Micah Lexier

The BAG show, Working as a Drawing, brings together 470 works-never intended as finished drawings-sifted out of the thousands that compose the Toronto-based artist's archive. Each of these working drawings, made between 1980 and 2012, is executed on standard 8.5-by-11-inch paper, vertical in format, identically mounted in thin white frames, and installed in grids on the white walls of the main and second-floor galleries. As with the overall exhibition, each horizontal line of each grid is intended to be read chronologically, left to right, like text. The installation is pure and pristine, without any labels or didactic panels, and beautifully suited to the artist's idea-popping practice. 512-page bookwork, entitled Working as a Drawing provides an explanatory essay and dates for each drawing.