MAKING IT MAKE ITSELF

• Published in: Canadian art (Toronto, 1984) 1984), 2013-10, Vol.30 (3), p.108-113
• Main Author: Ritchie, Christina
• Format: Magazinearticle
• Language: English
• Subjects: Art exhibits; Canadian art; Curators; Lexier, Micah; Visual artists
• ISSN: 0825-3854

[Sarah Milroy] also pitched the Power Plant on producing and hosting the exhibition. This was done, quite literally, on the fly-in the departure lounge at Billy Bishop Toronto City Airport, where she just happened to bump into Gaëtane Verna, the Power Plant's then-new director. With the concept no more advanced than what she had initially discussed with [Micah Lexier], Milroy described the project to Verna, who immediately saw its potential. With Lexier's hyper-connectivity to the Toronto art world, his exhibition seemed to Verna tailor-made to address the issue. She was also aware that, despite his ubiquity in local art circles, Lexier had never been included in an exhibition at the Power Plant. After meeting, they arrived at the structure of "One," "Two" and "More Than Two." ("One" is composed of three solo works by Lexier and "Two" includes three works on which he collaborated with three different writers; both are curated by Verna.) It may be the first time in its history that the Power Plant has turned over all its gallery spaces to a single artist, and it fits with Lexier's nature that he chose to share them with more than 100 other artists. Beauty first, then rationalizations and categories. True to his habit of sorting and classifying things, Lexier identified several unofficial categories for the objects in the show; among them are "process," "material," "shape," "sticks," "collections of things," "anomalies" and "something new for the show." "Sticks" are self-evident, though whether they share features with process, material or shape varies. Danielle Bessada's Implement for Grazing (2010) is clearly a stick. Looking just slightly weather-beaten, it suggests an arcane discipline for herbivores, extracting maximum metaphorical value from its elegantly pared-down formal shape. It is, in fact, a found object repurposed as a drawing tool. On the other hand, Jonathan Scott's composition of sticks, Neurath's Boat (2013), loaded with symbolic allusions, fits more into the "material" category, or perhaps it's a "collection" of sticks.