One lady said, “They are witches, you know.” And her friend said, “Oh, that’s so funny.” And the first said, “No, they’re really witches.” Then they tried to puzzle out what that really meant, while I wandered off and thought that it was the best conversation I’d heard all day in a gallery and that it made me like the exhibition more, even though I didn’t like it entirely. But after visiting a relational aesthetics experiment that sounded better on paper than it worked in the world and checking out three rooms full of high gloss paintings that should have been finished before they were finished (get it?), I was ready for some art that did something more than hang on a wall or occupy a space. And I found it here. 
Fastwürms
Here was Paul Petro Contemporary Art on Queen West and the witches were, of course, Fastwürms, who can be relied on to, at the very least, never be boring. Word was that the exhibition opening was a crowded affair with the Sasquatch-garbed artists taking turns go-go dancing atop the speaker stacks that remain as monoliths marked with runes and linked by extension cords. Behind them stands an altar mash-up that combines Styrofoam, neon arrows, a five pointed star, and rulers to sanctify a church of recombinant faiths. The same potential for multiple readings dominates the walls with a series of triple acrostics spelled out on pegboards that link acronyms with text-speak, wordplay, and secret codes. And then the floor was covered in canvas that added a further grid of letters and traced them out through the space.
The joyous thing about the exhibition was not so much the viability of the individual pieces (though a black curling broom with an embedded glass cat’s eye is going to make a striking addition to someone’s collection and I have to admit I’m jealous) as the overall sense of commitment and transformation. This was not just playing at art (or being witches); this was real magic. 
Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline
A similar reward, though in an entirely conventional form, pulled me into Katharine Mulherin’s main gallery after I walked by it twice. The large abstract paintings inside were not convincing me when viewed from the sidewalk and I was nearing the end of my afternoon jaunt, so I was tempted to let it go. (The window-pass is one step closer to a visit than the website-viewing, but neither of them merits a review.) However, something got the better of me – I’d like to think it was my carefully honed critical intuition, but it could have been that I just wanted to warm up – and I went in for a closer look.
I was told they were some older paintings by Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline and gave myself a mental pat on the back because I’d liked his work before. Way back, almost ten years ago, his lewd cartoony abstractions tickled my funny bone and rewarded my intellect (which is the best way to get on my good side). I’d heard he’d gone to Columbia University for his MFA and these were from around that era. They’ve lost the goofiness but still retain elements of the human figure – often in repeating arrangements that echo Duchamp’s descending nude. Further references go farther back – one to the 17th Century Spanish Baroque painter Murillo – but even stuck in the present, each of the four paintings reveals more the more time is spent in front of them. What from the window had looked indiscriminate, gained depth as the constellation of the artist’s decisive choices became clear. And there was a lot to see. Depending on where you looked, the character of the painting changed. However, Kaktins-Gorsline had moved beyond his booby trap laden early work and matured into an artist of subtle contrasts. At least, that was then. I’ll just have to catch up with his current work to see what’s become of him now.
Paul Petro Contemporary Art: http://www.paulpetro.com/
Fastwürms: Red Rum Tut continues until February 14.
Katharine Mulherin: http://www.katharinemulherin.com/
See website for current exhibitions.
Terence Dick is a freelance writer living in Toronto. His art criticism has appeared in Canadian Art, BorderCrossings, Prefix Photo, Camera Austria, Fuse, Mix, C Magazine, Azure, and The Globe and Mail. He is the editor of Akimblog. You can follow his quickie reviews and art news announcements on Twitter @TerenceDick.
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Fastwurms at Paul Petro | Krisjanis Kaktins-Gorsline at Katharine Mulherin
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