes Bomford's installation live in a completely different way. And that's a great thing.

7:00 pm: A quick head-poke into Georgia Scherman Projects, where Anitra Hamilton's lovely show was taking place. Hamilton's collected by big shops like the AGO, and has been on the artist-run centre circuit for years; the fact that this is her first commerical show was a surprise, to me at least. In any case, it's a clever small-scale cross-section of her current concerns of hierarchy and militarism, in a variety of forms, and much recommended.

7:30: A happenstance tour of Micah Lexier's studio, which, for my money (and not just because it was free) is one of the best contemporary art museums in the city. Ken Nicol, Greg Curnoe, Kelly Mark, Janice Kerbel and (gasp!) Dan Flavin all share space on his walls. To say nothing of Lexier's work itself, of course, of which I've made no secret of my fandom

8:00 pm: On to MOCCA's abbreviated presentation of Arena: The Art of Hockey. Missing some key bits (No At the Crease? How could this be?) it's a mixed bag of great (James Carl, right, Jean-Pierre Gauthier) and not that great by otherwise interesting artists (Tim Lee, Wanda Koop), but worth a look.

10:00 pm: Pondering the Drake opening of bits and pieces by almost too many artists to mention (a few: Kelly Mark, Lexier, Paul Butler and Michael Dumontier) and Hunter + Cook launch at Wrongbar, my sore throat, growing more sore by the moment, imposes reason upon me. I packed it in. 

Friday:

Another hectic night, with openings of the YYZ Mall, which I wrote about for the paper, and Mercer Union's opening of shows by Diane Borsato and Taku Dazai.

YYZ is a curious experiment, to be sure; given the gallery setting, I'm not sure the public will be hoodwinked into thinking this is even slightly sincere, as I think it needs to be for the project to have a real life, but you have to give Daniel Borins and Jennifer Marman points for ambition.

At Mercer, Borsato's playful interventionist work, The Chinatown Foray and Italian Lessons, thrusts opposites together -- she took the Mycological Society of Toronto on a species-identification excursion through the exotic mushroom sections of various Chinatown supermarkets -- to extract something revealing both about context and identity.

Meanwhile, Saturday's main event (for me) was Jessica Bradley's opening of new work by Kristan Horton. Horton, who stuck in most of our minds with his brilliantly absurd project Dr. Strangelove Dr. Strangelove, which showed at the AGYU in 2007, offers here a suite of new images built on the inherent paradoxes of photography -- what it can do, what it tries to -- and what happens when Horton bends it to his particular will.

I'd tell you more, but that'd spoil the piece I've written on it for the paper, scheduled to appear Thursday. So I won't.

Also of note, to be sure, is MKG127's Laura Kikauka opening, "For the Love of Gaud."

The Hirstian reference, to his ridiculous, diamond-encrusted skull, which to me has always read as a slightly pre-apocalyptic (if disingenuous) plea for sanity to return to the idiotic art market of 2007, when it was made, is entirely intentional. In fact, it's almost a response to that plea: Kirkauka makes her skulls with cheap trinkets and costume jewelry -- faux excess vs. excess.

Phew.

Anitra Hamilton tonight at Georgia Scherman

Opening tonight at Georgia Scherman Projects is the first solo commercial show of Anitra HAmilton's work. Which should seem odd, given her presence in such collections as the AGO's, but Hamilton's big-idea work, the current versions of which deal with leeriness of over-zealous nationalism and militaristic tendencies, has always been very much at home in larger-scale spaces. The Scherman show should offer a diferent view. As a bonus, Hamilton brings her Satchel Gallery along for the ride. Literally a shoulder bag that welcomes site-specific installations by other artists (Jon Sasaki among them) the current Satchel show contains the work of up-and-comer Kerri Reid. At Georgia Scherman, 133 Tecumseth.

MW MIA?

I haven't been on here much lately, and for that I apologize; I've been busy with the actual paper (what's that?). I'll be back later today with a raft of openings to tell you about, and some news. Hint: this blog is about to get a lot broader-reaching, at least for a little while. Stay tuned.  

(No) issues: Kelly Mark at Diaz Contemporary tonight

On the weekend, I jumped the gun a little and wrote about Kelly Mark's show at Diaz Contemporary, which opens tonight. 

Like most people who follow the Toronto art scene, I guess I couldn't contain myself; Mark is one of our best, a clever, playful, eminently readable artist who effortlessly crosses streams of contemporary art history with nervily universal (and often quite personal) anxieties of life in this hectic modern world. 

Mark's new work, called "It's Just One Goddamn Thing After Another," runs the gamut of drawing, video, multiples and neon sculpture (that's an older piece, above); it's sure to be a hit. See you there. At Diaz, with Lisa Steele and Kim Tomczak, until Oct. 10. 

 

McEwen, (mostly) indoors at Olga Korper

Is there an artist in Toronto to benefit more from the city's Section 37 regulation than John McEwen? The provision, which is part of the city's official plan, allows developers to trade slackened development regulations -- height restrictions, or zoning, for example -- in exchange for an investment in something the city deems, somewhat vaguely, as beneficial to the community. 

More often than not, that means a commissioned piece of public art for the front door, which is why we have toy soldiers in front of the condo at Bathurst and Lakeshore, or a canoe held aloft by pincers at Queensway and Colbourne Lodge Road. McEwen's most visible piece of city-regulated work adorns the gap between parking lots in front of the Air Canada Centre -- those three tall, lean cones of rusted steel, with McEwen's trademark star cut-outs dappling their hides, called Searchlight Starlight Spotlight. 

It's one of several pieces throughout the city for McEwen, one of the country's leading sculptors; you can see his more human scale work, most of it in steel, at the Olga Korper Gallery until Oct. 3.  Most of the work is inside, but McEwen loves the outdoor context, so expect to see some, like Striking Stone (2009), above, out in the gathering autumn chill.