Although I stopped going to art fairs a while ago, after having been to many over the years both as a ‘gallerina’ and as a critic including Art Basel, Basel Miami, Art Chicago and Frieze, they remain popular venues for collectors, curators and, of course dealers and artists to hang out and do business.

Kristine Moran, Sidestep. Image: modto.com

New York’s Armory Show is one of the most prestigious and it takes place from March 3 – 6 in Manhattan.

Canada’s Art Dealers Association is – as per usual – organizing some programming around Canadians participating in the fair, but this year they are celebrating Canadian expat artists in New York with a series of discussions and tours of the show.

It’s a pretty good list of artists that I thought I’d share with you.

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As some of you probably know, I do the publicity for the Reel Artists Film Festival, which is put on each year in Toronto by the Canadian Art Foundation.

Shooting the film Picture Start, showing artist Rodney Graham. Image: courtesy Helen Yagi.

This year, four days of films on art and artists take place at Toronto’s TIFF Bell Lightbox, and will feature some of the world’s greatest artists, including:

Sol Lewitt – Canadian premiere
William Kentridge – Canadian premiere
Wanda Koop – WORLD premiere
Carl Beam – Toronto premiere
Shuvinai Ashoona
Ai Weiwei – North American premiere
Pipilotti Rist – Canadian premiere
Jenny Holzer – Toronto premiere
Olafur Eliasson – Toronto premiere
Damian Ortega – Canadian premiere
Christian Boltanski – Toronto premiere
Nam June Paik – WORLD premiere
The Chinese art market – Toronto premiere
John Baldessari – Canadian premiere
The Vancouver School (Picture Start) – WORLD premiere
Andreas Gursky – Canadian premiere

Last night, I previewed William Kentridge: Anything is Possible, about the famous South African artist. It is a must-see for artists, particularly anyone interested in drawing, animation, theatre or opera.

The film offers incredible insight into Kentridge’s artistic process, which is complex and encompasses many different approaches and ways of working. He also describes how his childhood experiences and the history of South Africa have influenced his art.

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It’s design week in Toronto. Tonight, I just got back from the Gladstone Hotel’s ‘alternative design event,’ Come up to my Room, or CUTMR.

Founded by the fabulous Pamila Matharu and the Gladstone’s Christina Zeidler, CUTMR works because the rooms are small, and the artist/designers can literally take their idea and run with it. It’s refreshing to see such unfettered creativity.

Co-curator Jeremy Vandermeij being interviewed by Artsync TV. All images: VoCA

Last year was exceptional – I blogged about that HERE and this year was almost as good. The first installation I saw, and the best by far – to my eye, anyway – was by Dennis Lin. Last year, I had visited Lin’s studio and seen all the delicate metal mobiles and translucent wooden lighting fixtures for which he is known.

Dennis Lin’s fantastic installation.

For the Gladstone, Lin, inspired by having recently moved his studio, arranged a large number of studio works inside a cube made up of steel shelving units, wrapping the entire thing in cellophane. It was marvelous, like an enormous box of jewels. It was like the opposite of minimalism…a sort of self-contained maximalism. Brilliant.

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Regular readers will know I’m a big fan of the late American artist Paul Thek. Recently, we stopped off in New York over the holidays to see the exhibition of work by the late, great American artist at the Whitney (on the last day of the show.)

Paul Thek – shown in Andy Warhol’s Screen Test. Image: accessibleartny.com

I’ve long been aware of Thek’s work through some collector friends who had some early, 60s pieces and in 2008, I traveled to Hamburg for the opening of the first Thek retrospective at the Falckenburg Foundation. That invitation came – kindly – from AA Bronson (see blog post below), whose work with General Idea was also part of the exhibition.

Paul Thek, Untitled, 1966 from the series Technological Reliquaries. image: linea-journal.com

I blogged about that show HERE But the Whitney show, the first American retrospective of Thek’s work, was different, and in some ways, better. The curators included some significant pieces from the Falckenburg collection, but they introduced some contextual pieces that gave the viewer a greater sense of Thek, the man. I discovered that he was the subject of one of Andy Warhol’s famous ‘screen test’ films, and more importantly, that his famous Technological Reliquary works, in which glistening, life-like wax sculptures of human limbs are encased in a super-modern, often fluorescent Perspex boxes, were an attempt to inject ‘humanity’ into the prevailing Minimalism of the day.

Artist Paul Thek, with his effigy, “Tomb”. Image: stevekasher.com

And, that his ‘Headboxes’, which often involved chairs with shoulder mounts, were created to further this approach by allowing the head of the wearer to occupy the space of the ‘art’. Fascinating, when you consider how seriously and successfully he was in pursuing the advancement of art.

Paul Thek, Untitled (Diver), 1969-70

The show is named ‘Diver’ in reference to the Diver figure in a slab from the Tomb of the Diver in Paestum, Italy, which he knew about when living in Rome, and identified strongly with it as an artist diving into the great unknown, trying to find his way.

Perhaps most impressive about Thek is that, in 1967 he created The Tomb, an effigy of himself inside a ziggurat, which he displayed and then re-displayed in different form many times. The piece became known by critics as the Death of the Hippie. Fro Thek, showing the piece was like burying himself, and it showed many times.

Paul Thek, Unititled (Self-portrait), 1966-67 from the series Technological Reliquaries. Image: bjws.com

I think that many young artists are resistant to getting this close to their art, or perhaps I should say that the current trend seems to be for artists to distance themselves from their art. But I think art is much more successful when it is brave, unafraid, unrestrained…almost dangerous. Plus, I really admire Thek’s willingness to be subservient to the art – to place the importance of his art over his own.

The exhibition catalogue has some excellent essays. I recommend it – you can buy it HERE.

I came across a funny, smart article called “A guide to the market oligopoly system”, which is a piece by Felix Salmon that uses a drawing by the artist William Powhida to deconstruct the complexities of the American art market.

William Powhida, A Guide to the Market Oligopoly System. Image: reuters.com

It makes interesting reading, particularly the part of the pyramid where locales are listed on a scale from Topeka to New York, where he notes “the value of a work of art is to a very large degree a function of the city where it’s being sold. New York’s at the top of the heap (or, to be precise, Manhattan); Berlin punches well above its weight; Paris, the erstwhile center of the art world, is conspicuous by its absence.”

It suggests that Toronto, which I would put on par with Philadelphia or Seattle at the lower end of the scale, is a small market that determines the fate of its artists. It’s a bit of a double-edge sword for artists: Do they wallow in relative obscurity in a small going-nowhere market like Toronto (or all of Canada, for that matter), but where they can teach and have the support of government grants and artist-run centres and have a decent quality of life, or do they dive into the overpopulated, over-competitive waters in New York or London, where they also risk obscurity (and, likely, poverty)?

I’m thankful for the excellent, world-class artists who have decided to remain in Canada. Though they may never achieve super-star status, we need and appreciate them.

Read the full article, HERE.

Oh, and Happy New Year! See you in 2011.

Art makes a great gift. People don’t always realize how inexpensive some books and multiples are, and isn’t it better to support local art scenes than buy from major corporations? I think so.

Here are my top picks for Canada’s best art shopping:

1. ART METROPOLE. Started by General Idea in 1974, Art Met continues to specialize in the sale of artist multiple, artist books, video and more. Much of it is very affordable and rather unusual. Gold-plated replica of Peaches’ teeth on a chain, anyone?

Peaches. Image: robotdancemusic.com

Peaches’ teeth, on a chain. Image: artmetropole.com

Check out the comprehensive website, HERE. It’s fun to browse.

2. CANADIAN MAGAZINES.

Support Magenta, a newish online publication, or buy a subscription to the excellent Vancouver journal Fillip, or to Toronto’s artist-run magazine Hunter & Cook.

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I was impressed by the Vancouver architect Bing Thom, who I heard speak last week at the Sustainable Suburbs conference in Toronto.

Vancouver architect Bing Thom. Image: vancouverism.ca

Thom’s Arena Stage at the Mead Centre for American Theatre. Image: archdaily.com

Not only has Thom just designed an improbably well-received Arena Stage at the Mead Centre for American Theatre in Washington D.C., which encases the original brutalist architecture very elegantly, he has just received a commission from Miami mega-collectors Don and Mera Rubell.

The new gallery and mixed-use development is to be set on the site of an abandoned school, and will presumably house part of the 1500-piece Rubell Family Collection.

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Fashion designer Jeremy Laing, it turns out, is also an avid art collector.

Jeremy Laing’s exhibition. Sign by Derek Sullivan. Image: VoCA

I discovered this on Saturday of the Toronto International Art Fair, when I led a tour for the Canadian Art Foundation’s young patron group, the New Contemporaries, and Laing took the time to show us around the installation that he curated.

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I adore the Financial Times weekend edition, particularly its feature Lunch with the FT.

Larry Gagosian. Image: nymag.com

Last week, in case you missed it, mega-dealer Larry Gagosian, who was No. 1 in Art Review’s recent Power 100, had lunch with the FT’s art critic, Jackie Wullschlager.

He comes across as surprisingly humble, for a man succeeding at art-world domination, with a not-so-mini empire of galleries around the world, the most recent of which opened in Paris.

He says: “Taste changes, time will tell. But you can’t freak out about it and you can’t be paralysed because you can’t always hit the bull’s-eye when it comes to art history. That shouldn’t stop you taking your shot.”

Wise words.

Read the article HERE.

A friend of VoCA recently drew my attention to this article in the Independent.

So-called “It” curator Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld. Image: iwanttobeariotfeld.com

The It curators: A new breed of young socialites are selling art is about the likes of Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, son of French Vogue editor and eternally glamorous woman Carine Riotfeld, Vito Schnabel (son of Julian) and Tyrone Wood (son of Ronnie) becoming the new, super-well-connected art curators.

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