Toronto Winter Whirlwind

Time is tight these days, but necessity required a visit to Toronto to meet with the curator of Misplaced: Animals Lost and Found to figure out the where and how of installing my seventy-one drawings of rats playing in the ruins of Rome. The answer is likely magnets. When I figure out precisely how that works, I’ll let you know.

But far be it from me to waste a day out. ‘Tis the season for holiday showcases, erratic hours and the like, but I did manage to track down a few sure-fire places to hide from the ever-increasing cold.

1. The whole freakin’ AGO-thing

It took me a while to finally spend some decent time with the new AGO, and I look forward to spending even more time there very soon, as my two hours of browsing gave me just time enough to track the lay of the land and gawk at a few particular favourites. I dropped in on The Index twice and loved what I saw, even if I found it significantly smaller than what photo evidence from Venice and my own imagination had conjured up - granted, its new home isn’t the Canadian Pavilion, so fair enough. The two upper floors of contemporary galleries also have their share of personal highlights; the smaller rooms dedicated to Gerhard Richter and Jack Chambers were especially outstanding installations, and I was giddy to see the grid of Marcel Dzama drawings complete with a time-lapse video of their installation.

And while I’d been thus far unconvinced by what I’d seen of Frank Gehry’s renovation from the outside, this building is one sleek, sexy mother from the inside. I’m really loving all that Douglas fir.

2. Paul Butler, ‘Interventions’ at MKG127 (until December 20)

This one was pretty high up on my list of want-to-see exhibitions for the largely selfish purpose of seeing how his work on magazine pages was being displayed, as I’m relatively new to a related process of working in found books. His answer is the obvious one - simply remove and frame the pages, silly - and works very well with the overall slickness of his strategy in this show. But leaving aside those simple concerns with presentation, the works themselves are clever little gems of negation delicately handled with cheap bits of tape that both destroy and deify their art-world contents.

3. ‘Art Metropole: The Top 100′ at MOCCA (until December 28)

You have to plow your way through the Carte Blanche Vol. 2: Painting exhibition to get there, but MOCCA’s Project Space is well worth visiting for the wealth of contemporary art ephemera on display from the Art Metropole collection. Near every major player in conceptual art is represented in some shape or form, and while the set-up looks crowded and intimidating from the door, it’s a remarkably easy viewing experience once you get stuck into examining the contents of each clearly-labelled glass case. Videos and poster reprints round out the rest of the room, creating a general thrum of the ideas that drove contemporary art production in Canada and elsewhere through the twentieth century. Every art student and their dog should be spending some time with this lot.

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