1.      Allyson Mitchell Lesbian Sasquatches Paul Petro Toronto
Walking into the narrow spaces at Paul Petro, the three eight foot
sasqutches, the fake fire, and the elaborate wall hangings seduce with
well-crafted oddness. Thinking about the work fully, one realized the
epic theory about gender, history, sexuality and personae that exudes.
Best one-two punch of the entire year.
2.      Justine Cooper. Trophies, Online at
http://www.kashyahildebrand.org/newyork/upcoming/exhibition014.html
There is a certain thrill in the whole behind the scene shtick, w. its
moody, theatrical lighting dramatizes cold museums. That is a
relatively easy thing to do. The best thing about this one photo
though, with its dozens of stags and sheep trophies, is how it refuses
the differences between sports and science, the implications of
taxonomy, and the aesthetics of death that permeates these places. It
also makes it look like some kind of pagan temple.
3.      Paul Freeman MFA Show, FAB Gallery. Edmonton
His repurposing of kitsch decorative elements, into transhuman horrors
are politically and aesthetically radical.
4.      Sammy Harkham—Poor Sailor
A small, smart, comic. Features Farmers, Pirates, Amputations and Axe
work, exciting and solemn in equal measure, with some of the best uses
of blankness and silence in recent memory.
5.      Tabloid Photos, Daily Mail, Kate Moss
Amidst all the sound and fury about her as a bad mother, and the
obviousness of supermodels doing drugs, critics forgot three things.
a)      The photos themselves were well composed, with the coke in the
middle, and Kate hovering over it, had enough of a crowded/blank,
light/dark chicoursou. It was almost classical.
b)      The lighting, and the lo-fi paparazzi aesthetic, had a skuzzy
charm, made even better with thoughts of ubiquitous surveillance
culture.
c)      The triumph of vernacular, digital photography. When camera phones
and amateurs do the best celeb shots, there has been a seismic shift
in the way of looking at the famous.
6.      Christian Patterson's Blog
He is an emerging photographer, in the Shore/Eggleston vein, but one
of the strongest of that sort. His blog regularly updates, but has a
stern editing process, that doesn't overwhelm with thousands of things
that look the same.
7.      Mark Chamberlain Batman and Robin
The best thing about this work is that it is a fine art history of low
art eroticism. Batman and Robin fucking has been a staple of the
Tijuana bibles a few years after the first image, and there has been a
concurrent shadow history of this eroticism ever since. Chamberlain
comments on the clichés, the mirror stage stripping, and the tension
of  these two thoughts.  A law suit made him famous, but the work is
stronger then that.
8.      Personal Alphabet No.3 by Jose Parla
    A garish, sort of ugly, high end area rug, made of scrawled graffiti.
9.      Sol LeWitt Installation AGO
The bad thing was that it was in the ersatz gift shop. The best thing
about this winding rainbow is how over the top camp it was—Sol LE
Witts move away from minimal rigor is stranger and stronger—and this
is the wildest yet. Looked like it belonged on a teenage girls
bedroom, to complete a unicorn and pink ruffle motif, and that is a
good thing.
10.      Danielle MacDonald, Ceiling Paintings, Toronto
A painter in her fourth year at OCAD, her functioning between sign and
signifier work without the usual pomo theory claptrap. How she
exchanges meanings between photographs and paintings, her colour
sense, and her realism pushed into hyper-drive, made me excited about
painting in a new way.