Ladies and Gentlemen, bienvenue.   We are the Artfag.

And although we generally follow the dictum of "Never Apologize, Never Explain," we feel compelled to offer the following, in explanation (but not apology - Heaven forfend!) of our tardiness: there is an awful lot of blah out there, ladies and gentlemen.   And we simply couldn't commence the New Year with anything less than our sparkling best.   And so we waited for the opportune show that would provide us a means of announcing the coming year with a properly vituperative bang.   That, and we have been hibernating, sleeping off the "holidays," and their attendant hangovers (there were days when we simply couldn't find the strength to lift a single manicured finger from off our plush divan).

What we like: plush divans, the gently falling snow, the free flow of celebratory narcotics.

How we are: well rested, facial'd, and ready to face the world.

What we don't like: the world.

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THE POWER PLANT

We Can Do This Now

December 16, 2006- February 9, 2007

The most thrilling thing about the Power Plant's new exhibition, "We Can Do This Now," is the bike ride over to the gallery. As is the case with every sojourn to the Power Plant, we threw caution to the blinding gusts of Lake Ontario wind, navigating the four-lane highway that is the Lakeshore on our frail little bicyclette, slaloming through lanes and speeding cars. We reached the safe-haven of the Power Plant with all limbs and appendages intact, dizzy with the adrenaline that only a brush with Toronto traffic can instill.

We had heard of this contentious little show long before its opening, mostly in the context of huffs. It is meant to be some kind of reflection on art production in this city; now, a show of Toronto art necessarily invites these orgies of umbrage-taking. Even in a city this small, in an art-scene this miniscule, many are bound to be excluded, and exclusion breeds harrumphing. So we paid the nay-sayers no mind, preferring instead to see what was cooked up before lambasting the chef. Well, darlings, we have tasted the stew. Let the invective begin.

Back to our little near-death experience: adrenaline-giddy, we took some deep, cleansing breaths and sallied forth into the gallery. A quick read of the Informative Wall Plaque detailing the curators' vision instantaneously confirmed our worst fears, sending red flags hurtling missile-like into the upper stratosphere of our critical mind. It is a mishmash of wispy vagueries, self-justifying evasions, contradictions and bad grammar, and it is only 5 sentences long.  

Taking the "excitement over new buildings for the cities [sic] arts organizations" as a starting point - actually, curators Gregory Burke and Helena Reckitt take this construction-fever as an emanation of the zeitgeist, a "spirit of the time" - the curators set out to respond to Toronto's art scene. And then the contradictions begin: Mr. Burke and Ms Reckitt "resist the attempt [they probably mean temptation] to survey local artistic tendencies." What, pray then, are the curators doing (aside from resisting attempts, that is)? Well, since we asked, they are exploring "themes of contemporary art's production, presentation, and reception." This phrase is one of those exquisitely empty concoctions of dizzy jargon; it is utterly tautological, and it means absolutely nothing. After all, what else is there to art other than its production, presentation and reception? And if they're so heroically resisting "the attempt to survey" local production, to whom are they responding? If they don't want to survey local work, why bother with the Toronto pretense at all? The quick answer to these pressing questions is that this isn't a statement of intent at all, but is, in fact, a poorly written insurance policy, a quick note dashed off to cover their curatorial derrières. Let us bravely muddle through to the last sentence: they "also seek to trace a set of relationships and attitudes before they have crystallized into an identifiable art movement or set of formal properties." Ah. So, to summarize: the zeitgeist calls for New Buildings!; instead of surveying local art, they respond to the art of contemporary art that just happens to be made here; they want to generalize from this local art (the one that they haven't made a survey of), and create a Movement (the no-surveys-please-we're-from-Toronto school?) before anyone else does. If nothing else, we can be grateful to Mr. Burke and Ms Reckitt for crystallizing nothing so much as a flawless stream of total non-sequiturs.

So, to paraphrase Irving Berlin: on with the show.

It is, quite simply, the most depressingly horrendous collection of work anyone's assembled under the guise of resisting the survey, with one or two stunning exceptions (we'll get to them later). If we were a clueless tourist who happened by this show, we would be impelled to deduce that Toronto art is a neurotic mass of provincial, navel-gazing, pretentious, formulaic excrement, remarkable only for its complete and utter lack of ambition.

Some are guiltier of this than others; Kelly Mark, for instance, provides us with two double-channel videos of pairs of lovers talking about each other. Each half of the pair occupies his or her very own screen, and both play simultaneously, their combined soundtracks creating a whiny mess so solipsistic, not even Woody Allen would touch it. According to the Informative Wall Plaques sprinkled throughout the gallery (which are possibly worse-written than the curator's statement, if that's at all possible) this overlapping soundtrack signifies man's inability to listen to man.   We're not sure what's worse: the exhausted polemic of the work, or this nauseating over-simplification. All in all, nothing Simon & Garfunkel didn't already cover in "Sound of Silence."

Tania Kitchell is represented by a large construction made of plastic snowflakes and some photographs she took of falling snow. The IWP, in a brilliantly dexterous display of interpretive thinking, qualifies her work as an investigation of climate and geography. All we could do was shake our heads and wonder how it is that this glorified Kindergarten craft project managed to attract the attention of the curators in the first place.

Kristan Horton's entry consists of a spectacularly ugly comic book narrative of his attempt to build a nuclear reactor in his studio, which left us wondering whether someone should revoke his Photoshop privileges. Paulette Phillips' film "Crosstalk" (consisting of a loop of Toronto art scenesters slowly crossing a street, rubbernecking at an Unseen Event) is innocuous enough, so we shall spare her further comment. Ian Carr-Harris is included in the form of his cute little scale models of international contemporary art galleries. As far as Mr. Carr-Harris goes, we are, admittedly, hampered by our thorough impatience with Minimalism, and thus are doomed to spend the rest of our days wondering why exactly anyone cares about anything he does. He is, for our money, the single most boring art-presence in this city. Physically, his sculptures are the height of dull anaesthesia, about as engaging as Novocaine. Conceptually, they are packed to the rafters with obscure, over-processed literary references that seem tailor-made for a PhD thesis, which in execution, come across as stiflingly pretentious and altogether too clever by half.

Martin Bennett is sprinkled liberally throughout the two floors of the show, in obeisance to visual cohesion, apparently. For the unenlightened, his work here consists of images of various city faunae (crows, pigeons, squirrels et. al.) screenprinted onto lightly-coloured and -patterned canvases. The IWP informs us of the process: Mr. Bennett paints abstract patterns onto his canvases, grinds the surfaces down to a smooth patina, and then prints atop them. The IWP then has the temerity to conclude that, in so doing, Mr. Bennett opens up new directions and possibilities for that most tired of media, painting. We shall leave aside the staggering, elephantine ignorance embedded in that conclusion, to wonder: THIS is who they chose to represent painting in this city? THIS?!!?! (Ladies and gentlemen, there are not enough punctuation marks in Heaven or Earth to properly convey the depth of our furious shock). Mr. Burke, Ms Reckitt: you have accomplished the impossible; the sheer, abject poverty of both your curating intelligence and your knowledge of this city's artists has left us utterly speechless.

The two exceptions: Luis Jacob and Oliver Husain. Ms. Jacob is certainly an artist who utterly belongs here. He is a Toronto omnipresence, and, while we may not always like his work, we always appreciate its intelligence and breadth of spirit. Here, Ms. Jacob has installed a constellation of pigeons in mid-flight, suspended in a narrow passageway, high above our head. It is stunning, capturing, in one generous moment, the simultaneous extremes of the City: its filthy abjection (rats with wings!) and its capacity for soaring accomplishment. Cheekily titled "From Stream to Golden Streams," it encompasses Michael Snow, AA Bronson, the Hidden Cameras and himself in a great big daisy chain of reference and cross-reference, effectively surveying and paying homage to the vital queer heart (otherwise ignored by our beneficent curators) of this city's art.

Oliver Husain's 20-odd minute video "Squiggle" is the other stunner. It is an extended double narrative that runs along parallel rails. The diaristic commentary regales us with Mr. Husain's experience as an undergraduate in India. The visual narrative consists of a group of Indian men and women, building small red-brick and mud edifices in the manner indigenous to the region (so we are told). Aurals and visuals meet in an ingenious way towards the end of the video; just when Mr. Husain's thus-far 15 minute monologue is about to tire you out with its solipsism, he interrupts it by questioning the pretentiousness of his university surroundings and the usefulness of his craft, yearning instead to chuck it all and build red-brick houses, themselves a metaphor for tradition, regeneration, self-reliant resourcefulness. And just when his angst threatens to derail the monologue, the voice-over halts and the image erupts into an extended dance sequence, a riot of colour and choreography, and more than slightly campy. Within the vast scope of his project, Mr. Husain plays a delicate game of baiting, of exposure and concealment, of offering and refusal, and never loses his footing.

But his is an odd presence here. Mr. Husain is a relatively recent arrival to Toronto from Germany, and while it would be pointless and tasteless to refute the assertion that he is most definitely Toronto-based, it's worth noting that this work was produced before his arrival here. Of all the work assembled in this brutal wreckage of a show, his is the only one not informed by either a formal education or an extended stay in this, our fair city. As such, with the noted exception of Ms. Jacob, his is the only one with any breadth of vision, with any kind of ambition. He and Ms. Jacob stick out like sore thumbs, or like the only unscathed figures in a field of the bloody and mangled. Had the curators the wit to arrange things differently, this might have been avoided; even in a city this small, in an art scene this miniscule, it is among the simplest of tasks to find a glut of talented people, better suited to reflect this city's art community; even as we write, our inner rolodex of names is spinning in furious agreement. Somehow, in their theoretical contortions and survey-resistings, the curators managed to sail clean over all of them, producing what is (inadvertently, to be sure, but nonetheless) the most cohesive case against Toronto art we have yet to see.

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CINEMATHEQUE ONTARIO

Steve Reinke, Final Thoughts

January 17, 2007

The first thing that popped into our head, ladies and gentlemen, as we sat comfortably in our seat at the Cinématheque Ontario screening of new Steve Reinke work, the very first thing, was, "Oh no...not the shit-eating baby again." Now, we knew full well that Anthology of American Folk Song was on the programme, but we somehow remember it differently - for instance, we thought we had a good 13 or so minutes of buffer time before the shots of the chocolate-gorging baby and his monstrous caretakers. But the memory plays tricks, apparently, and besides which, the Reinke Universe is a slippery place, not terribly prone to easy summary or fixed interpretation, or (especially) vice versa.

The programme at the Cinématheque was comprised of yet more works from his Final Thoughts series, a collection of found-footage-based work that is to conclude at the precise moment of Mr. Reinke's death (and not a moment sooner, presumably), and was an adjunct to the launch of two DVD sets at Art Metropole. Two things were remarkable about this evening. The first was that we had yet to sit through multiple Reinke videos one after another; yes, we have seen the Hundred Videos, but not all at the same time, and not in a darkened theatre. We are more accustomed to coming across his work at galleries, where one can sit with the videos, watch them loop, and have them work their slow, sly magic.  

Which brings us to the second remarkable thing: until that evening, we had yet to be forced to reckon a Reinke in one gulp. It is a jarring experience, largely because of his particular mien. Part of the charm (and most of the art) of a Reinke video is his mode of delivery, both of images and of narration. He has the unnerving propensity to combine the offhand with the abstruse, so as soon as you've properly digested a Reinke bon mot, realizing its full implication, it has promptly passed you by. His videos are philosophical hit-and-runs. Without the luxury of a gallery setting, where one can sit quietly, wait for the tape to start again, bracing one's self for the coming collision, one has to make do with the sudden impact and (to polish off this little metaphor of ours) hope that at least we might make out his license plate number as his narration drives off to the next fender-bender. Which is all a highfalutin' way of saying that, instead of a study of the new works, we were forced to contend with glances and impressions. This is not all bad: we might not have sashayed out of Jackman Hall with a fully formed interpretive thesis, but, given the amount of end-to-end Reinke we managed to consume, we have certainly gleaned a rough roadmap, if you will, of the Reinke Universe.

Depending on your inclinations, it might be a nice place to visit; it is certainly not a nice place to live. Mr. Reinke exercises a particular brand of cruelty in his new work, which has become distinctly more pungent since, say, the Hundred Videos. Still, it's not obvious; or rather, it's much like an atmosphere, or a smell - one grows accustomed, until there is a sudden peak, jarring the senses, reminding us of its musty particulars. For instance: certainly, among the more beloved features of the Reinke Universe is its dark wit and wicked jokes: his response to Adrian Piper's business cards (intended to politely, thus ironically, draw attention to the social impropriety of casual racism) is to topple Piper's precarious balance of satire by having cards that aver, "I hate them, too." Or his take on biodiversity: too many species, most of whom are irrelevant. Or Mr. Reinke's take on the postmodern Death of The Author: a distinctly bad move, since The Reader proved to be a dullard. But then, it all comes to a distressing head in a video like "The Mendi." The video footage is cribbed off of some anthropological recording of a cannibalistic tribe, and is accordingly brutal; it opens with the savage beating of a live pig. But Mr. Reinke doesn't leave well enough alone: his first-person narration tells the story of a teenage boy accompanying his anthropologist parents on their sojourn with the Mendi tribe. His narcissism and puerile obliviousness in the face of his surroundings is grotesque (his greatest complaint, juxtaposed over footage of tribe members splitting human wish-bones: breaking the 8-track player, thus depriving him of his favoured BeeGees cassette). The one example that managed to genuinely shock the crowd, eliciting a dread gasp, was at the end of "Hobbit Love Is the Greatest Love" (whose title alone insures our unending love). The camera pans over a series of headshots of young soldiers. This goes on for quite some time, until we are informed that these are the faces of the American casualties of the current Iraq War, for whom photos were available, arranged by order of attractiveness (this exists as an archival inkjet print, and is on display at the concurrent Reinke show at Birch Libralato, which by the by, is largely inconsequential, save for a few pieces, this latter one included). There is a double perversity here: not only has Mr. Reinke thus qualified the deaths of some thousands of soldiers (the ugly dead, one assumes, are no great loss, but the attractive dead - what a waste!), he involves us in his process. Once the initial shock of what we are looking at wears off, we begin to play his game: surely that one isn't the most attractive person in the bunch? We saw someone a few rows back who is surely a cuter Iraq War casualty...

Still and all, even as impressions, despite not being able to parse them in anatomical detail, these are excellent works. To be sure, while the Reinke Universe is nowhere we'd want to settle down, it is of immense value; but cruelty does not automatically confer interest or value. What does confer value is the form the cruelty takes. It is subtended by the blackest of humours, and our laughter is evidence of our common recognition of his most basic of observations: we all know where this culture is, and where it's headed. We laugh because we are all on the same rollercoaster, and quite frankly, because sometimes it's just really funny. Where else but in the Reinke Universe could a one-year-old's birthday party become an exercise in voyeuristic coprophagia?

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