TIAF, ART TORONTO 2007: Art for the eye and the mind.

Toronto's annual International Art Fair is celebrating its eighth year as a successful venue where dealers, collectors, art professionals and enthusiasts from around the world meet, mingle and enthuse about contemporary art. Steadfast in its commitment to produce a quality Fair ART TORONTO 2007 presents a complementary mix of 100 diverse international commercial galleries, underpinned with a strong program of cultural dialogues and special projects.

Popular returns such as the Fresh Avant Garde section, now in its sixth edition, is a special on-site initiative that supports emerging artist. It features a select group of galleries from Canada, France and hot contemporary art centers New York and Berlin that present edgy and challenging work by young national and international artists. Most of the artwork in this section is aggressively priced at under $5,000.

In addition to gallery browsing in the user-friendly wide "art avenues", a day at TIAF is peppered with a range of art-topic discourses. From casual interview style talks to a formal lecture series TIAF provides art fodder for the mind. Border Crossings editor Robert Enright will interview artists, dealers and critics about the contemporary art market in the casual T at Three Series. For headier fuel the Power Talks Series, organized by the Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, present contemporary art heavy weights such as award winning New York art critic Jerry Saltz and celebrated curators Hou Hanru and Michelle Dery who will each present engaging and informative lectures to discuss their current projects, preoccupations and ideas relative to the global art scene.

And back by popular demand is the highly acclaimed News at Five special project with a new set of rotating one-day exhibitions curated by Richard Rhodes, editor of Canadian Art. This year's exhibitions, to be installed each afternoon in Canadian Art's special project space in the midst of the fair's activity, features artists based in Montreal and Toronto. Chris Kline, An Te Liu and Andrew Reyes. Each will present work in diverse media and modes--from Kline's resurrected minimal abstraction to Liu's digitally constructed science fiction-inspired architectural fantasy to the series of freely invented, personally resonant street posters that Reyes has produced over the past decade.

Rounding out this impressive line up of cultural programming is TIAF's latest special project, Open Spaces. Committing over 10,000 square feet in an unprecedented open format TIAF presents a select exhibition of contemporary installations by nine international artists including: Artists Emily Vey Duke and Cooper Battersby sculptural installation The Kingdom of the Emancipated Albino Companion Animals, 2007 built upon themes of the dichotomy of good and evil, using evocative objects in concert with video images. This will be the first opportunity for Toronto audiences to experience this talented team's multi-media work.

The sculpture installation of Stuttgart based artists' Klaus Illi and Bettina Buerkle PFLANZENATEM (The Breathing of Plants) reminds one of a field of over-sized fantastical living, breathing pulsating plants where the interaction of art, nature and technology suggests a synthetic approach. And Max Dean's Robotic Chair will entertain audiences as it repeatedly morphs back and forth between chair and robot thus exploring the controversial territories of artificial intelligence and regenerative technologies.

Other TIAF specific installations by Amy Kao, Cal Lane, Marianne Lovink, Lynne Richardson and Graeme Patterson invite viewers to reconsider aesthetic conventions and apply multiple interpretations where materials are manipulated in uncharacteristic ways. A live performance work by Vessna Perunovich titled MIRAGE (The Sudden Appearance of Many Mary's) will be documented on opening night and replayed during fair hours creating an endless shifting canvas while addressing the temporal and spatial boundaries of art.

Art Toronto 2007 is a dynamic melee of galleries, speakers and projects that will not only engage but challenge the eye and the mind.

Media enquiries:
Jessica Goldman
Applause! Communications
T: (416) 217-0700 ext. 304
E: jessica@applausecommunications.com

Lauren Dando
Applause! Communications
T: (416) 217-0700 ext. 301
E: lauren@applausecommunications.com