Ladies and Gentlemen, bienvenue. We are the Artfag.

It occurred to us, as we were slumming it in one of this city’s finer Kinko’s, feverishly folding and stapling the previous installment of our literary endeavour, that we are, in fact, making a zine.

We have to admit to some discomfort around the word “zine” and what it entails. Granted, zine-making is endemic to the Artfag, although there is something about the zine, as a genre, that engenders certain aesthetically questionable tendencies: poor photocopying skills, lackadaisical layouts, and shall we say, an overenthusiastic use of typography and graphic design (granted, you can spot our Courier New a mile off, but we feel it has a certain comforting transgressive simplicity). Despite this blight on the nature of our chosen modus operandi, we persevere, as we do feel that there’s something about dumpster-value mass communication that Fags and Dykes seem to pull off with such panache.

What we like: light salads, brunch at 2:30 p.m., outstretched pinkies, Antony and the Johnsons.

How we are: just lovely, thank you. Spring is springing, slowly but surely, and though we must be extra vigilant regarding mounds of excrescence (both on the sidewalk and in the galleries) that threaten our Diesel shoes, we must admit to a certain air of joie de vivre.

What we don’t like: the overwhelming propensity towards short-shorts in men’s summer fashion.

But enough petty griping. Let us continue on, in this, our second installment of witticism and criticism, delivered with diligence and style.

So enjoy, fuck.

----------------------------------------------------

Miss Gore Vidal once wrote in his essay “Who Makes the Movies” that when it comes to praising (or damning) a movie, at whom do we point our finger? The director? The actors? The cinematographer? The screenwriter? Too many people have left their stamp for the lone gunman theory to apply. A similar point can be made about ready-mades and collages: whose vision is being put forth? The guy who built the urinal? The person who took the photo in the first place? The photocopy machine? At what point does the artist come in? This brings us rather digressively to Andrew Harwood’s current show of...well, we suppose “collages” would be the best way to tag them...at the Paul Petro gallery.

Granted, this is a terribly unfair way to begin a critique. Just as Miss Vidal’s rantings have yet to deter a movie critic, we should not be deterred by categorical quibbling. Mr. Harwood has presented us with a cohesive (if not entirely serious) body of work, and he deserves to be responded to in kind. Carrying his penchant for spangled surfaces over from his tour of Canadiana, we are presented with images of all things Trucker - studly, mustachioed road warriors, sturdy 18-wheelers, etc. etc. - covered with a veneer of opalescent plastic sequins.

So what is to be made of Mr. Harwood’s latest oeuvre? Overall, it’s good. The lack of pretension is certainly a major saving grace. If pressed, we could probably concoct some artspeak about how all these pink and purple spangly studs are problematizing the enduring mythos of machismo, and de-centering the big rigs as a patriarchal site of heterosexist masculinity. Quite frankly, though, we don’t really buy it, and the gay porn in the corner isn’t doing the best job of selling it to us.

No, we’re here to look at studs. If any art theory applies here, it’s that of “the Gaze.” The porn, the shiny spangles, all serve as spotlights on the buff, gruff boys. This seems to us to be a show all about prettiness. The sequins are pretty, the embroidered trucker hats are pretty, and whether they like it or not, the truckers are pretty too. The show is unabashed in its boy-worship, and, in that, it is a success. The major weak spot of the show is the lack of formal relationship between the sequins and the photographs they cover; they simply rest one on top of the other. The best of the photographs are the ones in which the sequins are arranged in vertical rows, so that the idea of a transformative screen is made literal; the rows make unmistakable (if perhaps unintentional) reference to the beaded screens of the ‘60's and ‘70's, and they match rather well with the handlebar moustaches and tight Wrangler jeans of the truckers.

Besides which, we’re just a sucker for a nice ass.
---------------------------------------------------

The good thing about going to artist’s talks is that one tends to be provided with multiple sources of entertainment; if the speaker ends up being terrible, one can at least pass the time perusing the audience - the unfortunate fashion choices, the brainless questions, one knows how it goes. However, when Artist and Audience are in a dead-heat competition for blandness, the only thing one can be assured of is trouble in the offing. And, after having perused the audience at the Andres Serrano lecture in the overcrowded Ryerson University (or would Ryerson “University” be more appropriate?) hall, listening to Mr. Serrano kick off his lecture, we could see, clear as day, trouble lumbering forth from the proverbial horizon.

Mr. Serrano has, by this time, built quite the international reputation since he was launched into the upper reaches of the Art Star stratosphere by Jesse Helms in 1987. He has become the Grand Old Dame of Controversy and Taboo. Quite the Legend, it seems. Now, we are not naïve, and we understand perfectly well that the Man and the Legend don’t usually measure up. However, when confronted with just how short the former falls from the latter, it’s more than just a tad disappointing. This lecture was a bust, plain and simple.

Mr. Serrano announced, upon arriving at the Kodak-logo bedecked lectern, that this was going to be a simple chronological overview of his work, and that’s essentially what he delivered. Nothing less, and most unfortunately, nothing more (Cue trouble, stage right, lumbering). Slides came, slides went. No talk of context, of meaning, of intention; merely process, and barely that. Of his bodily fluid photographs, quoth the Legend: “I poured the blood into a tank of piss.” And on it went; of his portraits of the homeless and the Klan, bodies in the morgue, the Sex series, the Dream series, the America series, there was no talk of religious undercurrents, of Classical influences, of issues of spectatorship, of political or social relevance, nothing. Just bare-bones facts and pub stories of trying to find suitable archetypes of the demimondaine in subways and on sidewalks that were, at best, yawn-inducing, and at-worst, cringe inducing (he seemed to have something of an obsession with finding crackheads - his term, not ours - and verifying their status with an alarming vehemence).

The questions were not much better. Mostly, people just seemed intent on taking umbrage anywhere they could find it. The ignorant asked the usual frustrated “I-just-don’t-get-it” questions of his abstract work, demanding that he validate photographs of what they assume their three-year old could do. The overly-politically sensitive tried to goad him into answering questions on ethnic representation. For the most part, Mr. Serrano was terse and bullish, answering questions with tautologies (Of what 9/11 has to do with his America series, quoth the Legend: “It does, and it doesn’t”). As bland as the questions were, Mr. Serrano seemed so reticent about his own work that without them, the lecture would have been nothing more than a silent slide presentation.

Our criticisms and complaints notwithstanding, the audience seemed, in large part, rapt (so much so that we lost our hat as we were leaving to some belligerent idolater who wouldn’t budge lest he be suddenly bereft of his hard-earned seat). We were, after all, in the presence of the Legend, despite all evidence to the contrary.
----------------------------------------------------

Well, well, well, the Power Plant gallery does quite the job of packing it in, do they not? Upon entering the vast expanse of one of this city’s centres of institutional hipness, we are greeted by no fewer than three concurrent shows, and the faint smell of an unflushed toilet. But more on that later. Each of the shows are distinct unto themselves, and each of them is, on the whole, not particularly excellent. Not particularly bad, either: there are some gems here and there, but on the whole, even the most offensive of the bunch scarcely managed an arched eyebrow.

First on our right is the work of one Daniel Richter, a mostly-abstract painter from Berlin. We have to plead ignorance on this one, as we don’t have any acquaintance to speak of with Mr. Richter’s oeuvre. Judging from the catalogue, however, he seems to haunt the streets of Berlin (well, who doesn’t these days?), and indulges in abstraction (which is a brave enough act in and of itself, in these postmodern days of painterly angst).

This show isn’t abstract per se. Masses of figures (human, animal and vegetable) romp about his enormous, wall-sized canvasses (most of which need re-stretching). His work seems Surrealist in nature (the paintings radiate a fever-dream atmosphere) and is technically fairly accomplished. He tends to cram figures wall-to-wall into his paintings rather than make an effort at composition. When he does make the effort, though, the results are quite surprising and engaging. His drawing is accomplished, possessed as it is by a shiftless, wiry line.

The type of painting he engages in here seems to be what those in the sales department like to call “contemporary abstraction.” That is, although there are recognizable figures relating with a recognizable ground, it is not figurative. It is not entirely abstract for much the same reasons. At any rate, Richter does it well; instead of strictly defining figures with local colour, they look as if they’ve been passed through a technicolour x-ray machine, with lurid neon swirls jostling against underlying matte shapes. It’s a lovely little trick, although Richter doesn’t have many others, and we tire of them rather quickly.

His other Big Trick seems to be painting thinly over a heavily textured ground. The gesso here seems to be lathered on with a trowel, leaving the odd, randomly placed plaster puddle every once in a while. No effort is made to integrate these textural mounds (they’re just painted over, thinly at that), so it rather looks like a dog took a dump on the canvas, and no one bothered to clean it up.

Which leads us rather neatly into the next room: Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca, a.k.a. the Shit Machine. The installation (and we use the term loosely) is comprised of a giant machine whose sole purpose is to produce shit. Literally. It is fed, the food passes through a roller coaster of tubes and vats and pumps all filled with chemicals approximating digestive enzymes, and comes out the other end in a neat little pile of turd. It’s all very streamlined and efficient and industrial (or is that post-industrial?).

Quite frankly, it’s a toss-up as to what is more absurd: the installation, or the curator’s essay on it. We aren’t entirely sure why one object needs its very own curator, but we rather suspect that it’s the other way ‘round: the curator, judging by her essay, is in desperate need of this object. Nancy Campbell (said curator)’s essay is full of heavy theory and heavy breathing, and more than the occasional non-sequitur. To wit:

Well lah-dee-dah. Nothing like a pile of turd to instill a bit of Götterdämmerung. The only thing that stinks worse than the essay is the installation. The shit smell is so overwhelming, we are willing to lobby for the gallery staff to get danger pay. Honestly, though, it strike us that if one wants to make grand statements on the encroachment of industry upon humanity, and the anaesthetizing nature of “post-human” (whatever that means) life, the first thing one should do is try to figure out how to make shit that doesn’t stink.

The show rounds out with Republic of Love, a collection of paintings, drawings and installations by Shary Boyle, Jay Isaac, Paul P., and Tony Romano. The less said about the pretext for this show, the better (any broader, and it would no longer be a pretext). So let’s just stick to the art, shall we?

Tony Romano’s sound installation (good heavens, but this word gets flung about a tad liberally, doesn’t it?), which consists of some disco lights and a sad song played on loop, is a tad limp, to say the least, although it makes a lovely soundtrack to viewing the show. Jay Isaac’s deliberately hokey paintings, entitled “New Age Philosophy” are alright. Much too smarmy and self-satisfied for our taste, although strangely enough, they reminded us overwhelmingly of the Group of Seven. Coincidence? Paul P.’s drawings and paintings of the young bucks of 1970's gay porn are technically quite accomplished, although somewhat hollow. He tries to capture a sense of nostalgia, of loss of innocence, but fails. The best of them are the coloured-pencil drawings, which lovingly reproduce the faded Kodachrome of the vintage photography. Still, even these are somehow empty, too bound-up in technique and literal representation. Rather than achieving that sense of youthful lust, and pre-AIDS Dionysia, we are left cold. For the hot-blooded lustful abandon, we look to Shary Boyle. Her bizarre drawings and miniature sculptures, no less exact and finished than Paul P.’s, teem with uber-Freudian sexual psychoses.

Nevertheless, they are too small in number, and too lost amid the flotsam to save this collection of shows. Upon reflection, the one thing that we are thankful for is that only one of them really stank.

----------------------------------------------------

To succeed gloriously in one medium, in one exhibition, is rare enough. To succeed in two media simultaneously, in the same show, is a staggering achievement; to wit: Peter Kingstone’s installation “The Strange Case of Peter K, 1974-2004.” The installation is a masterstroke of conceptual tightness, formal consideration, and an almost poetic economy of means, given the scope of his purported subject matter.

The videos that comprise the installation are dense with potential interpretation, so there is much that remains unrevealed, even with multiple viewings. The subject matter (or subject, as the case may be) is the life of one Peter K., and by extension, biography, memory, history and how each alters the other. We are presented with a house full of videos - some projected, some displayed on screens of various sizes - each dealing obliquely with a major event in Peter K.’s life, which coincides with a major event in world or cultural history. The burning passion of a first love is narrated over the conflagration of the Branch Davidian self-immolation at Waco; the drive home from an abortion clinic is narrated over the O.J. Simpson mugshot; the realization of a life thus-far squandered is set alongside Manhattanites gazing up at the violent alteration of their skyline. It is heady stuff, and infinitely involving.

The presentation of the videos carries a great deal of weight here. Rather than being presented in any kind of chronological order, the videos are scattered in the various rooms of the otherwise anonymous three-storey house, and part of the joy (and, to a certain extent apprehensive fear) of the show is discovering another room with another video, and another trauma (or victory, for that matter). There are some lovely presentational flourishes: the bedroom is reserved for lusts and fantasies, with all the taboo and doubt that they entail; the basement houses a mother’s secret wishes, an uncle’s despairing secret; the shed is the site of a father’s solitary escape and narcissistic hobby. Despite the deliberate nature of the placements, there is something wonderfully organic about them: one happens upon these videos much in the same random fashion that one recalls memories.

Thus, the videos on their own, while they do make excellent formal and pictorial use of found footage, and while they have their own strengths to recommend them, would seem incomplete as simple gallery projections, just as the house, on its own, is incomplete as a communicative storehouse of memory and experience. It is the interaction of the two that makes this show a highpoint of the past gallery-going year, and raises the high watermark for video installation in Toronto.