Vestiges of power: Greg Girard at Clark Faria

I spent some time with Greg Girard yesterday, looking at his show at Clark Faria. If you know Greg, it's likely for his work in Shanghai over the past decade, documenting that city's rapid transformation -- and destruction, say some -- from crumbling to shiney new in the wake of the Chinese economic miracle. The work was collected in a book released a couple of years ago called Phantom Shanghai, and it's great.

Needless to say, we've heard an awful lot about China's onrush to first-worldliness, at least economically; and Girard, for the moment, had had enough of it. So he set out to pick up where he left off in his early 20s, in Japan, where some of his earliest pictures were of the bizarre incongruities of lives lived on American military bases in Japanese cities. Inside, a surreally picture-perfect version of outdated Americana (clean-scrubbed 50s idealism) ruled; and just outside, Japan. 

Girard, a Canadian living in Shanghai for the past decade, and Asia in general for much longer than that, returned to the bases to find little had changed in the intervening years, at least on the inside; islands of small-town America still drift in ever-densifying Japanese urbanity surrounding. The pictures remind one of a vestigial tail -- useless, but persistent, and ridiculous on both counts. Girard, though, is a master of understatement, and quiet observation, not finger-pointing, reigns here. Eerie and sublime, they quietly remind us of the intricacies of geopolitics, and the intractible situations they can create. Which, in these troubling times, is timely indeed.

Speaking of catching up ... Burtynsky closing this week

I've always tried to focus on openings, not closings, but being on the other side of the planet can seriously throw a wrench into even the best of intentions. Nonetheless, I don't want Ed Burtynsky's show at Nicholas Metivier, which closes Saturday, to pass without at least a mention here.

Full disclosure: I've known Ed for some time, and have written about both his work, and his calculated turn from ambiguous observation towards more vocal environmental activism (he used much of his generous TED Prize money from a few years ago to fund an epic guide to almost everything green, published by the envrionmental foundation Worldchanging).

While there's nothing wrong with a conscience, environmental or otherwise, it can be death as an artist. Nothing sours a sophisticated audience faster than perceived pedantism -- telling you what to think, and why. Ed always elided these things in his images, which ranged from viral incursions into the natural envrionment by man and machine -- his Rail Cut series showed, at vast scale, freight trains traversing mountains, rendered toy-like amid the majesty -- to collossal intrusions in the same; even in the latter (quarries in Vermont, several stories deep, or flowing molten rivers of nickle in Sudbury), scale and distance rendered the images contemplative, not scolding, and undeniably, eerily gorgeous.

The Metivier show, which has been duplicated and expanded at the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., tackles the common thread that ties all of Burtynsky's work together: Oil. Ed has been working on images of the oil industry specifically for years; but when I spoke to him about 5 years ago, for a story in the New York Times, he had started to depart from the specific notion of oil -- refineries, derricks and the like -- to the more abstract notion of oil as the great enabler of the entire manifestation of modernity. Without it, we wouldn't have freeways and suburbs, transport trucks and jet liners -- or anything else that allows people and goods to ignore geography and have, do and go everywhere and anything they want. This show is the cohesive manifestation of that notion, hatched that long ago.

The show's trademark Burtynsky's, as it were, will be manifest in his chilling aerial images of Alberta's oil sands; but with Burtynsky's growing fame in recent years, imitators are many and as such, these pictures will seem less striking for the glut of them that have been produced. For my eye, Ed's long view of the built environment oil has enabled, and in some ways, necessitated, strike hardest and last longest -- snarls of on-ramps in Los Angeles, distended exurbs cleaved by a dozen lanes of high-speed blacktop. Hiding in plain sight -- a ridiculous way of life rendered invisible by familiarity. That's Burtynsky at his best, and here, he is.

Boyle $25,000 richer -- or poorer, depending on how you look at it

Doing my damnedest to beat back the jet lag and catch up on everything I've missed while in China lo these many weeks (which is an awful lot), so I'll try to work backwards. To with, I'm a mere day late to tell you that Toronto favourite Shary Boyle is $25,000 richer after winning the Gershon Iskowitz prize yesterday. The prize, which is partially administered by the AGO these days, puts Boyle in good company in the Canadian contemporary canon; past winners include such bigwigs as Janet Cardiff and George Burns Miller, Stan Douglas, Max Dean, Vera Frankel, Rodney Graham and John Massey.

The award, nominally, is given for an "outstanding contribution" to the visual arts in Canada, which I don't think can be argued in the case of the prolifically inexhaustible Boyle; maybe it takes some of the smart out of not winning the $50,000 Sobey Prize a couple of weeks back, too (Boyle was among the five finalists; the winner was David Altmejd). Congrats to her.

TIAF: A gawker's guide

Nothing reduces creative human expression down to the bald-faced hucksterism of a trade show as effectively as an art fair, the likes of which have been proliferating -- or I should say, had been, pre-economic meltdown -- all over the globe.

There's just something unforgiving about cavernous concrete bunkers -- like our own Metro Convention Cente, where TIAF is on until the end of the day -- that have, in recent months, featured such diverse genre as building material, a psychic expo and farm equipment. It just doesn't really say "art" to me, I suppose; commercial galleries perform the same function -- they are, in essence, thoughtfully considered retail shops -- but amid sterile temporary booths and under the equally unforgiving glare of millions of watts of fluorescent tube lighting, any pretense of the personal melts away.

So that's the bad. On to the good, which is that, of the many local dealers I spoke to at TIAF yesterday, there's was some guarded optimism about this year's fair. Compared to a year ago, when the fair was staged within moments, it seemed, of the financial crisis, things are relatively rosey. As in, people are actually buying. Which is a good thing if you're an artists, or care about culture, and the inevitable market dynamic that allows it to be made.  

As with most fairs, there are few revelations here, but rather a host of dealers cleaning out their closets and looking to sell pieces that didn't on their first showing in the preceding months. That doesn't mean the work isn't good, or interesting (though lots of it is neither, but that's the inevitable grab-bag of a fair in the first place); but it does mean, if you follow the art scene at all, that there's plenty you've seen before.

That doesn't mean it's not worth a visit. The fair is a little smaller this year, with fewer international dealers -- just a handful from New York, London and Germany -- but in the interest of one-stop shopping -- or just perusing, which is what most people were doing -- it's a handy little market-based microcosm and well worth the price of admission. A few notables, to my mind:

1. For those of us who had the good fortune to stumble on the tiny house on Robinson Avenue, just off Queen Street West, a few years ago, Iris Haussler's presence at the fair this year will touch off pangs of warm nostalgia -- or fevered nightmarish chills. If you saw what I'm talking about, you'll never forget it; if you  didn't, it goes like this: One morning a few summers back, a ramshackle bungalow on Robinson displayed an official-looking sign on its front lawn. The sign, with the signature Toronto city logo (the curving towers of city hall), declared that the house was being assessed by the civic archives for its "cultural value." Why? Well, take the tour and see.

Inside, you were guided through the tiny house by an archivist in a white lab coat. Apparently, its sole resident for the past 50 years, an elderly German man named Joseph Wagenbach, had had a stroke and was in hospital. With no family in the country, social services, when going to collect his belongings, cracked open the inner world he had created for himself over the decades -- a tiny house overflowing with nightmarish sculptures rendered in plaster and wax, strewn with debris, basically uninhabitable. Social services alerted Civic Archives, and now, with Joseph alone and disoriented in hospital, the public was given access to the provate world he had safeguarded from view for much of his life.

It was all an elaborate ruse, of course, orchestrated by Haussler to explore the notions of outsider art and the isolating experience of immigration in the post-colonial western world. To put it simply, it was a masterstroke, a gut-wrenching and visceral experience like few I've ever had; I felt guilty just for being there. That it proved to false was a revelation that ought on a surge of relief in me; my first sense was 'thank God;' and only then did I start to think about it as an intellectual art exploration. Which, in my books, is how it shoudl be; the best art grabs our hearts and squeezes hard long before it engages out heads, and the Wagenbach project did that possibly more than any other I've seen. 

What does this have to do with TIAF? Well, Haussler, who has also enjoyed a successful run at the AGO in the Grange this year, has started a foundation to preserve Joseph's art, casting several of "his" plaster and wax sculptures in bronze; she's also selling the drawings "found" in the house, honouring the outsider as a canonized member of the art world. Conceptually, it's an extension of the original project, and an interesting comment on art-world legitimacy; personally, I was just so glad to see it back I didn't think much about. You can't equal the impact of the first moment you stepped through that door and into Joseph's world; but you can revisit it in a new way here.

Haussler discusses the project today at 3 pm. Well worth being there. I will be.

2. Feheley Fine Arts, the Yorkville gallery that specializes in contemporary Inuit Cape Dorset artists, seemed to be having a banner fair, with the majority of the works in display in its booth sold. Their two marquee names, Annie Pootoogook and Shuvinai Ashoona, are hot commodities and emblematic of the contemporary scene there; Pootoogook, for her spare, unromantic renderings of everyday Nunavut life, and Ashoona, whose work is a melding of the same with the fantastical and mythological aspects of her culture. That both women work mostly in pencil and pencil crayon has got to be if not a first in contemporary art, then a rarity; in any case, their audience is strong and growing. 

3. A big Montreal presence at the fair this year, most notably the Parisian Laundry Gallery, which represents Quebec superstars Valerie Blass and BGL. It's a little odd seeing their cheeky-weird sculptures in this context; but it still offers a taste of a scene that's gaining ground as an international presence. BGL is showing right now at Diaz contemporary, if the trade-show atmosphere leaves you cold.

4. The AGYU brought in the Buy-Sellf collective from Marseille for their booth at the fair, and the show is, true to their form, a cheeky bit of critique of the idea of art-as-commodity/object; Buy-Sellf is, in concept, an art manufacturer, selling contemporary art out of a catalogue of works that it makes to the specifications of the artists themselves. In other words, their booth is overtly what every other booth at this fair, and any other, is trying very hard not to be: A booth at a trade fair. Of course, the AGYU, being a university gallery, has nothing to sell here, which leaves you wondering if the organizers of the TIAF realize that the joke's on them?

I'm wrong!

David Altmejd is the winner of the 2009 Sobey Art Award! Just 35 years old, Altmejd, a Montrealer now living in New York, takes home the $50,000 prize as a another laurel in a stratospheric career that saw him represent Canada at the Venice Biennale when he was barely 30.

Altmejd, seen here in his New York studio, is known for eerily complex installation and sculpture, like his piece at the Art Gallery of Ontario, The Index, which comprised of taxidermied animals fused with human figures perched on a lucite structure. The Sobey jury said his work “represents the pursuit of metamorphosis and mutation as a means of releasing energy.” That's one way of putting it. Either way, it's compelling, visceral stuff. Congratulations to him.

Meanwhile, on the home front: Sobey's tonight

Being so far away doesn't mean I haven't been keeping an eye out for what's going on at home. That in mind, I'm keenly awaiting the announcement of the winner of this year's Sobey's Award. As I've written before, it's an outstanding field; selected regionally, which can mean a couple of tokenistic choices, there simply aren't any this year. Luanne Martineau from the West, Marcel Dzama from the Prairies (whose work is above), Shary Boyle from Ontario, David Altmejd from Quebec and Graeme Patterson from the Maritimes  -- it gives you hope for the future of Canadian art, to be sure.

So who'll win? Well, I wish that was a little more interesting. You could make a case for Altmejd, who, of the field, is probably the most officially accomplished, having represented Canada at the Venice Biennale a few years back; I would love to think it would be Toronto's own Shary Boyle -- who, for me, represents a coming-of-age of an entire generation of the city's art scene; and as much as I enjoy Martineau and Patterson, I have to think that Dzama is the no-brainer here.

The Winnipeg superstar, who now lives in New York, has everything from celebrity fascination (Beck is a collector; so are Jim Carrey and Drew Barrymore) to mainstream press adulation (he might be the only Canadian artist ever to appear on the over of the New York Times magazine) to, well, worthy talent. Dzama's darkly whimsical ink-on-paper nightmarescapes havehelped spark a generation-wide revival of drawing -- which, like it or not, is something. His influence and name-brand recognition are second to no-one on this list; and the work is brilliant, too.

We'll know tonight for sure; but bet against him at your peril.

Out from Behind the Red Curtain: Surfacing in Hong Kong

Live and learn: I thought I'd be blogging frequently while in China the last few weeks, but that was before I rather bluntly learned, on arrival, that it's more or less impossible.China may be opening up but it's far from open -- at least to such taken-for-granted Western blogging tools. I managed to make one post in Beijing, but couldn't verify it, and couldn't even see it; until this morning, I had no idea it had posted at all.

No Blogger, no Wordpress, no Typepad (which The Star uses to publish blogs like mine) -- each and every one of them are blocked by the governmental firewall. This is to say nothing of YouTube (also blocked), spotty Gmail access, and a litany of search terms -- you can likely guess which -- that turn up mysterious "file could not be found" pages on search. I arrived in Hong Kong this morning, where most of these things work; nonetheless, HK is a slowly integrating part of the People's Republic, so I'll refrain from mentioning them, to prevent being deleted, but they're far from mysterious to most in any case. 

All this can make you feel a little like Yue Minjun's hysterical self-portrait icon, seen above in a cluster fo stainless steel renderings outside Beijing's Today Art Museum. Minjun, who I spoke to a few weeks ago, is a former radical, making political works critical of party politics for decades, who in recent years has become a multi-millionaire for making the same work that left him virtually homeless and penniless just a decade or so ago.

So is China loosening up? Undoubtedly. Cultural expression -- particularly the kind that commands big dollars -- seems to have slackened reins when it comes to the breadth of its social commentary. Still, it's a moving target; while no-one -- that we know of -- is being jailed anymore for making art, film or music, there are still oblique controls on what can be shown, seen, or heard, and while the control structure is looser and more subtle, it's still there. I've seen so much and talked to so many people my head is swimming; it's been almost 4 weeks and I still feel like I've barely scratched the surface.

Blessed with unfettered internet access here in HK, I'll be playing catch-up the next few days, trying to put to words some of the things I've seen, and people I've met. The only thing I can say with any certainty is the tangled mess of modernity that is China today is without a nanosecond's doubt the most fascinating, compelling place I've ever been. More later ...