TIAF: Around the World in 80 Minutes
Image courtesy of Galerie Van Der Planken Antwerp
This weekend, Canada’s largest art fair takes over the Metro Toronto Convention Centre. And this year as in past ones, the most valuable stuff at the Toronto International Art Fair won’t necessarily be what’s sold, but what’s told.
Along with casual chitchat, which in itself bound to take in a range of topics at the current moment—Will market mayhem cause gallery closures and donation drops? Can fragile “unmonumental” works really stand as a substantial art movement? What’s the impact of recent culture cuts on art production in Canada?—there are more structured opportunities to investigate these topics too.
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Image courtesy of Michael Gibson Gallery London On |
Top of the list for many fair-goers will be Iwona Blazwick’s lecture, part of the Power Talks series, on Sunday at 4pm. Known as a key force in the British art world thanks to successes achieved in her former post as head of exhibitions and displays at Tate Modern, Blazwick was also the first curator to give Damien Hirst (whose sales, as we all know, seem quite secure at this point in time) an institutional exhibition.
Today, Blazwick continues to remain influential as a commissioning editor of Phaidon’s contemporary art series and as director of London’s Whitechapel Art Gallery. Her talk promises to examine “case studies in the evolution of curating and the conditions of looking.” Another Power Talk by Singapore Biennale artistic director Fumio Nanjo on Saturday at 4pm looks promising as well.
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Image courtesy of Galerie Mark Hachem Paris |
Also of interest for generating global conversations is “Invisible Cities,” a new video program and lounge curated by Micaela Giovanotti, the former American editor of Tema Celeste and ongoing US correspondent for www.exibart.com. In an email exchange with Canadian Art earlier this year, Giovanotti noted that the program will include artists who have no gallery representation as well as ones from galleries at the fair. Watch out for works by Italy’s Stefano Cagol, US/UK artist Rob Carker, Korea’s Miouk Lim and Czech artist Jakub Nepras.
International artists further come to the fore this year thanks to an expanded 30-plus passel of non-Canadian galleries. These include AGA-T, Nagoya; Praxis International Art, Buenos Aires, Miami and New York; Galerie Grita Insam, Vienna; Wilde Gallery, Berlin; Xerxes Fine Arts, London; Sundaram Tagore, Beverly Hills, Hong Kong and New York; and many more. Leave your passport at home, and bring an open mind.
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Image courtesy of Praxis Gallery New York Buenos Aires Miami |
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