Sobey long, long list announced

It's that time again: The longlist for the annual Sobey Art Prize  is out, and while it's short on marquee names -- no repeats in this year's list, that I know of -- there's quality to be had here. Too many names to get into, so I'll just single out a couple of Ontarians, Derek Sullivan (who extends Jessica Bradley's unbeaten string of nominees, I'm pretty sure) and Christian Giroux and Daniel Young (that's them, over there), who I'm going to go out on a limb and say will be the eventual winners when it's announced in November. Stay tuned for the short list -- one per region -- out next month ...

1001 Chairs for Ai Weiwei, Toronto version

On Sunday, about 1000 people will gather outside the Chinese Consulate in Toronto in support of Ai Weiwei, the famous Chinese artist and master of social resistance who was jailed without cause earlier this month. Called 1001 Chairs, it's based on one his works from Documenta 12 in 2007. It's just one of dozens of such protests that day at Chinese consulates all over the world, initiated by Creative Time, an independent art organization in New York.

Ai's fearless practice has won him a lot of friends internationally, including high level diplomats throughout Europe who have demanded, through official channels, that he be released (foreign ministers for both Germany and France have been leading this charge). A site has been established here as a clearinghouse of information regarding his detention.

So far, the massive outpouring -- from governments, arts institutions like the Tate and the Guggenheim, and millions of fans and admirers -- has fallen on deaf ears. After more than a week of detention, the Chinese government announced this week that Ai was being investigated for "economic crimes;" today, the Guardian reported that Chinese officials had announced Ai had begun confessing to a litany of charges, including bigamy, spreading pornography on the internet, and, weirdly, plagiarism (who know that was a jailable offence?)

If you know Ai's work at all, you know right away how absurd such charges are. Ai, a master provocateur who in recent years has switched to full-blown activism, is being punished for not only being an outspoken critic of the regime, but for putting his money where his mouth is.

While most well-known artists in China have developed an international practice with oblique criticisms of their Communist rulers, burnishing a Western sense that their work is somehow "dangerous," Ai lives his principles in the fullest sense. Among many other actions, he famously challenged the government's figures in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, particularly in its alarmingly conservative count of schoolchildren killed while trapped in substandard school buildings (Ai later learned the government had tried to buy the silence of scores of parents, which he of course broadcast loud and clear).

This is to take nothing away from his work, which can at turns be forthright, provocative, mysterious, full of conceptual rigour and almost never without humour. When I was in China last year, I missed meeting him by just a few days; his return to Beijing, from a show in Germany, was delayed by emergency surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain, still festering from a beating by Chinese police the previous month in Sichuan. They drilled a hole in his head to relieve the pressure. He went back to work at his studio in Beijing two weeks later.

Sign the petition demanding his release here.

 

Finally: Joanne Tod's O, Canada comes home to Toronto

Last summer, I groused at the apparent snobbery of the museum circuit that seemed to be keeping Joanne Tod's ongoing portrait series outside its hallowed halls. The well-known painter's project, simply, was to paint the portrait of each and every Canadian soldier killed in the conflict in Afghanistan, arrayed in a mosaic that loosely represented the Canadian flag.

To my surprise, I had to go to the Canadian Warplane Museum, next to the Hamilton Airport, to see it person, because no museums -- the AGO being the standout, I guess, owning several of Tod's pieces -- seemed to have an interest in displaying it. Just my speculation, but it seemed to be less about any potential controversy -- the work is stoic and ambivalent, neither lionizing nor critical of the war effort -- than about a leeriness to embrace work that was too topical, or literal.

"“It’s very frank, I know,” Tod told me, knowing full well that such frankness doesn't necessarily play well with curators of contemporary art, for whom such straight-forward topical sincerity is often a disqualifier. Have a look at Thomas Hirschhorn's overwhelming installation at the Power Plant and you'll see what I mean -- bombastic and over-the-top, it seems nothing more than a vicious send-up of such impulses.

I get it. At the same time, I don't see the distinction quite so clearly. Neither, apparently, do the folks at Harbourfront Centre, where Tod's installation is finally getting some air in the GTA, starting this weekend (just in time for the election, but let's not read too much into it.) It opens Saturday, and runs into June. About time, I say.

 

Burke, now as then: Toronto Life article out this week

Several months of hand-wringing on the part of the city's power elite ends this week with the publication of a much-feared Toronto Life profile of Power Plant director Gregory Burke. And it really ends: I received a preview copy of the piece, and I can confidently say that it contains nothing revelatory or even mildly bombastic about the institution or its soon-to-be-former director.

This will surely come as a relief both to Burke and the high-powered board he serves, though it does leave us wondering what all the fuss has been about these past couple of months.

Apparently, a fact checker from the magazine called Burke on the day of the Thomas Hirshhorn opening last month; Burke was so taken aback at the questions that he immediately sent a letter refuting much of the piece's content. How or why (or if) this influenced the final version remains a mystery, but it does suggest that the piece is far from the magazine's ideal. (A pull-quote, containing the one and only smidgen of enmity -- however mild --in the entire piece, should tell you all you need to know: "(Burke) screams and yells at people, shaking his finger." The horror!)

One way or the other,it was a roller coaster; the piece began as a straight-up profile of the enigmatic director, whose bashful persona always seemed at odds with the high-power international exhibitions he's snagged for the gallery in his 6-year tenure. Mid-way through the reporting, Burke abruptly resigned, sending the magazine's writer, Daniel Baird, into a frenzied re-do in search of where the bodies were buried.

The end result is neither here, nor there -- not a full picture of the gallery's, or Burke's, artistic priorities, nor an incisive dissection of his character, the piece comes across as a flat coat of primer on general institutional politics for the casually interested. Which is to say, the keenly interested -- you and I -- won't find much we didn't already know. 

Been there, done that, got a commemorative plate

I'm sure it hasn't escaped your attention that this week marks a couple of major fundraisers in the local art world. Sadly, they're on the same day: MOCCA's bi-annual MOCCA award (Ed Burtynsky this year) and the AGO's annual Massive party both go on Thursday night. 

Massive is always flashier, and bigger (it can be, given the building and the relatively modest $150 ticket), while MOCCA is pricier and more subdued. And what do you get for your $700? Well, aside from Susur Lee's canapes, each ticket buyer receives a limited edition commemorative plate. And here I was thinking the Royal Family had some kind of standing patent on the concept; silly me -- MOCCA has issued plates for each winner of the award, including Michael Snow and Matthew Teitelbaum. 

Let me just say: Really? Burtynsky's big oil show is up at the ROM, and the Steidl monograph is readily available for signing. Which would you rather have for your $700?

Am I the only one who finds this weird?

David Moos to leave the AGO

It's official -- David Moos, the AGO's head curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, is quitting. Staff were told this morning in a meeting, the gallery said.

David accomplished a lot in his seven years, it can't be argued; what  is, constantly, it seems, among the Toronto art community, is whether David's accomplishments served the gallery in the way that they ought to have.

I'm going to elaborate here, because the tiny bit in the paper is way too brief to include all the interesting stuff. No cloak and dagger, that I know of, but I spoke to David this afternioon, and he'll be serving as a private art advisor (his words) to local patrons in furtherance of acquiring significant international contemporary works both for institutional donation (like his old bosses) and their own collections. He called it a "missing piece of the puzzle" here, and a role that needed to be filled.

I also spoke to Matthew Teitelbaum, who said the search has begin in earnest for David's replacement. In the interim, Teitelbaum said the gallery's new Executive Director of Curatorial Affairs, Elizabeth Smith, would be "rolling up her sleeves on the contemporary side" and curating a couple of shows herself. Smith, who came from Chicago's Museum of Contemporary Art, specializes in art and architecture from the mid-20th century to present (which sounds a lot like Moos's portfolio, in fact). 

In the spirit of brevity (and, ahem, respect), I'd like to observe some high points: Iris Haussler's astonishing "He Named Her Amber,"  the acquistion of David Altmejd's "The Index," last summer's lovely "At Work" triumverate of Agnes Martin, Eva Hesse and Betty Goodwin.

Of course, Moos, with a PhD from Columbia on AbEx giants Jackson Pollock and Clyfford Still, has played a major role in bringing MoMA's outstanding "Abstract Expressionist New York" show to the AGO in May (he's staying with the gallery just past the opening). But more than anything, I want you all to tell me. So discuss, why don't you?

A post-script note to the nit-picky: "At Work," of course, was not curated by Moos (something I kinda figured out in reviewing it; thanks for your help, though) but would have come from within his department, at least in part (the Goodwin portion coming from the Canadian side) and therefore would have been assembled at least in part under his guidance and approval. To not give him credit for the assemblage -- particularly the signifcant loan of Agnes Martin's "The Islands," from the Whitney -- would not be giving him due recognition for what I felt was the highlight of the AGO's year. And I'm not goign to do that, am I?

Happy now?

Tonight at the AGO: Jon Sasaki's Pine

Tonight, the Art Gallery of Ontario welcomes Jon Sasaki's Pine, the self-described "romantic conceptualist's" best attempt at finding the same kind of idyllic, artistic communion with nature so enduringly conflated with those old Canadian chestnuts,  the Group of Seven. Sasaki trekked up to Canoe Lake in Algonquin Park to shoot a film (and collect water earlier this spring, for your sampling pleasure, which is what he's doing in the picture above) that represented his own artistic communion; the results are, not surprisingly, an exercise in hilariously naive futility. The work does double duty at its opening tonight, both as part of the Images Festival and the AGO's ongoing Toronto Now series. With dozens of fusty Thomsons hanging a gallery or two away, this one has particular acuity. Starts at 5 pm.