MITCH ROBERTSON at Birch Libralato (129 Tecumseth), to June 26. 416-365-3003. Rating: NNNN
Mitch Robertson has a knack for asking highbrow conceptual questions that come off as sly schoolboy jokes. For example, how many people in Ontario have the address 666? Do the names of constellations reflect national and cultural boundaries? Who has the legal right to name stars in the first place? Just how lucky are the 2010 Olympic Lucky Loonies? And most importantly, is it possible to make a hockey tape ball the width of a door frame?
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These form the basis of his new show, A Bit Of Luck. In The Luckiest Loonie, Robertson took a roll of special-issue Lucky Loonies and tossed them six times to see which coin came up tails most often to test their actual luck content. Discarding unlucky ones through a process of elimination, he eventually arrived at the single “luckiest” coin.
In 666, he sets out to discover how many Ontarians live at Satan’s address (666 being the number of the Beast in Revelations). Robertson drove through southwestern Ontario hunting down dwellings at the malefic address in order to make tombstone-style rubbings of each street number. The resulting 24 rubbings are oddly sinister and hilarious, weirdly combining the occult and the clinical.
Untitled Star refers to a celestial object Robertson purchased from a registry company that has been commercially renaming stars for private customers since the 80s. He called his Untitled to ensure that, should every other visible star in the sky be named after a deceased relative, a lover or a beloved pet, his would belong to everyone.
This is the sort of serious practical joke that jolts us into awareness of the ambiguous boundary between the symbolic and actual, and the tenuous stake we claim through our creation of value and meaning.
art@nowtoronto.com
