UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH MFA PROGRAM exhibition RUNS TO AUG 4. WED-SAT 11AM-5PM. BIRCH LIBRALATO, 129 TECUMSETH. 416-365-3003. WWW.BIRCHLIBRALATO.COM.
Birch Libralato's University of Guelph MFA Program Exhibition is often
outrageous, literally: conceptualism remains the name of the game in
graduate fine art departments, and that means a fair bit of faceless,
coy work. So go ahead and balk (and bark) at something like Victoria
Cheung's Number, very simply a stack of white paper with each
sheet hand-embossed with the Braille number sign (and going for a cool
$1,400). Other works seem, ahem, more interesting, but in an extremely
aloof way: Kevin Rodgers' Shelf (Ann Coulter) has a nice little
sketch of the titular blond crackpot, though damned if I know what it
means. It's pleasant enough to see that Joel Herman has appreciated
Josef Albers' designs for Enoch Light's Persuasive Percussion record
covers of the '50s, though he's not done much to them that the original
covers don't do all by themselves. Mild smiles might be elicited by
Jenn E. Norton's Transit Station video piece, which takes on
pop culture Ann Magnuson-style (read: in a way that's pretty old-hat by
now), presenting a series of fake, trashy programs that come and go, as
if being flipped through on a television. The two best artists here,
Maura Doyle and Red, take on the city, a good, proper, coherent subject
for conceptualism: Red has made a large rug of grass out of foam, and a
cool-looking sculpture of little houses on the edge of a giant cliff
(apparently it's just a maquette for a full wall piece, which makes it
more impressive somehow); Doyle has made a quietly hilarious video
about Toronto being inundated with empty chip bags – a pointed reminder
that banality comes in much more evil forms than art about nothing.