Toronto artist Micah Lexier is everywhere these days.

A view of Micah Lexier’s installation I Am the Coin, at BMO in Toronto.  Image: iamthecoin.com

Not only did he have new work in a recent show at his Toronto dealer, Birch Libralato, he has a just-opened year-long installation at the Bank of Montreal’s Project Room titled I am the Coin – click HERE to check it out – along with several upcoming collaborations.

-Twelve of One: A Series of Twelve Consecutive Vitrine Displays is on view at Art Metropole, and will change each month over the course of one year. Click HERE for more info.

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Great curatorial minds think alike, it seems.

After what seems like an interminably long period of preciousness with Toronto’s starchitect-designed art spaces at the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Royal Ontario Museum, the gloves are off.

Both institutions have invited artists to literally destroy gallery walls.

The gorgeous, Frank Gehry-designed AGO. Image: seanjohn.com

At the AGO, the glorious collages and installations of Kenyan-American artist Wangechi Mutu will, for her first major solo exhibition, include a haunting series of drawings mounted on a ‘pockmarked’ gallery wall, which will be punctured and torn to reflect the post-colonial themes at the core of Mutu’s work.

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We snuck in on the final day to see the Cut/Paste: Creative Reuse in Canadian Design show at the Royal Ontario Museum this past weekend, and, while the huge gallery spaces overwhelmed the design objects on display, there were a few things of particular interest, like objects that prison inmates had ingeniously cobbled together: water-boilers and crudely made toaster, to transform water and bread into toast and tea.

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Jean-Pierre Gauthier, Nul/Flirting with the Puck 2008. Image: canadianart.ca

1. Kinetic works by the former Sobey Art Prize winner Jean-Pierre Gauthier at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia from December 18, 2009 to March 15, 2010.

A drawing by Dan Perjovschi. Image: romanianculturalcentre.org.uk

2. The curators at the ROM finally see the light and bring in Romanian artist Dan Perjovschi to graffiti the walls of Libeskind’s precious crystal. The artist will work on the walls ‘live’ during gallery hours from February 13 to 22, and the show continues to next summer.

A portrait piece of Janusz Dukszta by Evan Penny. Image courtesy UTAC.

3. From 19 January to 13 March 2010, collector Janusz Dukszta is the subject of a new show at the University of Toronto Arts Centre. It’s curated by Gordon Hatt and should be an interesting comment on the artist/patron relationship.