10 great pieces from Art Toronto
go see them IRL!
before diving in to the fair
A brief reflection on my previous essay as it’s relevant to my thoughts on Art Toronto. The piece is about how challenging it is to find immersion in visual art compared to other mediums. I feature two artists (Luke Painter and Dan Climan), both of whose work I find quite immersive.
In response to the essay, Luke Painter sent me a textbook he used with his students for a critical theory course. I pulled this screenshot from the text:
The idea of “diminishing critical distance” from this excerpt stuck with me. With the many layers of screens and ever-expanding discourse (ahem, Substack) placed between us and our cultural experiences, immersion seems less attainable than ever. Every IRL experience has the potential to be abstracted into a vibe which can be audited from afar.
So if you’re reading this without having attended Art Toronto, maybe go this weekend???
my day at Art Toronto
I stayed for a full shift (11am-8pm) on Friday. The diversity of artist voices was commendable, the flow of visitors and overall energy was consistent, and in the few lull moments there were very beautiful places to sit.
Attending an art fair exposes you to the community that underpins the art market. The commerciality is icky at times; I remind myself that what happens here enables gallery spaces to feel like a safe haven from all of that. There is a slightly manic and competitive energy in the room which “best of” Substacks and instagram stories do not account for. These rich people feel alive.
At one moment I recognized the distant, cheerful voice of John Bianchini, CEO of Hatch (the company I left 4y ago to work in the arts), as he gave a welcome speech to a room that was probably responsible for most of the red dots around the fair. A tall dividing wall between the art floor and the banquet blocked my view of it from any angle. I recalled my early months at Hatch, when John invited several of us new employees to private tours of the McMichael collection and the Heffel auction house. Despite being more connected to art today than ever before, I felt profoundly like an outsider.
In a nice segway from my earlier reflections on immersion, Mia Neilsen, director of Art Toronto, said the following of her inspiration for the 2024 event in her interview with ArtBeat:
I started thinking about how the internet, social media in particular, has influenced the way we look at art. On one hand, there are so many new entry points for artists to enter the market… on the other hand, it has made certain kinds of art popular because it looks great on-screen. As someone who came up and was educated before that time, it made me think about the tactile, scrappier, harder-to-pin-down works that resonated most with me. Of course, artists still work in these capacities. An art fair can be an opportunity to show these immersive works. That became my entry point for the 25th anniversary: putting together a selection of work that can’t be captured by a single photograph.
While I wouldn’t use the adjectives scrappy or hard-to-pin-down for much of the work in the gallery booths, the site installations — esp. Sami Tsang’s and Nicholas Crombach’s — excelled in this category.
I meandered through the booths haunted by a genuine dilemma: what should I wear to my Halloween party tonight? The question came up in various meet-and-greets, and I realized how helpful it is to have a disarming topic on-hand at events which demand a lot of small talk. It was amazing to watch the relief wash over artists upon realizing that they would not have to talk about their art. And the glazed-over faces from gallerists as they confirmed that I am not a serious buyer.
I’ll intersperse my favourite pieces with some quotes overhead at the fair.
fav art pieces + collector quotes overheard
An intentionally common thread: none of these pieces are done justice by photos.
“You really need to see every nook and cranny of this bullshit?”
- deeply slouched middle-aged man as his wife drags him into the next gallery booth.
“What I can tell you for sure is that this is the lowest price you’ll see this artist go for.”
- this variation of phrase from numerous gallerists (never acknowledging the likelihood of the artist having an active resale market).
“I promised my husband I wouldn’t buy anything this year… our rental property just flooded!”
- lady who just impulse bought a $6,000 piece.
“I’m so done with this modern art stuff!”
- middle-aged lady at the Sami Tsang installation.
Despite the not-so-flattering quotes, I truly enjoyed the palpable sense of community in this year’s art fair and the awkward humour + learnings that came with it. It was interesting to observe and be swept around by the tides that dictate the art market — something I am not usually privy to.
The experience was exhausting and, dare I say, immersive.
