"MITTENFISTS" RUNS TO AUG 25. MON-SAT 11AM-7PM; SUN NOON-6PM. MAGIC PONY, 694 QUEEN W. 416-861-1684. www.magic-pony.com.
Magic Pony has a teeny-tiny exhibition space, to which their
"Mittenfists" group show is perfectly suited. It's surprising, in fact,
to see so many effective small works all together; the three artists
here are young, their offerings like thumbnails – promises of more
excellent, more fleshed-out work to come. Andrew Wilson's resin
paintings are perhaps most remarkable (I can't wait to see larger
format stuff, if/when he's got it); "paintings" may not even be the
best word for them, as they combine drawing and collage, coming off
like embalmed sculptures, pop-up books or dioramas, their dozens of
resin layers standing up very well to close inspection (the image
printed here doesn't come close to doing them justice). Wilson makes
sci-fi landscapes that look equally influenced by de Chirico and, say,
He-Man's Eternia; similarly, his palette, with its pale yellows,
purples and blue-greens and blue-greys, seems inspired both by
Surrealism and by vintage t-shirts or '80s plastic toys. Melinda Josie
goes even further into nostalgia, overdosing on kiddie whimsy with her
foxes, mushroom houses, bunnies and birds. The predictable choice of
subject matter can't erase Josie's talent: she's an adept
watercolourist whose tastes are bound to evolve. Finally, Team Macho's
Jacob Whibley does clever collages out of paper ephemera that sometimes
date back to the 1800s; his reference points are Bauhaus and Kurt
Schwitters, and his works, including his collection of weird wooden
blocks, actually seem better the littler they are.