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Art & Books

Bathhouse peep

THE TORONTO BATHHOUSE ART PROJECT at St. Marc Spa (543 Yonge), to July 10. 416-927-0210. Rating: NNN


Pride began in Toronto as a response to a series of police raids on bathhouses. Last weekend, as police focused elsewhere, a group of artists, playwrights and performers opened the Toronto Bathhouse Art Project, a sort of high-libido, low-rent version of the Gladstone’s Come Up To My Room, at St. Marc Spa.

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On the fourth floor of an office building on Yonge, the St. Marc and its bar, Grasp (through which viewers of all genders can enter the installation), don’t bother much with decor, aside from some sheets of plywood with penis-shaped glory holes. (Spa customers will not be using the rooms during the art exhibit.) Each tiny jail-like cell contains a narrow bed, a locker and a TV piping in porn.

In an exhibitionist room with a window onto the bar, playwright Brad Fraser, author of Poor Superman, covers the walls with a mélange of colourful, awkwardly rendered superheroes, opening a window into the inner child. Artist Shaun O’Marra surrounds a sad theatre mask with swirling drawings resolving into penises.

Mayoral candidate Keith Cole, perhaps courting the ethnic vote, creates a South Asian pastiche of Hindu gods, red flags and banana offerings. Playwright Sky Gilbert riffs on desire in his pink-walled Pig Pen, with snout-like rubber nipples and the word “butcher” scrawled on the door.

Drag performer/columnist Donnarama cleverly transforms a locker into one of the Twin Towers in a fantasia of conspiracy paranoia that includes references to The Da Vinci Code, the Last Supper, Fahrenheit 9/11, Princess Di and Marilyn Monroe.

Not your usual high-concept, slickly produced, gallery-style installations, they offer a fun peep show into what else is on gay men’s minds in a setting that’s usually off-limits to the rest of us. Curiously, as Toronto devolves into a police state for the G20, no one is thinking about the 1981 bathhouse raids.

art@nowtoronto.com

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