Some simply stared for a few seconds at the blank face, then left the gallery. Others lingered, waiting for HIM to leap into action, scream at them, take off his clothes--anything to justify their standing there, waiting. The "moment," as artist Taras Polataiko describes it, comes innocently and unexpectedly: A teenage girl comments aloud about a pimple on his forehead, then watches, mouth open, as the man lifts a hand to scratch it. Someone is appalled at the way he's staring, and is taken aback when he suddenly winks.

This is not a videotape at all, as gallery goers had thought, but a live image projected in real time. The face on the wall is attached to a body that's somewhere in the building. HIM can see and hear the visitors in the gallery. "It's like you're spying on someone and enjoying it," explains Polataiko, "and suddenly you realize they've been spying on you all along. There is an interesting period of adjustment."

As an artist, Polataiko has long been interested in what's seen as well as unseen. He also has a playful streak; he likes to be noticed. In 1992, when the city of Saskatoon put up a statue to Governor General Ramon Hnatyshyn, Polataiko painted himself bronze and stood facing the Hnatyshyn likeness--in honour of all the "invisible" Ukrainian-Canadians, the ones who didn't become Governor General. In another notorious installation piece, Polataiko traveled to Chernobyl and entered the nuclear plant's contaminated zone. Back in Canada, he drained his body little by little of his blood, and poured it into a nickel-plated bathtub. Gallery visitors couldn't tell from looking at the pool of blood that it was contaminated. Or was it?

With HIM, Polataiko is again playing with notions of what's seen and unseen, and, in this case, said and unsaid. He wanted to put a face to his great-grandmother's unnamed prince of darkness--and he came up with an unusual way to go about it.

From the Kiev police station he obtained photographs of twenty five missing people, scanned them, and separated each into five parts--foreheads, eyes, noses, lips, and chins. He mounted each on a Soviet-era device called a "photorobot," used by Ukrainian police to create composite images of suspects. He then placed the photorobot in the gallery for a two-week period, encouraging visitors to create their own composite faces. A video camera taped everything. Polataiko then reviewed the videotapes to determine which composite face received the most screen time--the face most often "chosen" by gallery visitors. He put the face on a poster and plastered it around Kiev, urging anyone who thought they looked like the person to contact him.

He received about fifty responses, from both men and women. For another two weeks, Polataiko met and photographed each at the gallery. "How should I look?" he recalls them asking. "Look like the poster," he told them. Afterward, he went to a restaurant, laid them out on the table, ordered a few stiff drinks, and selected the one most reminiscent of the image. Polataiko had found his devil.

"Kiev is a very mystical city," he says, sitting in a Toronto cafe, recalling his decision, and how uneasy he felt about making it. "There are a lot of bones in the ground. ... Even though I'm not that superstitious, I was becoming superstitious. I wanted to keep as objective as possible."

Polataiko knows how to work the media. He knew that hyping the project depended on his ability to manufacture mystique around his newly discovered devil-in-the-flesh. So when the young man he had chosen from the pile of photos accepted the role, Polataiko insisted that he not reveal a single detail about himself. "I told him that all the media will want to know is who you are. Eventually your ego will kick in and you'll want to be famous as YOU, not as HIM. There will be this temptation to give in. But as soon as you do the game will be over, the hype will be over."

Three years later, HIM still hasn't given in--and neither has Polataiko. All Polataiko will reveal about the young man is that he has never been to North America, and he's currently learning English--at Polataiko's expense. "The devil has to know how to speak English," he says.

HIM has his North American debut at the Art Gallery of Hamilton next February. The show will also be featured in 2003 at Saskatoon's Mendel Art Gallery. When I express doubts about a Canadian audience buying into all the VIN-HIM devil mumbo jumbo, Polataiko assures me that it doesn't matter. HIM's persona will simply change, from that of evil spirit to foreigner.

In most respects, the Canadian shows will be identical to Kiev's. Visitors entering the gallery will encounter the lone image of a man's face projected onto a wall, with HIM spying on them from somewhere nearby. The major difference will be context. The Canadian HIM will be alien to this culture, just as Polataiko was when he arrived to Canada twelve years ago. HIM will have to get a visa and an apartment. He will have trouble speaking and understanding English. He won't know where things are. He may not become a local celebrity, as he did in Kiev, or maybe he will.

While he's here, Polataiko wants HIM to call him every hour and describe what's happening. These updates will become the "HIM Chronicles." While the Hamilton show may not tap into deeply rooted cultural myths about the devil, it does play nicely with the North American fascination with celebrity. As Polataiko points out, HIM's celebrity is literally based on nothing. It's manufactured entirely by the artist. The only thing making HIM a celebrity is that no one knows anything about him. Which, when you think about it, is not very different from any other kind of brand image--the Calvin Klein underwear model we see everywhere but know nothing about.

"I think it's going to work because there's this simple thing that I don't think has been done before," says Polataiko. "It's about human relationships and our relationship to an image."

HIM's appearance in Canada next February follows on Polataiko's near sell-out painting exhibition held recently at the Sable-Castelli Gallery, a series titled Cuts, which replicate Fontana's slashed canvases (except Polataiko has painted the slashes). HIM will keep Polataiko's name in the zeitgeist while he works on more paintings.

I ask which medium he prefers, painting or the performance-installation works that are clearly more conscious of how media can add to their theatrics. He answers: "Installations are, what?, thirty seconds of orgiastic thinking, getting a good idea, then the rest is production. You're not an artist any more. You're more of a businessman, a producer. You're on the phone getting better clothes. Then he adds: "I love painting ... but HIM could not have been done in painting. I cannot say that I prefer one over the other. I enjoy working in my studio, but sometimes it's good to get outside too."