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r.m. vaughan: the exhibitionist

Untitled Head, 1995, from the Kaneko Collection

Jun Kaneko, Gardiner Museum, 111 Queen's Park, until Sept. 18

Visitors will be forgiven if, upon entering the Gardiner Museum's survey of Jun Kaneko's stately but kooky, massive ceramic sculptures, they are reminded of the frantic, boulders-balanced-on-pebbles landscape of the old Road Runner cartoons.

Fragility (and the anxiety it produces) and monumentalism (likewise the awe) are the defining points/counterpoints of Kaneko's virile (yes, I mean that in all the ways you can think of) sculptures. One misstep and you'll be taking tickets at the Gardiner for a very, very long time.

A master ceramist, Kaneko is best known for two signature forms: dangos, enormous (but they also come in table-top sizes), puffball-mushroom and Zeppelin-shaped or triangular towers, rounded at the top like barrel cacti and glazed with zigzag and ribbon designs; and his monolithic heads, bulbous, bald, stern-faced humanoid forms that appear to be crosses between Thai representations of the Buddha and Easter Island's mysterious, long-faced moai. The Gardiner survey includes a handful of dangos, all beautiful and vaguely menacing, and one spectacular head, a genderless, apparently sleeping face slathered in a brilliant robin's-egg blue glaze.

The didactics for the exhibition give ample information on Kaneko's techniques, his innovations in clay slab application, the near-psychotic amount of patience each work requires, and his elaborate glazing system, but for the non-ceramicist, the exhibition is unabashed eye-popping fun. It's not every day one gets to be surrounded by bright-blue giants, dark obelisks that look as though they've been wrapped in bands of gummy licorice, and low-to-the-ground boulders that could be alien monster eggs.

Furthermore, Kaneko's palette, limited to mostly black, a murky milk white, heavenly candy blues and tarnished metallic hues, forces the eye to focus on the shapes and how they balance weight against/with height (really, some of the top-heavy dangos defy physics), as well as the interplay between the massive sculptures and their smaller counterparts (which remind me of the hen and chicks plant in my garden that keeps sprouting new, button versions of its central, palm-sized rosette).

Apart from the obvious child-flattening hazard, there's a good reason Kaneko's sculptures are fenced in by Do Not Touch signs: His glazing technique is maddeningly inviting to forbidden fingers. Kaneko's surfaces are dewy, not patent-leather shiny; liquid and sensual, not flat and baked. Think newly applied clear nail polish, not the grainy glaze common to earthenware; think gel toothpaste fresh from the tube, not hardened icing.

And try not to think how much you'd love to take (as if you could carry it) one of Kaneko's glistening stele home.

Melissa Fisher, Lately I've Been Wondering If You Feel It Too XPACE, 58 Ossington Ave., until Aug. 20

Today is your last chance to see Melissa Fisher's inventive, multilayered installation in the XPACE Cultural Centre's window gallery. Your last chance, but your best chance, as Fisher has been adding to the installation on a daily basis, culling her materials from leftovers and surplus bits of other exhibitions running concurrent in the main and basement galleries.

The day I saw the installation, Fisher had blended an op-art-infused, black thread-string art sculpture with carved and painted wood trim scraps, gem-shaped clear-plastic picture frames, a bell jar, some flat pink dentist spit cups, plus cheesy seventies mirror wall tiles.

Given the above list, one would expect Fisher's pile-up to be exactly that, something between an artful collection of pretty junk and a storefront shop display mangled by a raccoon.

But her selection and placement of materials is meticulous, even fussy. This is the tidiest "found art" assemblage I've seen in ages, as it is founded (pun intended) on simple geometric principles (the bold, black strings form two facing, parallel triangles that meet, pyramid top to pyramid top, in the centre of the window), and on a considered interaction between identifiable objects (picture frames, cups) and repurposed materials (wood, string, paint).

Toronto's long history of window galleries – the great Fly Gallery on Queen West will be closing this month, after a decade in business – has fostered a unique subgenre of merchandising-based, or anti-merchandising-based, free public art; works driven, no matter how carefully constructed, by the primitive impulse to show, not tell, to grab attention first, spark conversation second.

Fisher's installation does both the former and the latter quite nicely, but there's just something atavistic about a window full of stuff – a twinge of the darkened cave and the campfire – that can't be overcome by even the archest formalism.

Nor would I want it to be.

Kerry Croghan, Façade Gladstone Hotel, 1214 Queen St. W., until Nov 1

Last year, I promised to stop making fun of the Royal Ontario Museum's Michael Lee-Chin Crystal.

So, when I suggest you drop by the Gladstone Hotel and see Kerry Croghan's large, dragonfly-wing iridescent textile and dye works, which are based on angular, pointy, ahem, crystalline architectural forms, don't for a moment think I am suggesting that Croghan is depicting the way the Crystal was supposed to look. Pure coincidence.

Croghan's futuristic urban landscapes, all long beams, opaque glass and mirrors, are created via silkscreen application of fibre-reactive dyes that appear flecked with flinty speckles. The results are sideways glances of buildings seen through oil-smeared glasses – blue black lines sharpen, dissolve, then reform, while blocks of pearly greys meld with burnt purples and polygons in gemstone pinks and citrines ooze into leaden indigos. And everywhere small bursts of light flicker and fade as the sunlight moves across the surfaces.

If Croghan ever goes into the T-shirt business, she'll make enough to build her own prickly castle.

IN OTHER VENUES

Everyone Agrees … The Department Gallery, 1389 Dundas St. W. Until Aug. 27

Four neo-abstractionists, Kyla Chevrier, Laurie Kang, Jacob Whibley and Naomi Yasui, come together to celebrate their shared questioning of architectural, interior design and domestic structure norms (and, by extension, how we live).

Videosphere: A New Generation Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, N.Y. Until Oct. 9

Jam-packed with works from the A-K's impressive collection of new media works, Videosphere updates viewers on the next wave of video/digital artists while surveying the field's history. But why do women artists make up less than a third of the show?

Emerging Sculptors Canadian Sculpture Centre, 500 Church St. Until Sept. 9

The 12th incarnation of this annual juried exhibition offers a peek into the future of sculpture – from retro-conceptualism to found object revivification to a renewed interest in traditional casting techniques. Something for everybody.

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