An art fair is a marketplace, and I went window shopping.
Last weekend, the 16th annual Art Toronto fair at Toronto’s Convention Centre saw 16,000 square meters, more than 100 exhibitors, 91 galleries, 12 SOLO booths, and more. All in all, a dizzying amount of artwork. The fair was divided into bite-sized chunks; Focus: Latin America, SOLO, VERGE, PROJECTS, PLATFORM, and tons of different publications.
The venue was scattered with Warhol Brillo Boxes, towering crates with overflowing foliage, white shelves stocked with Canadian Art publications and potted clementine plants. It had the feel of an experiment – with the fair itself being the control, and each gallery’s pod fruiting the mutated, independent variables under observance.
It would be impossible to soak up all that the sixteenth annual Art Toronto fair had to offer – so whether you made plans to wander the maze yourself, or you’re getting comfy with a glass of your favorite Pinot Noir, have a look at our wish list from this year’s Art Toronto fair.
Where the Shark Bubbles Blow SA4 by Wilfried Grootens at Sandra Ainsley Gallery
A tesseract is to a cube, what a cube is to a square. It is the unimaginable fourth dimension, a layer of perspective our minds can’t quite bend around. The works on view in this booth are the closest to a fourth dimension you’ll get. Wilfried Grooten’s Where the Shark Bubbles Blow looks like foliage from the film Avatar. From the side, you notice slivers of sliced, painted glass, stacked vertically to form an alien bubble. It warps your mind and is a beautiful illusion that manipulates light and perspective.
Reflujo (2014) by Eduardo Basualdo at PSM Gallery
After a two year absence, Art Toronto resurrected a geographical focus program, with FOCUS: Latin America. Argentinian artist Eduardo Basualdo’s installation Reflujo featured clocks with no numbers scattered across the floor of the enclosed space, with a dangling, ominous bundle of what appears to be black rope. Immediately, the lyrics from Bob Moses’ Hands to Hold came to mind – time, time, time it’s a poison.
Nobuaki Onishi at MA2 Gallery (SOLO)
The Cleansing (2015) by Tammy Salzl, Featured Artist Project
A set of painted red curtains parted to allowed your curiosity to step into Tammy Salzl’s immersive world of contrasts. The nucleus of the popup room at first looked to be a painfully idyllic red brick dollhouse, complete with chimney, overflowing astro-turf, sounds of singing birds, and church bells. It is eerily familiar to us: a rendered fairytale.
However when you peered into the window you found an entirely different scene: a crying child wearing a jersey with “This” splashed across it, pointing a bow and arrow at a seemingly calm fawn with flames ablaze in three frames around the tiny room.
Tammy hosted an impromptu talk in front of her works telling her engaged audience that she was inspired by Brothers Grimm fairytales. She explains that she didn’t want to repulse, rather she wanted to have a piece that “entered through the eyes, dropped to the gut, and soared to the mind to fester.”
Homage to Holbein (2015) by Evan Penny at TrépanierBaer Gallery
Have you ever seen those sidewalk chalk art pieces that look 3D from afar but up close everything is wildly distorted? Evan Penny has created a similar effect with Homage to Holbien, a sculptural adaptation of Hans Holbein’s The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb to life (and death). This stretched, elastic, skeletal human has real hair spilling out of the frame and around the dead eyes and yellowed teeth.
Trimming the multitude of pieces to just four wishes was difficult: honorable mentions are deserved for the 40 million dollar Picasso at Landau Fine Art, Jim Holyoak’s India Ink mural, Annie Briard’s 3D prints, Steve McCurry’s The Afghan Girl, and the wonderful RBC Canadian Painting Competition.
It’s hard for most people to leave an art fair without thinking about the price tags – do we consider an art fair a space in which contemporary art is presented only to those who can buy it? Of course not. Can I imagine sitting in a room with enough bills to count 40 million dollars? No. Can I imagine my fantasy foyer complete with a mounted Francis Bacon? Yes. That’s the fun.
Like this article? Check out our highlights from Frieze London, or other contemporary art fairs around the world.