NYAB Event - “OUTSIDER?” Exhibition

“OUTSIDER?” Exhibition

Fountain House Gallery

This event has ended.

“Outsider?, timed to run concurrently with the 2014 Outsider Art Fair, aims to continue the dialogue addressing the question of what is ‘outsider art’ today, when all creative processes and mental illnesses are being redefined,” said Stoffel, an art historian and museum specialist. “Can and how does mental illness define the creative process? If we know beforehand that this is work by people with mental illness, does that change our perception of it?”

A seasoned collector of emerging art, Stoffel, who serves on the Fountain Gallery Advisory Board, works with contemporary artists on professional development and sees no difference between the temperament and creative output of artists with mental illness compared with other artists struggling with their oeuvres. Stoffel concurs with New York magazine art critic Jerry Saltz, who wrote in a February 2013 review of last year’s Outsider Art Fair: “Which brings us to the horrible Rubicon that still separates so-called ‘outsider,’ ‘self-taught,’ and ‘visionary’ art from institutionally sanctioned official art. … it’s time to integrate ‘outsider art’ into permanent collections and erase that distinction for good.”

Outsider? comprises nearly 60 pieces by four artists. Davida Adedjouma, whose bold assemblages incorporate African-American ephemera, has created for this show a woman “giving birth to herself” (featuring a female “body” built upon an actual concert cello). Mercedes Kelly’s small-scale acrylic paintings of dogs represent her whimsical take on more than 20 breeds of canine. The haunting mixed-media works of Dick Lubinsky (1933-2001) portray the humanity of individuals. Keith Pavia invites us into the fantastical realm he has dubbed “Strunzland,” a landscape of imagination populated by Mr. Strunz and a varied cast of beings.

Media

• Painting
• Sculpture
• Other

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