Like a lot of people in the art world this weekend, I spent a good part of it engrossed in The New Yorker's profile on mega-dealer David Zwirner. The fascination was the immense amount of money exchanging hands, but, apart from some people I knew (the artists), it could have been about any ridiculously high-end commodity trader. That end of the art scene (which for some is probably the one and only art scene) is so far from my experience of it as a foot soldier in a minor centre like Toronto that I struggled for the right metaphor to capture the distance. Zwirner and his ilk are the Miami Heat compared to my pick-up game? No. I don't want to diminish the professionalism of the artists and art workers who make up my corner of the world. Perhaps our connection is comparable to the Warren Buffetts of the financial sector. I too have my investments; however puny they may be, they are my blood, sweat, and tears. Billionaires simply do things on a scale so far beyond my RRSPs that we're hardly the same species, though we're definitely sharing a phylum, if not a genus. Which is just to say, I didn't get my knickers in a knot about King David's riches. Though it did elicit a convenient meditation on treasures that carried me through my gallery going on Saturday.
William Fisk, Untitled No. 72 (from the Portrait Series), 2013, oil on canvas
William Fisk's cold and crisp photorealist paintings at Nicholas Metivier are objects of value depicting objects of value. More precisely, they are fetish objects rendered fetishistically. Fisk has a thing about precision and it is evident in both his method (meticulously layered pigment with nary a brushstroke) and his subjects (primarily optical devices such as small format film cameras and scopes for bringing far or little things into view). In addition to the obsessive craftsmanship of the lens grinder, he is attracted to a certain era of modern design with a tendency to lean towards the gadgety (James Bondish lighters, for example). The overall feel is of a bachelor who worships his adult toys with a reverence that is supposed to imbue the art. Having passed beyond that period of adolescent attachment, I fixate on the anomalous paintings: a pair of high heeled shoes (though I supposed they could be a trophy of sorts as well) and an intriguing pair of cuff links - the strongest work in the exhibition, but strangely unsold amid a number of red dots elsewhere. These masculine accessories and their strangely phallic locking mechanisms were the only instance of ambiguity amid the objective display and, as such, resonated beyond their physical limits.
Dorian Fitzgerald, Vestibule, Apartment of Gabrielle Bonheur 'Coco' Chanel, 31 Rue Cambon, 2013
A different version of object fetishism is on view at Clint Roenisch's current exhibition of paintings by Dorian Fitzgerald. He also eschews brushstrokes (opting instead for a patented drip/pour method) to capture the immaculate aura of luxurious things most of us see only in pictures. His treasures are bound by the lives of their owner/collectors, celebrity fashion stylists or movie starts who imbue the inert with an added sparkle and mystique that is then leaked out in some form on the canvas itself. They - the paintings and what they represent - attract with the same queasy compulsion as Zwirner's multi-million dollar purchases and sales. In light of the recent record breaking auctions of works by Bacon and Koons, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl wrote, "Any price – many millions, a buck fifty – paid for any work of art is absurd." Fitzgerald invites us to contemplate this absurdity as it winds it way back through histories both cultural and personal. As a value-added bonus, he manages the clever trick of making the journey worth it.
Nicholas Metivier Gallery: http://www.metiviergallery.com/
William Fisk: Portraits continues until December 14.
Clint Roenisch Gallery: http://www.clintroenisch.com/
Dorian Fitzgerald: Catalogue continues until January 4.
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.
↧
William Fisk at Nicholas Metivier | Dorian Fitzgerald at Clint Roenisch
↧