Think Outside the Box

The Broad­way Gallery’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Euro­pean Out­sider Art Fair (EOAF) this sum­mer indi­cates a renewed sig­nif­i­cance to out­sider art to a wider aes­thetic dis­course. The fair, in its inau­gural year, show­cased sev­eral inter­na­tional artists in the heart of Vienna at the Aus­trian National Library. Along with Galerie Ate­lier Heren­plaats (Rot­ter­dam), Mae­ce­nas Art Forum (Berlin), Tep­pels Art Gallery (Lei­den), Pure Vision Arts (New York), Museum Im Lager­haus (Gallen), The A Gallery (New York) and many oth­ers inter­na­tional gal­leries, The Broad­way Gallery cel­e­brated the impor­tance of out­sider art—not only to the com­mer­cial art mar­ket, but also as a coun­ter­point to the generic trends of con­tem­po­rary visual art.The inno­v­a­tive art fair focuses on the intrigu­ing aes­thet­ics of out­sider art, which often appears as though the work was from an alter­na­tive type of consciousness—one far less beholden to pre­vail­ing social and intel­lec­tual con­ven­tions and more attuned to intu­itive, emo­tional, and vision­ary impulses.

Fea­tured artist Reuven Shezen, per­fectly demon­strates this inclu­sive, cre­ative per­spec­tive. In his work, Israeli artist Shezen deals with sub­jects, events and moods of day-to-day triv­i­al­i­ties. Informed by an inter­est in the place of the indi­vid­ual within soci­ety, Shezen is an unusual observer—free from the restric­tions and stereo­types of social train­ing and edu­ca­tion. An auda­cious painter, Shezen cre­ates a series of com­plex geo­met­ric com­po­si­tions com­bin­ing the uncon­scious influ­ences of cubism and futur­ism, typ­i­cally using a lim­ited num­ber of strik­ing col­ors, turn­ing humans into sim­ple, angu­lar shapes, and some­times over­lay­ing the whole paint­ing a strong grid-work col­or­ing scheme. His obses­sive impulses last through­out the night, where he paints with­out breaks, until the intri­cate works are com­plete. Reuven’s works at EOAF uti­lized his pro­lific nature with works fea­tur­ing ani­mal­is­tic imagery of dogs and cats, a sub­ject he has dealt with since for almost 20 years. Imme­di­ately rec­og­niz­able at the exhi­bi­tion by their dar­ing yet sub­tle use of color and brush mark, Shezen’s work evolves from the depths of his soul, out of the essen­tial needs to express him self.

Sim­i­larly, British painter Carl Hoare’s unusual work exhibits a per­son­al­ity and art that is dia­gram­matic, invented, his­tor­i­cal, and non­sen­si­cal all at once. His work depicts all the energy and spec­ta­cle of por­trai­ture while pre­sent­ing a dark sar­cas­tic world that is per­sonal as well as imper­sonal. Cana­dian artist Michel Blouin’s art is also not influ­enced by the cur­rent trends of con­tem­po­rary art. He trans­poses his own sen­si­bil­ity into col­ors and forms, in order to achieve a raw aes­thetic that evokes the kind of hon­esty that is found deep within the human spirit. Blouin’s paint­ing are an exten­sion of his poetic work. The lack of cen­sor­ship, con­fine­ment and restric­tion, within both art forms is entic­ing to the artist. The phys­i­cal impact of Blouin’s paint­ings act as a reac­tion to the visual arts con­text as opposed to relat­ing to a pre-established aes­thetic. For Blouin, “paint­ing is an intu­itive way to sym­bol­ize events, life sit­u­a­tions, beings, ideas or feel­ings.” For exam­ple, the paint­ing Le print­emps de Marguerite—Marguerite’s spring trans­lates a piv­otal moment in which a young girl enters adulthood.

The uncon­ven­tional opti­cal tech­niques and social analy­ses of both Argen­tinean native Gra­ciela Cas­sel and Cana­dian artist Pierre Juteau echo both Blouin’s organic use of paint and psy­cho­log­i­cal inten­sity. Pierre Juteau has devel­oped a deep reser­voir of ideas and images, which pour freely from him. His art reflects both a sen­si­tive obser­va­tion of nature and a steady, refined and keen grasp of his craft. Cre­ated from pure and authen­tic cre­ative impulses, Juteau’s work ignores the establishment—creating idio­syn­cratic worlds within the can­vas that form a very spe­cific artis­tic ver­nac­u­lar.
Cassel’s paint­ings inves­ti­gate the inter­sec­tions of space, place, time, mem­ory, cul­ture, and his­tory. Her con­tem­pla­tive series Cos­mos acted as a reflec­tive pause for the senses. The series exam­ines the invis­i­ble, topo­log­i­cal spaces through which human beings nav­i­gate. Myths and strong his­toric nar­ra­tives are preva­lent through out the exhi­bi­tion. In the case of Cas­sel, Ulysses’ trips in the Odyssey is a clear inspi­ra­tion. “Ulysses had to solve rid­dles in order to save his life,” the artist says. “In my works, the human char­ac­ters are not present in the image, but it is the observer—the char­ac­ter who will be trav­el­ing and tra­vers­ing the seas.”

Sim­i­larly Russ­ian artist Ekathe­rina S.’ focus on the human fig­ure, also gen­er­ates themes of spir­i­tu­al­ity, and social iden­tity with per­sonal expe­ri­ence in an attempt to cre­ate a unique per­spec­tive on impor­tant and con­tro­ver­sial issues. Her works fea­tured sym­bolic and myth­i­cal images that inves­ti­gate the notion of dual­ity in many forms—from love and chaos, to order and dis­truc­tion. With mulit­ple lay­ers of color and tex­ture, Ekathe­rina S. uses bru­tal tech­nique (scratch­ings and punc­tur­ing the can­vas) in order to archive all the depth and pas­sion of an ancient myth.

Within an aston­ish­ing sculp­tural palette, Cana­dian Pierre Juteau has the abil­ity to trans­form real­ity into an accom­plish paint­ing. His vivid col­ors rep­re­sent his rich, gen­er­ous, and impetu­ous inner-self. Ital­ian artist Matthew Lauretti’s paint­ing com­bines ele­ments of ges­tural abstrac­tion, draw­ing, and writ­ing in a very per­sonal expres­sion. At once epic and inti­mate, his work is infused with ref­er­ences to lit­er­a­ture and aspects of the Mediter­ranean and Near-Eastern worlds from an outsider’s point of view. His work is cryp­tic, devoted to nuance and prim­i­tive mod­els of human­ity. Some of the fig­ures meta­mor­phose into cubist forms through the vivid jux­ta­po­si­tion of color that high­lights the subject’s per­son­al­ity and individuality.

Helen Joynson’s idio­syn­cratic works inves­ti­gate the lyri­cal and atmos­pheric effects of vast expanses of color—saturating the can­vas with a translu­cent color pal­let. At first glance the works are sim­ply two-dimensional objects, how­ever, upon closer inspec­tion, the works are almost sculp­tural in their depth and den­sity. The artist’s pres­ence becomes one within the can­vas as Joyn­son ques­tions the stan­dard per­cep­tions of painting—creating ambigu­ous, sculp­tural shapes within the can­vas. The works are an orches­trated visual expe­ri­ence, express­ing thought­ful notions and moods that shim­mer and radiate.

Reuven Shezen, Carl Hoare, Michel Blouin, Gra­ciela Cas­sel, Pierre Juteau, Ekathe­rina S, Helen Joyn­son, and Matthew Lau­retti exem­plify the Broad­way Gallery’s inter­est, and focus on the rede­f­i­n­i­tion of por­trai­ture and nar­ra­tive from an intu­itive and unique per­spec­tive. The artists shown by the gallery rep­re­sent an art that demon­strates society’s capac­ity to inte­grate human expe­ri­ence with indi­vid­ual cre­ativ­ity. One thing that each artist had in com­mon was their com­mit­ment to his or her own cre­ative project, regard­less of con­ven­tional artis­tic stan­dards. The Broad­way Gallery’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the EOAF pre­sented the full scope of its artists’ achieve­ments in a vari­ety of medi­ums and scales, form­ing a star­tling new sense of psy­cho­log­i­cal ten­sion between fig­u­ra­tion and for­mal abstrac­tion in an art-brut con­text. Thought-provoking and fas­ci­nat­ing, the gallery’s selec­tion of artists demon­strates not only an inves­ti­ga­tion into the fun­da­men­tal energy and dynamism of the cre­ative act, but also the height­ened emo­tional states encoun­tered upon view­ing raw art.

Suzie Wal­she

The Euro­pean Out­sider Art Fair took place in June.