Feature – A new OFF fair for Toronto

Feature Art Fair, VIP opening on 22 October 2013. Photo by M-KOS

Feature premiered its four-day fair on 23 October, as a somewhat smaller yet more sophisticated alternative to the Toronto International Art Fair (TIAF). The TD Bank sponsored event showcased no more than two dozen Canadian galleries, cherry picked by Montreal based AGAC (Association des Galeries d’Art Contemporain) to present some of the most forward thinking artists in the region. Inside the main rehearsal spaces of the Canadian Opera Company – a free-standing 10,000 square feet interior in a historic building of downtown Toronto – each exhibitor presented a maximum of three artists, laid out within wide-angled walls that blurred the threshold between the fair corridors and gallery booths. Feature’s limited selection did however reflect the country’s main cultural hubs by keeping to contemporary galleries from Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, with the exception of Patrick Mikhail in Ottawa.

Works by Zin Taylor (left) and Jessica Eaton (right) at Jessica Bradley Gallery, Toronto

Kitted mostly with Made-in-Canada art from emerging to mid-career artists, Feature offered an edgier line-up of local talents, with many internationally acclaimed works such as the hazy rose canvas by Scott Lyall at Susan Hobbs, Jessica Eaton’s multi-faceted and colorful geometric photographs at Jessica Bradley and Raphaëlle de Groot’s performance artefacts at Galerie Graff. Pleasant surprises also materialized amongst the budding art contenders, between the illusionist tile and doorway installation of Caroline Cloutier at Nicolas Robert, Olga Chagaoutdinova’s uncanny portraits of Russian female prisoners at Galerie Trois Points, and Jen Aitken’s refreshing sculptures blending concrete and polystyrene foam at Battat Contemporary.

Most surprisingly, Feature’s program consisted of an impressive proportion of photography and especially video, to such an extent that galleries restricting themselves to painting and sculpture looked slightly outmoded. Even while no such thematic was imposed, video artists electrified the individual booths as well as dedicated monitors spread around the fair’s aisles. Irony ostensibly remains a dominant leitmotiv in media art, should we trust Adad Hannah’s fusion of still and moving images with Young Couple at a Playground for Equinox Gallery, Jon Sasaki’s obligatory Post-Internet cat video entitled Hang in There at Jessica Bradley, or Failed Art – a faux documentary by Robb Jamieson presented at Laroche/Joncas.

Raphaëlle de Groot, Collections serie 2 – La perte, 2013 at Galerie Graff, Montreal. Photo by M-KOS

Recent sales report perhaps best exemplify Feature’s boutique style and scale, revealing figures just above the million dollar mark (with significant purchases by Albright-Knox Gallery as well as TD Bank patrons) to outline a still-decent gap between the fair and its closest competitor in Toronto and global market leaders. While attendance numbers for this newly born fair have yet to be disclosed, one needs remembering how much Canada’s art scene is legitimized via a great variety of means – including relatively generous public programs – to enable many more forms of expression than what is possible exclusively through private speculative investors. A case-in-point here being the Esker Foundation; the country’s largest non-commercial yet privately funded gallery based in Calgary which brilliantly hosted Feature’s four-day-long program of talks. Once assuming its position between modest means and generous schemes (as well as a respectable press coverage so far), Feature should undoubtedly settle as the official “OFF” site for Toronto’s art fair week in the coming years, hopefully also attracting international exhibitors and collectors in the next editions.

Olga Chagaoutdinova at Galerie Toris Points, Montreal Photo by M-KOS