When I was in high school, one of my homeroom classmates would, on the first of the month like clockwork, break out an enormous set of coloured pencils, and furiously busy himself while the teacher read the day’s announcements. I leaned over once to ask him what he was doing. He showed me a pocket-sized bit of lined paper coloured to look like a bus pass. It was an absurdly obvious forgery to me, and I asked him if it worked. He stared at me with that look of pity and mild contempt one reserves for Pollyannas who shell out $30 a month (this was in Montreal) because they don’t have the balls to pull off a stunt. He quickly waved his ersatz pass at me, as one would when walking past a bus driver. I was suitably impressed.
Walking into the project space at the Angell Gallery, one is confronted with a similar kind of forgery: a pile of handmade Art Gallery of Ontario members’ tags, apparently “editioned” to 500. Gallery-goers are encouraged to pick one up for themselves and, ideally, test them out: pull off a stunt.
This is the centerpiece of Joshua Schwebel’s new show, “Currencies.”
Parenthetically, it’s worth noting that his is a distinctly odd presence in the Angell Gallery: a portion of the entryway is given over to a couple of pretty photographs by Jakub Dolejs, and the bulk of the space hosts Daniel Hutchinson’s effete, inoffensively decorative monochrome paintings. There are some very handsomely framed, austere-looking wall pieces in Schwebel’s show, but the nature of this wall work, and by extension, the nature of his project, suffuses the small project room with a confrontational aggression that contrasts sharply with the rest of the gallery.
And what of these framed pieces? A blank cheque, signed by Schwebel (one assumes: this signature is, like most others, an illegible squiggle); an AGO member tag with a different signature in gold on the bottom right-hand corner; a page with two neat columns and a number of rows, each reiterating that same golden signature.
The particular spelling of the titles of the signature drawings — “Unteiteled” — suggests, given the room’s branding, a pun on Matthew Teitelbaum, the AGO’s Michael and Sonja Koerner Director and CEO. Is this Teitelbaum’s signature? A frisson of danger arises at the mere suggestion, and its implications: did Schwebel get a hold of Teitelbaum’s John Hancock? It’s certainly possible; surely there’s some bit of AGO press release fluffery that’s signed by him.
There’s a delightful history of forgery — specifically monetary forgery — as an art practice. There are a number of 19th century trompe-l’oeil painters who dabbled in depictions of currency. In his glory years, Picasso used to pass off his restaurant napkin doodles as legit lucre. Likewise, Warhol would bring framed, lurid dollar bill screenprints to pay for his dinners out. And there’s the case of JSG Boggs, an American artist who uses his highly detailed drawings of currency as face-value money.
But Schwebel’s mission, should one choose to accept it, is much more fraught.
For Boggs and similar artist-forgers, the acceptance of the replica is a private negotiation; one can take or leave the drawings. If you take Schwebel’s member’s pin, however, you are not only abetting the act of forgery, you become the forgery. Those member tags declare a kind of identity, that of a paying member of the Art Gallery of Ontario (irony of ironies, each fake tag declares “MEMBERS MATTER”). Your tag declares your belonging to an elite: a distinct group afforded exclusive rights and privileges. You have to pretend to belong; Schwebel is daring you to pass as a member, to go stealth in and amongst other “legitimate” (i.e. paying) customers. Thus, your forgery not only has to get you past the gate, it is a performance that must be actively maintained throughout your visit.
If I were a more academically-inclined art critic, I might categorize Schwebel’s work under the rubric of Relational Aesthetics or Performance or Institutional Critique. To be sure, it has all of those implied elements in it, but I’d like to suggest a less polite, but more specific, jargon term: Schwebel is engaged in Fuckery. And it’s a magical kind of fuckery: with a single gesture, he offers a series of theoretically compromising dares and complicities: first of all, in hosting that mound of falsies, the Angell Gallery officially becomes the safe house for this vast deceit, the institutional co-conspirator in Schwebel’s scams. The AGO will surely get wind of this (in my appreciation of Schwebel’s work, have I become a stool pigeon?); they can’t realistically encourage the potential loss of $10,000 in ticket sales.
Would a museum prosecute an artist? And what about you? Will you attempt to take advantage of the AGO, or are you one of those Pollyannas who will shell out $20 because you don’t have the balls to pull a stunt?
Currencies will be featured at the Angell Gallery until March 24th.
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Sholem Krishtalka is the Toronto Standard’s art critic.
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