Saturday, May 12, 2018

Art in Toronto - Spring/Summer 2018

Last night my son and I checked out the hottest ticket in town -- Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirrors at the AGO. Basically, the advance tickets all went to members, so the only way the general public can go is to get rush tickets.  They have decided that the last two weeks they will extend the hours of the exhibit to midnight on May 17-19 and May 24-26, so I suppose that means there is a decent chance of getting rush tickets (starting at 10 am) for the late evening on those days.  It was an interesting experience, though it was about 2 hours of queuing for around 3 minutes in the various infinity rooms.  I wouldn't go a second time.  I will post some photos and video from our visit later.

There is still just under a month to check out Yoko Ono's exhibit at the Gardiner Museum.  See here.  I'll try to go next Friday after work.

What is even a bit more exciting to me is that the Gardiner is going to be hosting an Ai Weiwei exhibit in 2019.  The main event will be Sunflower Seeds, which are literally hundreds of thousands of ceramic replicas of sunflower seeds.  However, it is pretty clear that they won't be able to get the same scale as was achieved at the Tate Modern in London.  I managed to see this exhibit, and fortunately I was there in the first week or two, before health and safety protocols more or less shut down the exhibit (due to the porcelain dust from people walking through the exhibit).  Had I known how it would all play out, I would definitely have taken one of the seeds.  Maybe this time around, with the more compact setting, it will be possible to walk among the seeds again.  Ideally, they will sell the individual seeds at the gift shop, so one won't be so tempted to steal them.  Anyway, definitely something to look forward to.

MOCA was supposed to open up this summer, but now it looks like it will be the fall.  I haven't decided how often I will go.  It really is in a lousy location relative to transit, and it is far too far for me to want to bike there, so my guess is I won't go often.  In the meantime, there is an unauthorized Art of Banksy exhibit that will be right there.  I am tempted, but the ticket prices ($35+) are a lot higher than I think can be justified for his work.  Still pondering whether I want to go.

There is a photo exhibit being staged at the Unilever Soap Factory through June 3.  I might be able to make that today, if the rain holds off, though that will somewhat complicate my swinging by TCAF.  I don't actually have anything on the calendar for next weekend, so maybe I will hold off on that until next week.

This is the last weekend for the spring exhibit at Power Plant at Harbourfront.  I'm going to be honest that I haven't been all that impressed when I have made it down to Power Plant, and I don't plan on going out of my way to see these exhibits.  The summer-fall exhibit looks better, especially Ellen Gallagher's solo show Nu-Nile.  I'll try to go and should be able to squeeze it in, though I won't be crushed if I don't make it.

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