A search seems underway in the art community to expand on the current model of the art fair. At these ticketed events targeting collectors, often located at venues with a corporate ambience, galleries cram art into rows of little booths. In October, the Feature fair tried a sparer, more curated approach in a more art-friendly venue, the Tanenbaum Opera Centre, where Canadian galleries each highlighted a few of their artists.
Now Warsaw’s Raster Gallery brings Villa, an event founded in 2006 that insists it “is not an art fair” to Toronto, partnering with local art publication hub Art Metropole and Toronto and international galleries. Previous Villas took place in Warsaw, Reykjavik and Tokyo, places with thriving art markets not quite as overheated as in cities like New York, London and Beijing. Villa also brings in international artists, some better known than others, from their previous locations to Toronto.
Villa, by locating its primary exhibit in the Great Hall at Union Station (admission free), hopes to engage a local audience. However, the week-long event seems primarily geared to insiders – gallerists, curators, artists, etc. – who will become “a spontaneous, informal artistic community,” according to Villa’s press material. This may be a valid goal, but the Union Station exhibit left me wondering about the gulf between the lives of artists and curators who travel the world doing residencies and attending fairs and biennials, and the commuters whose daily grind takes them through the perpetual construction site that is Union Station.
At Friday’s evening opening, the space is dimly lit and tags offer no explanatory info, just the artists’ and gallery names and titles. Art Metropole is selling a book that offers a bit of context, but an abridge version of this should have been available for free. In it I learned, for instance, that Michael Portnoy’s topographic photographs are actually kale and contain encrypted images of a “vegetable of the future.” Yuki Okumura’s video interview with an Icelandic-American artist who’s continuing the work of On Kawara – the only one viewable from the Great Hall’s seats – is the kind of work that has too many layers of art-world references for the average person.
Other videos, along with installations, run in two gallery-esque white-box structures. My favourite is Ragnar Kjartansson’s video of a Viking ship called the SS Hangover, aboard which musicians contribute a majestic soundtrack while sailing around a column-lined Venetian canal.
Art outside the boxes is more successful: at either end of the hall, tall sculptures by Derek Sullivan (Endless Kiosk, a flyer-encrusted version of Brancusi’s Endless Column) and Dean Drever (Pass The Hat, a white totem pole made of stacked sheets of laser-cut paper) take advantage of the hall’s soaring height and offer some commentary on the space’s use and history. Berlin-based Reto Pulfer’s Hallengeist, a gossamer giant textile face, has also escaped confinement to hover above the exhibits like a ghostly flag.
Best in show are Zeke Moores’s Dumpster and Port-O-Potty, two life-size reproductions of construction site fixtures clad in shiny aluminum sheeting. Commuters will have to do a double take to realize that these meticulously crafted replicas are works of art and not part of the current upheaval at the station.
Later Friday night, Kjartansson, whose work plays with various genres and aspects of musical performance, presented An Evening Of Misery at the AGO. Wearing dinner jackets, Kjartansson on guitar and Davið Þor Jónsson on piano gave a concert of punishingly slow numbers ranging from depressing country songs to gloomy German lieder and an Iceland murder ballad by the artist’s grandmother. Kjartansson has an adequate but unremarkable voice, but his deadpan repertoire of performance mannerisms, both serious and silly, won me over.
In addition to the Union Station exhibit, Villa hosts a series of events at various venue throughout the week. A food panel with Pulfer (Tuesday at 5 pm), a Michael Snow performance (Wednesday at 7 pm), both at the Drake Hotel and Jan Sasaki’s Bouncy Highrise performance in the MOCCA courtyard (Friday at 6 pm), involving an attempt to stack a series of bouncy castles, look like good bets.
Villa Toronto runs until January 23. Find out more here.
