Despite the many conditions that preclude me from actually purchasing art, I was sorely tempted by a small, modestly-priced drawing by Orlando Camacho from Miami’s Spinello Gallery, depicting a minute herd of dwarven men facing a comically plump green dragon, breathing out a flurry of the word ‘RUN’ in a threatening cloud above their heads. One tiny figure is already fleeing from the dragon and his bed of skulls, while another watches balefully, the words ‘I’m fucked’ above his head cementing the sentiment.

There’s a fight-or-flight impulse that kicks in when an early career artist steps foot in an art fair: how do you hope to find a crack in this tight little world when the market is still profiling the same generic photography, the same competent Greenbergian painting propositions, the same ruddy dogs made of map bits?

And that cynicism comes from someone who actually loves dogs. But TIAF offered better propositions where the animal form was keyed into a base measure of survival. For each of Peter Clark’s pampered poodles, there were scores of feral wolves carving out their own place in this market. I suspect bestial imagery is rapidly becoming a trait of Canadian art, but it’s hard to argue with the results in Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby’s The Kingdom of the Emaciated Albino Companion Animals from Jessica Bradley Art + Projects in Toronto. Sitting in the company of a stuffed deer and fox while watching the uplifting animated tale of a shrew determined to fight his way out of the eagle that ate him made for a great aside to my first day at TIAF.

Being the shrew eaten by the eagle, or even the wee gnome facing down the big scary dragon, it seems the best choice is both fight and flight. To return to the somewhat wobbly Doctor Who parable that opened this set of comments on TIAF, one can add that The Doctor is one who chose to run when faced with the Untempered Schism - an act of refusal as well as a fierce drive toward that utterly bizarre something else. The key to running is just ensuring that one is not running away.

On my last day at TIAF, one more Camacho was hung in Spinello’s booth, drawn largely of words descending in clusters to more hapless figures below: ‘I want to stop making art but the art can’t stop.’ I think that may say it all.

Share This

• BROWSE / IN TIMELINE
• « The madness of the market (TIAF 3/4)
• » Art blog, existentialist style

• BROWSE / IN Art Fairs Canadian Art
• « The madness of the market (TIAF 3/4)
• » *insert something clever here about bombs*