Collector bids farewell to Barbie gallery
‘Pop culture archeologist’ to auction off unusual items from Ossington Ave. location
The self-described Wizard of Ossington, a part-time psychotherapist and assembler of Barbie doll art, is shutting down the 9-year-old Toronto art gallery he never really opened.
Among the items to be sold in a week-long auction that began Sunday: a naked Barbie cake, a clothed Barbie Christmas tree, more than a hundred world globes, dozens of mannequins, a cigar store Indian, lamps, clocks, vintage toys and thousands of other mystery items in boxes piled floor to ceiling in the roughly 5,500-square-foot warehouse.
“SPECIAL UNUSUAL,” shouts the auction announcement on the door at 100 Ossington Ave., home of the Ulterior Design Gallery. “IT WILL BE CRAZY FUN.”
Standing in a cramped space at the threshold of his beloved gallery last week, Dr. Sheldon Wagner summoned enthusiasm as a liquidation team cleared things out to ready the place for auction. “It’s on with the show,” the bearded psychotherapist said with a sad smile. “My lease expired, rent has doubled and I’m out of here.”
He knew the gentrification of Ossington would inevitably push him out of the long-term rental and he’s ready to go.
Wagner’s bizarre gallery, with its front window showcasing the “Abandoned Barbie Project” — a work of art he says is meant to give new life to dolls tossed aside when little girls grow up — has been stopping Ossington Ave. pedestrians in their tracks for nearly a decade. It features a naked Barbie in a martini glass, another lounging in a winking teacup and rows more, draped in garland and arranged in the shape of a Christmas tree.
Four years ago, the Star tracked Wagner down and arranged to meet him for a coffee. He wore frameless spectacles, a fur fedora and a dark vest over a shirt with Sylvester and Tweety Bird, the Looney Tunes char- acters, sewn into the breast.
Wagner said he had been a collector of all things human-made since he was a child, a hobby that morphed into a fascination with Barbie dolls. He described himself as a huntergatherer, assembler and “pop culture archeologist.” He was writing a book titled Dr. Sheldon Wagner’s Secret Formula for Understanding the Human Condition from Which We All Suffer.
He was aiming to open the gallery soon and hoping a museum might one day buy his “found art” projects — the Barbie displays, a collection of globes, a boy mannequin staring at a lingerie-clad lady mannequin. None of that came to be. Recently an intriguing email arrived: “My name is Michel HOSS Bertrand and I am an auctioneer and what I consider for me will be a sort of off the wall auction, I have read the story that you wrote back in 2010 on . . . the doctor with the Barbies that are displayed in the front windows on Ossington street. Well now his lease has expired and he never opened the doors he is selling off everything in his store, WOW. . .” A few days later, Michel HOSS Bertrand — Hoss is his nickname — sent a progress update: “I was there yesterday with my guys and sheldon Oh my god!!!!!!” he wrote. Six exclamation marks seems a bit much — until the inventory is viewed in person. It looks like a small room, just another crowded west-end antique shop, until you realize the back “wall” is not a wall at all, but the beginning of a tower of boxes and furniture and art piled floor to ceiling and spanning 90 per cent of the roughly 5,500-square-foot space. Bertrand estimated the space holds 10 tractor-trailer loads of stuff. The auctioneers plan to work their way from front to back, unpacking and selling several rows at a time until it’s gone. There are dozens of cake platters, a painting of Bruce Cockburn, the head of a replica of Michelangelo’s David, a music box, piles and piles of vintage clothing, stuffed animals that haven’t been hugged in decades, records, cassettes, books, and thousands of Barbies. “Most auctioneers would have walked away,” Bertrand said. “Just because it’s such an off-thewall kind of auction.” But he was intrigued. “It’s so wacky I just had to do it.” Wagner said he never got around to opening the gallery — despite paying several thousand dollars a month in rent for nine years — because he has been busy with his psychotherapy practice in North York and working on his book about the human condition. He doesn’t think of himself as a hoarder (“I prefer to call myself a collector,” he said) but understands that some people might define him as such. “I want it to go to good homes,” he said of his art. “And I want to have fun doing it.” He has begun to view the auction as the show he’s been waiting for his whole life — the curtain call for what he has dubbed “Sheldon’s collection.” “We’re going to find out if it’s art or if it’s garbage,” the psychotherapist said, laughing. “Because if it doesn’t sell we’re going to throw it out.” The full schedule for the week-long auction at 100 Ossington Ave. is posted on the auctioneer’s website, globalassetssolutions.com.