Slideshow: The Best and Worst at Art Toronto

The Canadian Art pavilion.

No Canadian fair is complete without a Kim Dorland painting. This one's called "Smoke" and it's on view at Angell Gallery. Not one of his best works—he's currently on a residency at the McMichael Gallery, so we expect there's better work there—but it's already sold.

A few buyers and sellers at the fair. You guess who's who. For what it's worth, the fair experience is a little like walking along South Beach Miami; store fronts start out appealing to middle class sensibilities, and by the end of the street, you're looking at mannequins with fake tits and barely enough clothing to cover them.

Self-proclaimed "famous new media artist" Jeremy Bailey raised close to $9000 to produce augmented reality portraits on Kickstarter. Those who pledged $149 or more had a portrait made from a photo they provided. We were disappointed that the portrait of MOCCA Executive Director David Liss wasn't available—he's depicted as a king—but oh well. Pictured here, you can see the red-headed pixie that is "Important Portrait of the Artist's Wife," 2013. At Pari Nadimi.

Mitsuo Kimura had immigration problems, so he enrolled in art school at the advice of LE Gallery so he could stay in Canada. This piece was a school project—the class was asked to replicate and interpret a contemporary master, so Kimura chose Jackson Pollock. You're looking at the result; nothing like Pollock, and that's a good thing. Those graceful, controlled lines are not only incredibly skilled, but a joy to look at.

Just to give readers a sense of the institutional supporters at the fair, note the enormous Royal Bank of Canada wall showcasing three unremarkable abstract paintings compared to the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) acquisition label. To be fair, The Tate has a similar acquisition program at the Frieze fair, which also hosts a commissions program that's afforded more real estate supported as it is by Hugo Boss. Still, the Tate labels resemble plaques and the commission program supports a more diverse spectrum of art-making than just painting.

Marcelle Ferron, "Untitled", 1958, 16.5 x 13.5 at Lacerte Art Contemporain. Great painting, but buyer beware: it needs reframing. The matte on this work is textured and interferes with the read of the paint.

Lacerte showcases a number of paintings from the Canadian canon. This Paterson Ewen, "La Porte Etroite" is a pretty good example of that. It's got none of the routed out particle boards that he's become so famous for (and in fact, were the cause of the AGO's decision to extend his solo show a few years back due to their popularity), but still showcases the incredible sensibility for abstract composition and texture that's made Ewen the star he is today.

Paul-Emile Borduas never made the dint in American abstract painting that I thought he should, and that's always been a little disappointing to me, if for no other reason than I'd like more people to be aware of his work. This untitled abstraction from 1949 may not look exquisite in reproduction, but in the flesh the paint glints in the light, lending an unexpected life and movement to a piece that might otherwise seem ordinary.

I feel a little bad following up a Borduas' modern masterpiece with a painting that comes with a magnifying glass, but that's the kind of experience you gotta expect from this fair. Alex Guofeng Cao's "War and Peace, Picasso vs Matisse" explores how value, art and competition is evaluated by remaking Picasso's "Guernica" with thousands of stamps in the shape of Matisse's "Joie de Vivre". For reals.

Shuvinai Ashoona’s "Shovelling Worlds," was one of many drawings on a salon hung wall, nearly all of which were impossible to photograph thanks to lighting and glass over the pieces. This work depicts an Inuit shoveling worlds (or rocks) and we liked it for its its awkward flat depiction of space and smooth line work. Seems like the Art Gallery Ontario (AGO) liked it too—they acquired it for their collection.

No idea what this performance was about, but here's Johannes Zits laughing hysterically after a friend launched a tickle attack while yelling "Do not touch the art!"

Evan Penny, "Self Portrait", 2013, at Trepanierbaer. Some spirited arguments were had over this bust: "It's so detailed." "It's just like Ron Mueck." "He was doing it before Ron Mueck." "Yeah, Penny pioneered realism."

Aganetha Dyck at Michael Gibson Gallery. These sculptures that bees build their honeycomb upon are nice and all, but Dyck's been making the same thing for at least ten years. When's she going to boil and perserve some of her buttons again?

Four white horses, hanging mid-air, should probably evoke victory. I didn't really get that from Max Streicher's installation "Quadriga": there's a vacuum-type tube sticking out of each horse's ass, and the horses are dirt-flecked. It seems like these horses are really popular around the city and are continually brought out for events.

Art Toronto's To-Do list for whipping this fair into shape may be long, but they can start by asking themselves a simple but pointed question: What can we do to make sure that Ross Bonafanti's dancing rabbits don't end up on the floor again next year? Rebecca Hossack Gallery may be part of the problem.