Ladies and gentlemen, bienvenue. We are the Artfag.

And quite frankly, we were beginning to despair for a while, there: those barren summer days, with nary a vernissage (or, as this city has the unfortunate habit of saying, opening), and consequently, a free glass of red wine, in sight. Sure enough however, the Fall has, well, fallen, and not a moment too soon. The lack of art (not to mention having to pay for our own drinks) was getting tiresome, to say the least. Besides which, ladies and gentlemen, as we stated before in these pages, we don’t do heat. Our temperament (and our wardrobe) is much more suited to the crisp autumn air.

What we like: Harris tweed blazers accessorized with an exorbitantly expensive scarf (scarves are the new ties, after all).

How we are: well, darlings, now that we don’t have to go through the vulgar indignity of seeing other people sweating (we never sweat; we merely release a delicately perfumed mist), we are quite definitely plus à l’aise.

What we don’t like: the continued preponderance of post-Labour day white accessories. Ladies and gentlemen, what has society come to?

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We are all too aware, ladies and gentlemen, of the potential unpopularity of the following statement, but we are going to make it nevertheless (we are nothing if not controversial): When it comes to the more accessible modes of art-making, we propose the following maxim: just because you can doesn’t mean you should. The nigh-overwhelming accessibility of, oh say for instance, video cameras (and therefore video art) has produced a seemingly endless river of terrible art: if it isn’t glib, it’s attended by miles of theoretical footnotes; if it isn’t bland and nose-picking, it’s possessed of the kind of earnestness that induces nausea. We find video art, despite the relative ease involved in picking up a camera, to be entirely inaccessible. It is exacting, its limitations are harsh and severe, and demands a balancing act of Sheherazadean proportions.

When we first encountered the work of Steve Reinke, during a video program of recent work organized by the Pleasure Dome, we were not impressed. We were assured by those familiar with his oeuvre to withhold judgement; this was not Reinke at his finest. We obliged, albeit grudgingly. And so, it was not without some small measure of apprehension that we entered the doors of the Robert Birch gallery during Mr. Reinke’s show there. For if there was ever a time to judge, this was it.

We are delighted to say that Mr. Reinke did not disappoint, this time around. Materially speaking, it was a show of, one might say, pure accessibility: two videos, some naughty polaroids, and a few drawings on standard sized paper, some business cards. And Mr. Reinke dons full Sheherazade drag to produce a work of subtle, probing intelligence and moving sparseness.

The main thrust of the installation consists of Mr. Reinke’s 30-odd minute video projection, “Anthology of American Folk Song,” which is the first installment of his “Final Thoughts” series, although ‘series’ doesn’t quite capture the nature of the project. Mr. Reinke will collect bits and pieces of found footage as an archive, to be combined with original footage old and new, for future video works. It can only be seen as a complete series posthumously, as the one to decide the end of it will be Death, rather than Mr. Reinke.

Even without foreknowledge of the morbid raison-d’être, “Anthology of American Folk Song” comes off as elegiac and eulogistic. This is a video with a clear beginning and end, however, so one has to sit with it to unravel its nature. At first, the video seems to meander, taking the scenic route through sundry bits of seemingly unrelated visual material: a baby gorging on chocolate cake (which takes on the unnerving visual quality of shit) being cooed and gawked at by surrounding adults, scientific footage of underdeveloped pubescent boys in various states of undress, a pornographic gay sex scene, someone rifling through naughty polaroids while manically singing “Jenny From the Block,” some pretty flowers serving as the backdrop for a musing on mortality and the desire for transcendence. What emerges from this collection of detritus is something with a clear trajectory, and a lofty purpose; Mr. Reinke has constructed a eulogy to a life’s worth of desire. He moves smoothly and elegantly through its various stages: the animalistic, immediate urges of infancy; the private shameful desires of adolescence, the full-bodied lust of adulthood, the fearful nostalgia of old-age. Mr. Reinke’s image-history is viscerally felt, and married with a tone of sorrowful poetry made all the more poignant by the brief stabs of humour.

To produce something of such grand scope is a difficult thing to do with video. It is, after all, a medium, like snapshot photography, known primarily for its domestic uses. To marry the elegiac and the mundane without pretension is no mean feat, and Mr. Reinke does it with deft legerdemain; by constructing a life out of its documentary detritus, “Anthology...” captures its subjects when they aren’t looking, in their few moments of naked truthfulness. This is the work of someone operating at their pinnacle; as such, we are gratified indeed that we have chosen this instance to make our judgement.

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There are certain artists whose work provokes an almost religious fealty; where every new performance or show is anticipated with expectation and apprehension lest they disappoint, and, of course, they never do. We admit freely and without misgiving that Daniel Barrow is, for us, just such an artist. We feel this to be so, not only because his performance persona is the quintessence, the Platonic ideal, of Romantic Artfaggotry, but because his work accomplishes so much with so little. His work is nigh-monastic in its economy of means, and as such, he belongs in a sphere occupied by early John Waters, George Kuchar, and anyone else whose work’s wit, and breadth and scope of affect is underscored by meagerness and simplicity. Every time we attend one of Mr. Barrow’s performances, we worry secretly if his mylar projection schtick will get old, if he has become a one-trick pony, still feverishly drawing pale, sickly boys, narrating their trials and tribulations when the novelty has long-since worn off. And every time, Mr. Barrow renews our faith in him with another pulpy romantic tale, whose nostalgia, wryness and sincerity are blended with infinite nuance. So imagine our apprehension at Mr. Barrow’s gallery show at Mercer Union; a Hammond organ struck a chord of anxious incertitude as the thought-bubble hovered above our temple, reading: can Mr. Barrow’s work, which depends so much on its narration and performance elements, translate with any success into the White Cube?

Once again we doubted, and once again, ladies and gentlemen, we must slap ourselves on the wrist for our crisis of faith. Mr. Barrow’s show at Mercer Union, consisting largely of drawings and constructions from his “A Miracle” video for the Hidden Cameras and including a new projection and some videos, only underscored with greater depth and severity the scope and power of his project.

The unquestioned centrepiece of the show, to our mind, are the “Miracle” drawings. Intricately detailed, vividly and tropically coloured, the drawings are layered, collage-like, just as he layers his transparencies in his performances. They are accompanied by small constructions: for instance, the drawn airplane that flies through the frame at one point during “A Miracle” is present as a constructed model for our examination and delectation. Simply put, all of the elements of “A Miracle” are displayed together for us to marvel at, while the video itself plays on a T.V. at the far end of the gallery. Thus, the presentation of the works suggests that we are looking at props and stills from a lavish Hollywood production, as if the scale of the “Miracle” video is so grand, it requires this kind of retrospective documentation. Of course, it’s no secret that, in literal execution, Mr. Barrow’s work is anything but lavish and grand. And of course, figuratively speaking, Mr. Barrow’s work is also anything but literal. His work functions on the scale of pretense and aspiration, like the wish-fulfillment fantasy of the little girl (or, in this case, more accurately, the little boy) who thinks she is a princess. Though simple in means, Mr. Barrow’s work speaks in the nostalgic language of grand Romance, and of lavish Hollywood melodrama. This exhibition of drawings/stills and constructions/props simultaneously extends that fantasy, makes us eager consumers of it (and therefore participants in it), and covertly, subtly underscores its tragedy; a fantasy, after all, is just and only that. The tragic tales of sad young lads are narrated into our imaginations by Mr. Barrow, and any work of art that can so delicately work on our fantasies and play on our heartstrings has achieved greatness; and just as the little boy donning tiara and pink taffeta gown for his coronation, this greatness is no less impressive having been achieved through the powers of make-believe.

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If there is one thing that marks the beginning of the gallery season, it’s the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF). What with the Metro Toronto Convention Centre dolled up to look like a flea market designed by Philippe Starck, the massive publicity budget on display, and the faint yet unmistakable sound of collectors’ pens writing large-sum cheques, we’ve always felt that, rather than the TIAF being, as it claims, the international promoter of Canadian art, it more closely resembles an upscale version of Filene’s Basement. And the extortionate entry fee never really weighed in its favour, either. So imagine our delight when the buzz began to sound around the Toronto Alternative Art Fair International (TAAFI). And imagine our further delight when the buzz began, to extend the metaphor only slightly, to raise in volume; the articles, the interviews involving strenuous (if not altogether believable) denial of competition and resentment, it was all too grand. So we decided to promenade on over and have ourselves a look-see, especially since this look-see wasn’t going to burn a 40$ hole in the lining of our pockets.

How do we even begin to summarize? If ‘grand’ isn’t the right adjective, then it’s certainly close; the TAAFI has taken over three floors of the Gladstone hotel, and one wing of rooms at the Drake hotel, involving some 17 galleries, an array of individual curators, and an exorbitant number of artists, both represented or sponsored by galleries, and on their own. This, of course, doesn’t include daily panel discussions, guided tours and parties. The mind staggers at the amount of organization required, and staggers further at the fact that the TAAFI collective consists of only three people: the Misses Pamila Matharu, Andrew Harwood and Selena Cristo, themselves prominently entrenched fish in the Toronto art world sea.

As TAAFI isn’t necessarily a curated art event, to talk about the installations and displays would be to miss the point; each gallery involved is, after all, responsible for its own artists (as we can’t resist judgement, however, we will say only this: that to describe the mass of works as ‘varied’ is a diplomatic understatement). TAAFI has a larger project than merely to put on a show (and a big show, at that). By setting itself up as an alternative to TIAF, it defines itself politically; certainly the press coverage has allied TAAFI with the left (NOW magazine, in a semantic stretch of yogic proportions given the abundance of corporate sponsorship and the pedigree of its organizers, described TAAFI as “grassroots”) by virtue of its declared resistance to the stampeding consumerism of the TIAF. But that’s generally where the politics stop, which still leaves us with the question of how exactly to talk about it.

TAAFI is, at its heart, an Event. Certainly, the overwhelming feeling walking through the two hotels, cruising from room to room, is that one is at a giant art opening. There is a sense of excitement, of novelty, and of tacit respect and appreciation for the intrinsic value of art that is quite heartening, if not exhilarating. That’s the feeling at the Gladstone; the atmosphere at the Drake is another matter entirely. The Gladstone’s disheveled, dilapidated rooms, each in their own unique state of quaint disrepair, provide a mostly blank slate against which the art can be seen. The haphazardness of the Gladstone does more than that, though: freed from the sanctifying atmosphere of the polished white cube gallery, the work becomes less of a declaration, and more of a conversation; we are free to interact with the pieces on a more human scale, without the legitimizing gallery acting as a mediator. It also lends the event a certain hasty informality, which is essential to TAAFI’s vaunted political project. However, TAAFI has done itself an immense disservice by having installations in rooms at the Drake hotel. There is no sense of hors-gallery ease, nor do the voguish rooms provide a blank slate. This is The Drake, after all, and unlike the Gladstone, it is a fully functioning hotel, one that seems only marginally willing to be a vehicle for the artists involved in TAAFI. None of the Drake rooms have been cleared, and consequently, the thing that is really on display there is the Drake itself; the art is drowned out by the ostentatiously trendy design, and is thus reduced to being an accessory for the geometric leather furniture. And we won’t even condescend to say what we think of having work installed in closed-off shower stalls. But this is an Event in its infancy. As such, TAAFI has organizational burps like any other, and should it live up to its potential, these burps may be forgiven.

And just what is this potential? Given all the attention it has received, given its success (the wisdom of involving the Drake notwithstanding), which is astounding and encouraging in its relative immediacy, given the earnestness of its project, the TAAFI could very easily become what the TIAF wants so desperately to be: a Canadian event with a seriousness, if not scope, on par with Dokumenta or the Whitney Biennale; a Canadian event where the power of art is valued, as opposed to its price tag.

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