FEATURE: CONTEMPORARY ART FAIR
With the looseness of art selection in the city, Feature: Contemporary Art Fair is a welcomed alternative to the Art Toronto Fair. In fact, Feature appears to serve a direct response to the complaints of Art Toronto's priority on volume of dealers. With only 23 galleries - notably Birch Contemporary, Susan Hobbs, Georgia Scherman, Clint Roenisch and Jessica Bradley - and 60 artists, selected by an advisory board of some of Canada's most prestigious art experts, Feature is dedicated exclusively to cutting edge contemporary art. Make no mistake, Art Toronto also requires galleries to apply for admission, but with space for more than 100 galleries and a business imperative to fill them, it can't be as selective.
Snickering chatter about a clear dividing line between rigorous contemporary galleries at one end and galleries showing colourfully decorative works at the other, became the constant shop talk of recent years. Clint Roenisch, who was part of the early discussions for Feature, notes that Art Toronto became off-putting for some dealers, calling the big fair a “curated-by-cheque, pay-to-play event, anchored by the convention centre and bloated by too many dubious galleries showing too many lame works climbing the walls.”
Feature is also a symptom of a global art economy that has seen an explosion of art fairs all over the world in the past decade, and a more recent repositioning of those fairs as more targeted and market-specific. Just in Toronto, there are two fairs aimed at neophyte buyers: The Artist Project in February and Love Art, a product of the international Affordable Art Fair brand, which debuted in May.
Association des Galeries d'Art Contemporain Director, Julie Lacroix also indicated that each exhibitor would be limited to three artists per booth. However, each booth would be at minimum the size of Art Toronto's largest booths, providing ample space for each gallery. The innovative layout of the fair will generate a dynamic presentation space and will foster dialogue between the artworks on display, thus creating an intimate and unique viewer experience.
The design of the exhibition spaces is innovative, which enhances the quantity of perusers into potential buyers. Unlike Toronto Art, there is no brash carpet at Feature that inhibits the passive viewers on the runway from psychologically committing to enter the gallery space, which increases the purchase potential of the pieces.
Feature provides visitors with a fresh and exciting perspective on contemporary art. Presented inside the towering brick walls of the Joey and Toby Tanenbaum Opera Centre heritage building on Front St., Feature runs from October 23 to 26, 2014. Not a half-dozen blocks away, Art Toronto, a big, sprawling affair counting more than a hundred galleries laid out in neat grids in the decidedly less intimate environment of the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.
Robert Birch discusses the work of James Nizam, David Hanes and Martin Bennet in his gallery's booth.
