TORONTO INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR 2003
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"Evan Penny’s head sculptures"
There was always a crowd around Evan Penny’s head sculptures, represented by TrépanierBaer.
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"The Night Divides the Day"
Jason McLean, "The Night Divides the Day," 2003, ink on paper; 42" x 64". Photo courtesy Tracey Lawrence Gallery.
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"Evan Penny’s head sculptures"
There was always a crowd around Evan Penny’s head sculptures, represented by TrépanierBaer.
TORONTO INTERNATIONAL ART FAIR
By Gregory Elgstrand
The day I arrived in "Tarrahna," it was bitterly cold. However, the Metro Toronto Convention Centre was hot with feverish Liberal Party conventioneers attendant to the coronation of Paul Martin as their leader. I made my way through the throng of politicos, party functionaries and earnest youth wingers to Exhibition Hall A for the fourth incarnation of the Toronto International Art Fair. Art and politics were as close as ever.
An art fair is where the art market becomes literal marketplace. The rarefied space of the gallery temporarily gives way to white cubicle walls with competing incandescent and fluorescent lighting. Thankfully, visitors and gallerists alike held no pretence that an art fair floor provides optimum conditions for viewing art. Still, there was a good deal of good art on view.
Canada’s long-held penchant for regionalism was dispensed with in the layout of the booths. The photographs of Vienna artist Erwin Würm (Galerie Krinzinger, Vienna) rubbed shoulders with the photographs of Vancouver artist Scott McFarland (Monte Clarke Gallery, Vancouver and Toronto). British artist Tony Oursler’s (Lisson Gallery, London) grotesque video installation shook hands with Evan Penny’s (TrépanierBaer, Calgary) huge stretched head. Winnipeg artist Daniel Barrow’s drawings (othergallery, Winnipeg) threw a wave to the photographs of ceramic figurines by Russian artists Valery Orlov and Alexandra Mitlyanskaya (Krokin Gallery, Moscow).
To wax regional, 12 of the 80 participating galleries were from Western Canada, with Tracey Lawrence Gallery, Vancouver, being highlighted by TIAF organizers amongst the “Fresh-Avant-Garde Galleries.” Art Beatus Gallery, Vancouver and Hong Kong; Catriona Jeffries Gallery, Vancouver; TrépanierBaer, Calgary; and Douglas Udell Gallery, Edmonton and Vancouver, made it to the fair organizer’s highlight list in the press kit.
Regulars Bau-Xi Gallery, Vancouver and Toronto; Buschlen Mowatt, Vancouver and Palm Desert, CA; and first-timer Loch Gallery, Winnipeg and Toronto, were all part of the Western Canada contingent, each with large and regularly changing displays.
Regina gallerist Susan Whitney has been a fixture at all four Toronto art fairs and she echoed the sentiments of her colleagues that this was the strongest of the fairs yet with higher quality work and, importantly, higher sales than previous fairs. Indeed, this echo reverberated throughout the fair and into the Toronto press. There was a feeling that the fair has developed into a kind of community where acquaintances and far-flung clients congregate once a year.
First time fair participants, Tracey Lawrence Gallery and Winnipeg’s nomadic othergallery, emphatically proclaimed that the fair was worth their effort. Paul Butler of the othergallery (an artist in his own right with his work on view at Toronto’s Wynick Tuck Gallery booth) found a diverse and interested audience for work that is not readily available in Toronto. For Tracey Lawrence, the new connections between artists and collectors exceeded her expectations. Among the work Lawrence presented, Vancouver artist Jason McLean’s ecstatic drawings created a justifiable sensation and sold out at the fair’s opening gala. And, just down the row at the othergallery, one erstwhile collector purchased an entire folder of Winnipeg artist, Simon Hughes’ remarkable architectural narrative drawings. (As an aside, the fair was ripe with wonderful drawings perhaps because of their portability and their relative inexpensiveness. Victoria artist, Luanne Martineau’s elaborate and exceptional drawings at TrépanierBaer were also the cause for extensive and justifiable buzzing.)
Catriona Jeffries Gallery returned to the Toronto fair this year after recently attending the Berlin Art Fair. Jeffries, cool to the idea of attending Berlin again for its lack of coherence and sluggish sales, expressed her satisfaction with the development of the Toronto fair since she participated in its inaugural year. Her booth also created a palpable stir with a rambunctious new sculptural work by Vancouver artist Geoffrey Farmer that Kitty Scott, Curator of Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada, proclaimed as the “biggest, loudest work at the fair.” Jeffries’ gallery also contributed the most substantial anecdote of the fair when security guards stumbled upon itinerant artist Germaine Koh asleep in a sleeping bag for her work, Sleeping Rough, and contemplated removing “the bum” from the building. The work seemed to prove that an art fair could be more than an art fair.
Can Canada accommodate a second art fair? It is, after all, a big country with many accomplished galleries and institutions and even more artists. Surely, there is room for another fair that could succeed where the ill-fated Vancouver Art Fair failed a number of years ago. The gallerists with whom I spoke offered a resounding “no” to the question. Standing in the Equinox Gallery (Vancouver) booth in front of a stunning painting by French artist Bernard Frize, Andy Sylvester stated that another fair would only serve to dilute what the Toronto fair has accomplished: the critical mass needed to make a fair successful. It appears that Canada has a success on its hands.