Ladies and gentlemen, bienvenue. We are the Artfag.

We were in the midst of doing research for something-or-other when, in our travels among the microfilm, we noticed a headline and an accompanying story that caught our hawk-like eyes. It was a brief bit of flotsam from the crime section of the Toronto Star (or was it the Sun?), relegated to the bottom of the page, devoted to a bathhouse raid, and the arrest of the hapless employee on guard: a young gentleman, one Eugene Andrew Fabo. This was not our first introduction to Andy Fabo (we had made each other’s acquaintance a fair bit prior to this investigative endeavour), nor did it strike us as particularly surprising. If anything, it heightened our esteem for the man, and further secured his entrenching as the Daddy of Toronto Artfags.

The passage of time has not diminished the ubiquity of Mr. Fabo’s artistic musings, nor has it dimmed the rapacious nature of his probative artistic mind. And so it has come to pass that MoCCA has culled a vast cross section of an already vast oeuvre (well, darlings, 25-odd years of art-making does tend to make for a lengthy back catalogue) for what the rest of us would call a mid-career retrospective, and what Mr. Fabo would probably call no big deal.

But, darlings, a Big Deal it certainly is, in both the literal and figurative senses of the phrase. The first impression of the show is just how much sheer Stuff there is. MoCCA is a curious space in that regard; its ostensive dimensions (courtesy of some expert handling of false walls) are bewilderingly mercurial, and, for this show, Mr. Liss has opted for cavernous, and Mr. Fabo seems to have had no trouble filling it. All of our favourites are here: the “Time Machine” silkscreens, the Studs (the cruelties of time having slackened the crotch-bulges of their jeans), the Quatro series, the terrifying, sublimely haunting ink-wash portraits of Michael Balser. The space is as vast as a prairie sky, and the production of Mr. Fabo’s tireless work ethic makes it seem packed as tightly as a sardine tin. We harp on this point because it is genuinely staggering that a single human being can produce this much, and it is even more staggering that this probably amounts to a small proportion of output.

What is equally staggering is his broad range of subject matter. One of the great joys of retrospective exhibitions such as these is that one gets a clear visual assembly of the overarching motifs of a life spent toiling in the mines. Now, Mr. Fabo’s work has never opted for the easy, superficial read, but certain conclusions are inescapable, or at the very least, visually available to the vaguely inquisitive. What’s more, these ‘certain conclusions’ are encyclopedically voluminous. A brief list, then, of the preoccupations, fixations and obsessions of Mr. Eugene Andrew Fabo: myth, classicism (the Laocoon and St. Sebastian making several repeat appearances), tragedy, origins, precedent, lineage, memory, death, loss, language, text, taxonomy, category, the body, disease, the medical establishment, fashion (as opposed to style), style (as opposed to fashion), love, lust, social condemnation of illicit desire, and crossword puzzles. Yes, this is a brief list.

All this largesse is merely the initial reaction; it remains for us to sum up the experience of the show. While it might be easy (and we use that term loosely) to arrive at a somewhat adequate record of conceptual fixations, it is a far more difficult task to arrive at a summation of an aesthetic. Mr. Fabo has a quality of line, a way of translating sight to gesture to two-dimensional form that is recognizably his own. But the vagaries of connoisseurship are not to be confused with an aesthetic. The main reason why it seems to difficult to pin Mr. Fabo down is that we are dealing with a painterly (and graphic, and print, and digital) language that has little regard for the so-called finished surface. This is not to say that his images are unresolved (although, to be frank, we were never terribly satisfied with his painting, “A Fine Thread” – too vaporous, too haphazard); we mean, merely, that his images are possessed of a certain brevity, a directness of thought and of gesture that seems to have little time and little regard for fanciful demonstrations of refinement. We can, if pressed, make certain comparisons: with American Bad Painting of the ‘80's – Phillip Guston. His silkscreened canvasses channel Warhol (well, who doesn’t?) and John Baldessari. Comparisons with General Idea are inevitable, as they share the same thorny sense of conceptual fun (as well as a home base and time frame). There is also a distinctly German streak to his painting: his feverishly repeated hatchings and spiky, elongated figures evoke Expressionist painters like Nolde and more contemporary painters like Immendorf. But all this cross-referencing accomplishes little, as it’s merely (and barely) descriptive, and says nothing of the experience of seeing Mr. Fabo’s work. What this brevity, this directness, this ruthless immediacy connotes is tirelessness; he has to work this way, one feels, because there is so much more to be said, so much more work to be done. Miss R.M. Vaughan, in a brief interview (available to be read as a three-page photocopied handout at the Museum, a preview of their soon-to-be-published monograph), describes Mr. Fabo as a senior artist. As a convenient designation, this is true (although we might say that he’s barely over the mid-career hump). But what the “senior artist” moniker suggests is someone who can now rest, the bulk of his work behind him, the majority of his artistic statements already having been said. This hardly seems true of Andy Fabo; if anything, the enormity of the work on display spells out a vast “To Be Continued...,” suggests the briefest of pauses for one of the most restless minds of our acquaintance. Long may he continue working, and long may he reign, Mr. Eugene Andrew Fabo, Daddy of the Toronto Artfags.

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“In the Boneyard,” the second collaboration between the Hidden Cameras and the Toronto Dance Theatre company, leaves us having to resolve a peculiar problem: what do we do when an excellent, uplifting, perfectly lovely event isn’t as excellent, uplifting, and perfectly lovely as its previous installment?

Last year’s collaboration – “You Are the Same” – was certainly a more familiar set; “In the Boneyard” was, in some small way, a showcase for the Hidden Cameras upcoming eponymous album, whereas “You Are the Same” occurred between albums (“Mississauga Goddam” had yet to be released, while “Smell of Our Own” was spinning merrily on turntables and CD players international). But that has nothing to do with our peculiar problem; Joel Gibb’s talent continues to romp unabated. He still has the soul of a delightfully dirty pop poet, splicing semiotically charged verbiage with onomatopoeic burblings (we can now add such gems as “H-AAOWWW” and “BRRRAPABAP” to the ever expanding repertoire which includes such favourites as “DOOT DOOT,” “HUH!,” “BOPBOPBOP” and “WAOOW WAOOW WAOOW”). His ear for a catchy melody and a bouncy chorus remains unfettered; it is impossible, we have noticed, to sit through a Hidden Cameras set without chair dancing (at the very least) once or twice. Although his current set of songs is less anthemic than earlier outings, ditties like “Awoo” (there’s another burble for the record) enter through the ear and ease in for an extended stay, bouncing around the brain for a couple of days before moving on.

The show opened with an abruptly rhythmed start-and-stop instrumental, which found the TDT dancers participating in a game of “Freeze,” alternately twisting and gyrating and doing their level-best impression of stern-looking lawn statuary. We must admit to not having a wide range of experience with contemporary dance, and not liking what we see; too often, we find interpretive dancing to be wincingly illustrative, earnest, or self-important, and sometimes all of those at once. This hasn’t been a problem with the Toronto Dance Theatre performances we have attended, and certainly is not an issue with the Hidden Cameras collaborations, and has nothing at all to do with our peculiar problem. Christopher House’s direction is supple and considered enough to be able to marry the more abstruse trends of contemporary dance with the folksy pop of the Hidden Cameras without missing a beat. And this is to say nothing of the dancers, whose joy, enthusiasm and utter conviction is on display in every acrobatic twist, jump and roll. Their ebullience is winning and infectious, and makes us want to take them all home and bake them cookies (and do other things to them, besides...). Granted, some strange choices are made, this time around: the slightly unnecessary and somewhat confusing costumes (you see gravedigger, we see Depression-era newsies) and the moodily-lit scaffold-set (sans the happily ubiquitous sewn-felt banners), which ended up looking very nouveau-experimental-theatre in an early 90's “Rent” kind of way. But that didn’t matter much either, as the sheer poetry of the dancing – from the dolphin-esque leaps and somersaults, to the utterly charming video of Mr. Gibb taking his endearingly clumsy turn at formal dancing, to the extended bit of assisted flying – overshadowed all else (except for the songs, natch).

“So,” we hear you ask, “just what is your peculiar problem, then, you irate killjoy?” Well, in a word or two, growing pains. Last year, the proceedings were held at the TDT’s headquarters at the Winchester Street Theatre, a far more intimate venue, and far more suited to the kind of audience-performer love-in that happened last time around, but never quite materialized this year. The Harbourfront Centre’s Premiere Dance Theatre is a much more formal space, with atrium seating and an elevated stage. Now, the moody particulars of different nightly audiences are somewhat responsible, but nevertheless, it remains somewhat intimidating to let the spirit move you when the separation between audience and performer is so architecturally enforced. And, unless one is commendably brave and dime-turningly spontaneous, one can’t really “lose it” (as per the instructions of Mr. Gibb) packed in seat D8, especially when one’s compatriots in D7 and D9 (to say nothing of rows E through Z) are gripping their arm-rests with as much white-knuckled force as they are gripping their senses of composure and shame.

But the growing pains have more to do with the band than the dancers (the TDT are Premiere Dance Theatre regulars, after all). The nature of Hidden Cameras gigs has changed as well, and irrevocably. An international record contract and international indie-fame (with its attendant international tours) have materialized between this year and last, and have resulted in a different public face for Mr. Gibb and his mild-mannered army. Their performances use to be, well, more performative, and certainly more dependent on the structure of (queer) community than they are now. What made a Hidden Cameras show so utterly enjoyable was precisely that: the slap-dash chorale of friends and neighbours, the porn-via-pro-wrestling costumed amateur go-go-dancing, the step-by-step dance-alongs, the campy theatrics, and the grade-six-talent-show aesthetic in general was a welcome antidote to hipper-than-thou indie posturing. Simply put, the Hidden Cameras felt like an extended family, whereas now, they are a Rock Band. Now, we would not begrudge Mr. Gibb his utterly deserved success, and the lamenting of the good-ol’-days-gone-by must have its limits; things change, and this is simply the reality of a band on the up-and-up. Nevertheless, as far as our peculiar problem goes, this is simply more buttressing to the wall between audience and performer.

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We have never been terribly superstitious, but the Grand Unveiling of the newly renovated and open-for-business Gladstone Hotel was preceded by some fairly amusing, and somewhat portentous omens. First came the appearance of the by-now well documented graffito on the facade of the freshly built Starbucks on the corner of Queen and Dovercourt: “Drake, you ho, this is all your fault,” which was quickly painted over. The taggers would not be silenced, and quickly and surreptitiously responded, “Drake you pimp, this is all your fault.” We would like to add that this latest bit of spray-painted civil disobedience has likewise been painted over, although if you look hard enough, you can still make out a palimpsestual “pimp.”

The second omen came just minutes before we were leaving our cozy domicile to head for the Grand Unveiling itself. Sandwiched between a dizzyingly fluffy interview with some braindead TV star and a brief report on Celine Dion’s latest Vegas venture was a publicity piece on E-Talk Daily, of all shows, on how the Gladstone is set to be, in the words of the tangerine-tanned and bafflingly insipid reporter (and we use that term loosely), “Toronto’s NEWEST [gaudy emphasis hers] hot-spot.”

This should have been enough to tip us off. Nevertheless, as we approached the Gladstone to tour their new artist-designed third- and fourth-floor rooms, we were met by a line-up that stretched halfway down the block, about three impatient and incredulous people wide. One woman even tried (unsuccessfully, alas) to diva her way past the line-up, exclaiming that her friend had designed a room, and it was outrageous that she should be forced to wait with the commoners. The unflappably polite (and beefy) security guard was unimpressed, and off she went.

And so it goes: dilapidated flophouse one year, frenzied hot-spot the next. But the Gladstone was meant to be somehow different than the Drake; it was meant to fulfill all the promises of community-oriented artist bohemiana that the Drake never delivered on. From their diligent restoration, care of the Zeidlers, to the maintenance of their Karaoke nights, to their commitment to TAAFI (our opinion on the Drake’s participation in TAAFI is a matter of record), the Gladstone projected a desire to make good on their clever use of the strikeout in their tagline: this was to be a unique hotel, one that would be mindful of history and community. The artist-designed rooms were clearly meant to be the jewel in this crown.

And? Success? Well, yes and no. The successful rooms are such by virtue of the originality of approach by the designer. Obviously, these rooms should be welcoming and comfortable for journeymen of all kinds, so nothing too egregious, if you please. The best of the rooms manage to marry this basic commercial reality with a probative conceptual sensibility, one that reflects on the Gladstone, or, more generally, what a hotel room implies: history, travel, transience, etcetera. To put it simply, the successful rooms function as a kind of cozy installation. For instance, Day Milman’s fourth floor room, wallpapered with a pattern of tiny Delft-blue line-drawings of the Gladstone’s barfly regulars, a pre-restoration view of the hotel itself, and a flotsam of birds. To see other Gladstone barflies dotingly point out their companions memorialized on the walls amidst the flood of opening-night gliterati was a curious juxtaposition, indeed. Rayne Baron’s lush Victorian boudoir room with a faux-fireplace, period furniture, and antique sepia-toned photographs was equally considered, seductively inviting, and utterly gorgeous. Lief Harmsen’s room looked entirely unremarkable until our eyes floated up to the ceiling, to behold a mural composed of flesh-toned pixels, which we are next to certain involve something pornographic. Allyson Mitchell’s wood-and-stone wallpapered room offers a fuzzily cozy utopian paradise with its enormous fun-fur Arcadian Playboy cheesecake mural. Michael Steele’s room is more design-oriented, simple and whip-smart. Irregularly shaped paneling creeps up the wall and spreads out onto the ceiling in the shape of the Toronto downtown street-grid, with a charmingly camp coronation portrait of HRH Liz II marking Queen Street. The room is lined with maps and indexes, ready and waiting for the eager traveller.

And the other rooms? To be perfectly blunt, they’re either furnished via design-by-numbers “trendiness” or involve design choices so bizarre, we pity whoever gets saddled with them. A brief f’r’instance, in this latter category: Heather Dubbeldam and Tania Ursomarzo’s room, with a wooden-beam canopy structure that actually makes the already minuscule room seem smaller, and a lighting scheme that obscures the windows, making the place as about as inviting as an interrogation chamber. There are too many entrants in the former category to bother listing names; designers whose rooms, reflecting nothing more than the current trend for geometric, militaristically clean minimalism, look like they were copied from a layabout issue of Wallpaper (one bland room actually had a cast-off copy of some design digest laying about, like a kind of emblem of unoriginal mediocrity); in short, lifestyle decoration for the decoratively lifeless. The most unfortunate example of this is the two-storey Tower Suite, in the southwestern corner of the building. The view from that room is, for our money, unparalleled in this city: the CN train tracks sweep by eastern, southern and western exposures, and the skyline is laid out like a sleeping giant across the distant horizon. This magnificence is complemented by the gorgeous arching brickwork of the window-frames. Pity that the room itself can’t offer much in competition.

So, now that the restoration is complete, what’s the damage – is this the Drake redux? The Gladstone has, after all, done things the Drake has not: kept the devoted and long-suffering staff of the building, including the elevator operator. The restoration of the actual building is precise and painstaking. And the second floor art-spaces are, for the moment, devoted to photos and documents of the hotel’s past and present, from mimeographed handouts on the necessities of vacuuming to fragments of the original moldings, to photographs of Keith Cole, in all her splendid vulgarity. Not surprisingly, what is glossed over here is the fate of its former residents, the ones who no longer have a place in this boutique unique hotel. Now, we shouldn’t dwell on this point; after all, if the building wasn’t going to be renovated, it surely would have been demolished (and replaced by yet another monolithic grid of condos, Heaven forfend), so someone’s going to be nudged out, either way. Nevertheless, there’s nothing like a gala opening to make one mindful of these details, especially after having lined up in the cold; everybody but heaven knows that try as they might, no diva fit will let those ejected souls back in, especially not now.

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