A very small piece of art that's sure to rattle viewers

Gary Michael Dault. Saturday, November 24, 2001 Ð Print Edition, Page R10

Toronto's Fly Gallery is probably the smallest art gallery in the city and maybe in the entire country. For the Fly Gallery, a flyspeck on Toronto's gallery-enriched Queen Street West, is merely a single storefront window, with changing exhibitions therein.
Eldon Garnet's new show at the Lilliputian gallery consists of only one piece -- a small construction called Geographically Based. Garnet, a Toronto-based sculptor, photographer, filmmaker, writer, editor and teacher, is probably best known for his large-scale public sculptures, such as his mighty Monument to the Chinese Railroad Workers beside the CN Tower. Geographically Based could pretty much fit into an attache case.
But the piece, though small, is powerful. And mordantly funny. It consists of a cleanly designed and handsomely crafted aluminum box-like construction, which supports a small horizontal shaft of steel that bears, at its far end, the rattle from a real rattlesnake.
Here's what happens. Because Garnet has affixed a motion sensor to the upper rim of the Fly's window and connected it to his rattler machine, whenever anybody makes a move -- such as, say, sauntering past the window -- the rattle begins to vibrate frantically, just the way a rattlesnake might if you came abruptly upon its resting place.
If you stand still and stare at this now-agitated machine, it continues to thrash its rattler at you until it registers that you're no longer moving. Then it stops. The minute you move again, though, the menacing agitation begins again. If you continue to walk away, there is a point when, once you are out of range, the rattler stops. When you look back at it, the thing seems to have fallen asleep -- master, once again, of its own spatial domain.
All in all, Geographically Based is an almost literally off-putting sculpture. It dares you to approach it and, once you're there in its presence, demands that you keep still. Here is interaction with the viewer writ large -- no small achievement for such a tiny work.
Price on request. Until Nov. 30, 1172 Queen St. West, Toronto; 416-539-8576.