Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art
January 19, 2017 – September 16, 2017
One of “The Five Most Anticipated New York Art Museum Exhibits of Winter 2017”
— Forbes Magazine
Overview
Highlights
Lenders
Staff
Known/Unknown: Private Obsession and Hidden Desire in Outsider Art showcases over 100 rarely seen works by self-taught artistic masters – so called ‘outsider artists’ – who have worked outside the continuum of art history. The exhibition features photographs, sculptures and paintings which provide provocative and sometimes disturbing insight into the psychological terrain of their creators. Featured artists include: Robert Anderson, Steve Ashby, Morton Bartlett, Gil Batle, Eugene von Bruenchenhein, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Ike Morgan, Aurie Ramirez, Marilena Pelosi, Miroslav Tichý, Edwin Lawson, Johann Korec, Johann Garber and Royal Robertson.
The art in Known/Unknown is a long way from the typical art world. Many of the artists in the exhibit are self-taught, with little formal education, and range from institutionalized mental patients, to intellectually disabled people, to untutored isolates and eccentrics. Their pieces were often created in seemingly unlikely places; ranging from the sanctuary of psychiatric hospitals to private realms hidden within the lonely, impersonal jungles of teeming cities.
Overall, the work is fueled by secrecy and isolation, resulting in imagery that is far from ordinary experiences of sexuality. And since information about the makers and their objects is often fragmentary with many bodies of work discovered after the death of the artist, in many cases there is no way to know if the makers intended the work for public display. Visitors are left to determine for themselves whether they are actually encroaching on the remnants of these unconventional artists’ most private thoughts.
EXHIBITION HIGHLIGHTS INCLUDE:
Erotic sculptural figures by Steve Ashby, who did not begin his life as an artist until after the death of his wife in 1960. Pieces on view include Rocking Bed Cunnilingus Whirligig and Masturbating Man with Hand Under a Woman’s Blouse, both of which give animated reign to Ashby’s sexual fantasies, as well as Woman and Dog, a sculpture of a woman in a compromising position with a dog, which exemplifies the more tongue-in-cheek elements to the sexual acts in Ashby’s work.
A collection of Eugene Von Bruenchenhein’s erotic photographs of his wife Marie. The black and white prints are stylistically reminiscent of the1940s pin-up and convey a loving playfulness between the photographer and his subject that is both titillating and profound.
Grainy photographs taken of unsuspecting women by recluse Miroslav Tichý, considered the master of the stolen image in his hometown of Kyjov (Czech Republic). The technical imperfections of the prints are a result of Tichý’s crude construction of his own homemade cameras out of shoeboxes and toilet paper rolls.
Ike Morgan—a Texan artist with chronic schizophrenia—creates nearly-pornographic images of female subjects ensconced in buzzing abstract patterns, which might be read as bed sheets or the noise of sexual desire made tangible.
Also on display is Henry Darger’s watercolor At Sunbeam Creak/At Wickey Lansinia, which is abound with images of little girls, at times subjected to horrible tortures at the hands of male adult oppressors—a theme that is possibly related to the artist’s own childhood traumas growing up in an orphanage, and later an asylum. The piece was among 15,000 pages of text and hundreds of drawings and watercolors discovered by Darger’s landlord shortly before the artist’s death.
WE WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING LENDERS:
Fred Blair and Patrick Ryan
Michael Boruch
Creative Growth Center
Delmes & Zander, Berlin/Cologne
Ted Degener
Cheryl Dunn
Galerie Gugging, Austria
Henry Boxer Gallery
Ike Morgan
Lewis and Jean Greenblatt, Chicago
Emily Harris
Marion Harris, New York
Just Folk Collection
The MARVILL Collection
Private New York Collection
Andrew Lemeshewsky, Jr.
Aurie Ramirez
Ricco Maresca Gallery, New York
Robert A. Roth
Shrine Gallery (NYC)
Webb Gallery, Waxahachie, TX
John and Barbara Wilkerson
Jessica Yu
CHIEF CURATOR
Frank Maresca
EXHIBITION DESIGN
John Monaco
ASSOCIATE CURATOR
Lissa Rivera
CURATORIAL ASSISTANT
Lucy Weisner
INTRODUCTION AND TEXT
Colin Rhodes, PhD
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
Serge Becker
DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS
Mark Snyder
LOGO DESIGN
Berger & Wild
PRODUCTION AND DESIGN ASSISTANCE
Scott Stevenson Wilson
Jun De La Cruz
Jason Volenec
Trey Tyler
Cletis Chatterton
Kayla Camstra
Joey Agostinacchio
LIGHTING
Hervé Descottes for L’Observatoire
PRESS
W Magazine
Stephanie Exchardt, January 3, 2017
Forbes
Adam Lehrer, January 5, 2017
Hyperallergic
Edward Gomez, January 13, 2017
Apollo
Susan Moore, January 15, 2017
The Wall Street Journal
Charles Passy, January 17 2017
Curbed NY
Rachel Sugar, January 18, 2017
Guest of a Guest
Mackenzie Johnson, January 18, 2017
Bedford and Bowery
Daniel Maurer, January 19, 2017
DuJour
Kasey Caminiti, January 19, 2017
Fashion Unfiltered
Aria Darcella, January 19, 2017
Observer
Scott Indrisek, January 20, 2017
The Creators Project
Kara Weinstein, January 20, 2017
The Knockturnal
Dalton Taylor, January 21, 2017
Artnet News
Sarah Cascone, January 21, 2017
Playboy
Lanee Lee, January 26, 2017
The Art Newspaper
Victoria Stapley Brown, January 26, 2017
