Art Adventures in Toronto Land With Fitzgerald Part 2!
After our time at the Power Plant we found ourselves in Art Metropole, a smaller than expected gallery, publishing and archival space. They are interested in anything that can be mass produced which is pretty cool. they Also do a lot of archiving. just being in the space it was very comfortable yet when i looked at the price tag of say a sewn stuffed pigeon i became oddly aware of how much money some of the things in Art Metropole would cost. the space transforms into what Art Metropole needs it to be, but mainly it looks like a store. They do however have a massive array of subjects from books to pigeons to mini skateboards.
After leaving Art Metropole we went searching for Birch Librato, which we found the entrance to with some help from the T.A. whose name escapes me at the moment (Ryan i think it was). Two Artists works were being set up for an exhibition that was opening the next day. Peter Smith (the exhibit called And or Other Gods, which can only imply the nature of said exhibit) in the front part of the gallery and Andrew McPhail’s(the exhibit called LIT, which again implies the nature of the show) in the back. Both artists with different in many ways.
Smith used found objects, and paint and other such things as logs in his art which sticks at least 5 or 6 inches out from the wall. all of his pieces were really enticing to me, the craftsmanship of them sometimes seemed sloppy but obviously with that purpose, he often used the letter blocks which are in the majority of his pieces and if they are not small cracked and skewered plastic globes are in their place. many times using the blocks the name of the piece will be on it somewhere, an example is Scared Shitless it is placed at the top of the peice in the same blocks that are throughout the piece so you would never think anything of that specific phrase being there. Smith’s art is on an epic slace however unepic-sized his art is. Alot of the subject matter and visuals are of swirling worldpools, the world (or worlds) and somewhat off putting childrens toys which are placed very strategically in the works. his works make me think of something i would have done as a child had I been motivated enough to do so, but are fairly morbid for such a small child do.
Andrew McPhails are is much more illustrative and and pretty for lack of a better word. LIT is much more 2D and picture esque, but still hold a quality that makes them very attractive. to me his art reminds me of pop art merely for its simplicity.
Next we found (by accident) Pari Nadimi, 2of2 and Niagra Galleries. the fact that there were three galleries in one space confused me to no end as to why there were three titles on the building, but then i looked at the infosheets on the exhibits and figured it out.
In the Pari Nadimi portion of the exhibit we saw an exhibit by Michael Dudeck. His exhibit i quite frankly did not understand, I could tell it had something to do with nature and humans interaction with it and its own interactions with itself. There were three hanging manequins adorned with animal and animal esque structures as an earie sound played throughout the space. at the back was a large poster thing-a-ma bob with words on it and a broken cacoonish bright orange manequin, on the walls were 4 pictures of Dudeck titled as different things and large scale ink and pencil drawings he had done.
in the front gallery (2 of 2) there were black and white portraits part of an exhibit called Film Noir by Paige Holden and in the very front room Nothing of me is original by Melisa Esplina (not pictured) her peices are wax dripping works, i liked them very much actually, the surfaces seemed to be flat but there were very visible drips.
Diaz Contemporary
There were two exhibits going on, Texto and a show by another artist Nick Ostoff. Ostoff’s art was very simplistic but by using very simple lines and marks he created imense depth within a flat surface.
Texto on the other hand was a colaboration (also not pictured here) that included site specific peices and other werk by artists such as Deanna Bowen, Ricardo Ceuves, Joel Herman, Yam Lau, Ken Lum, Gordon Lebredt, Francine Savard. Some of the art was very pop-artish and Japanese media like, but they were all very different, some of them seemed to focus on our cutlure others on eastern culture.
and last but not least mercer union where we got to talk to john sizaki (i just butchered that last name) there were some very interesting exhibits. The group was explained something about Ubuweb which my bad memory is failing to let me remember at the moment. i think its about the work on the left wall (when you walk in) that it a collection of someones work whom the person who runs Ubuweb has collected. they are poems that are visually as well as mentally pleasing.
on the other two walls of the from portion of the gallery there were miscalanious papers and signs from NYC from the artists neighborhood. These collections allow the viewer to get to know his neighborhood slightly without actuallybeing there. they were very amusingto say the least on the wall facing the front doors there are rants from an unknown person that make no coheirent sense written down on scraps of paper are really amusing. all three of these walls show the contribution of thrid party and found objects and work and how by mearly displaying them for someone to see and critique.
and after mercer union we attempted to find the other galleries in the neighborhood and failed very miserably so here is where the Toronto Land adventures end and we got back on the bus and trecked off to Guelph again.
–Emma Tiffin
