MAVERICK! The New at Cavin-Morris
CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY
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MAVERICK! The New at Cavin-Morris
CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY New York, NY MAVERICK! > 2
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MAVERICK! : The NEW at Cavin-Morris Gallery Maverick:
1- a lone dissenter, as an intellectual, an artist, or a politician, who takes an independent stand apart from his or her associates
2 - a person pursuing rebellious, even potentially disruptive, policies or ideas
3 - unorthodox, unconventional, nonconformist
“Outsider art” is not a movement. Each artist, regardless of background essentially reinvents the wheel for personal expression. What they create is contemporary art but none of it is made in conversation with an art historical agenda. Process is more important than discourse. The work is made in trance, or as a simple act of self-location in an ever-kinetic universe. In a year of great exhibitions and press attention, the field of non-mainstream art (art brut or ‘outsider’) is finally gaining the critical scrutiny it merits. The past couple years have been an extremely rich time for finding, and featuring new artists previously unseen in the United States, and elsewhere in the world. This isn’t just a case of ‘new for the sake of new’ It is about finding artists outside mainstream channels who will be important future additions to the field. We are open to possibilities from all over the world and MAVERICK! will feature 25 artists from the U.S., Indonesia, France, Belgium, Austria, India, Japan, and a special presentation of artists from Czech Republic whom we feel will be appreciated more and more as years go by. This exhibition was years in the making and could, in no way, include ALL the new artists deserving of attention and inclusion.
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HARALD STOFFERS (b. 1961) In his delicate calligraphies documenting his physical world, Harald Stoffers has created a form of constant communication with his surroundings. His word topographies serve as a way to locate himself in the world. Appearing almost like musical staff lines, the drawings, and especially the words, when scrutinized reveal an internal conversation which lists his day to day intentions and needs, inner maps of his compulsion to make sense of a messy world. It is as though, by listing and itemizing, he gains control of life’s sequences of daily survival. We are witnesses to the demands and promises he makes himself and others. But even though we know this, even though we know the facts of the mundane life he is documenting, there is no reason other than aesthetic for the asymmetrical, carefully woven formats he uses or the way he balances intense wordplay with empty space. There is an element of performance to the work…he has abstracted what many of us do naturally…manifested physically that personal voice that captures the universality of what it is to be human.
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Harald Stoffers Brief 164, March 10th, 2012 Waterproof felt tip pen on card stock 39.25 x 27.5 inches / 99.7 x 69.9 cm HaS 14 MAVERICK! > 6
Harald Stoffers Brief 316, 2014 Ink on paper 11.5 x 8 inches / 29.2 x 20.3 cm HaS 16 7 < MAVERICK!
Harald Stoffers Brief 336, 2014 Waterproof felt tip pen on paper 16.5 x 11.75 inches / 41.9 x 29.8 cm HaS 18 MAVERICK! > 8
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HERBERT FREEMAN (b. 1951) Herbert Freeman has been on and off the streets of Orlando, Florida for a many years. His life has long followed a loose pattern of ups and downs that he has seemingly always managed to personally balance, on or off the streets, by making art. He began to make art by need and observation. Despite the hardship of his life his subject matter is universally transcendent, stemming from a desire to convey a spiritual sense of morality and what he considers to be Godâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s goodness. His portraits glorify humanity, anointing his subjects with an inner glow. It is amazing to me that this man works on the streets in all weathers and degrees of available light from sun to streetlamp and still manages to imbue the subjects with astonishing detail and great depth of feeling. Using scrap board to paint or draw on, the work glows with his visually unique aesthetic language.
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Herbert Freeman Queen of Hearts, 2015 Colored pencil and graphite on board 33 x 16.5 inches / 83.8 x 41.9 cm HFr 43 11 < MAVERICK!
Herbert Freeman Untitled, 2015 Colored pencil and graphite on board 24 x 11 inches / 61 x 27.9 cm HFr 42 MAVERICK! > 12
ILYA NATAREVICH (b. 1971) Ilya Natarevich was born into a family of artists. From childhood he was interested in drawing and mathematics. His cerebral palsy has not affected his extremely positive outlook on life but it did keep him from getting an art education. Just the physical aspect of making his art demands an incredible amount of physical and mental effort because of his lack of physical coordination. He has essentially harnessed the limitations of the disability and used them to focus and develop his immediately recognizable style. His line is nervous and powerful. His subject matter includes family and friends, stories of everyday life, flowers and characters from the books he reads with his family. He draws on found materials with colored pencils and markers.
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Ilya Natarevich The Dream Woman, 2015 Ink, graphite, and crayon on paper 15 x 10.25 inches / 38.1 x 26 cm INa 10 MAVERICK! > 14
Ilya Natarevich Big Bouquet, 2015 Ink, graphite, and crayon on cardboard 28.25 x 15 inches / 71.8 x 38.1 cm INa 12 15 < MAVERICK!
Ilya Natarevich The Goat Bull, 2015 Ink, graphite, and crayon on cardboard 8.75 x 17.25 inches / 22.2 x 43.8 cm INa 6 MAVERICK! > 16
JAROSLAV Ä&#x152;EVORA Jaroslav Ä&#x152;evora makes work about the energy interstices of the physical world examined up close. He is fascinated by clusters of lines and shapes in the real world; wiring, stacks of industrial debris, the interweavings seen close up of a textile or a basket. Particularly interesting is when these lines take lives of their own, move and wriggle in contained chaos. He channels chaos theories through his hand, endowing them with a very active and human passion. Completely self-taught he explores the expressionistic possibilities of abstraction with a compulsive and obsessive eye toward multiplicities. His is an active, unceasing midnight mind that travels to intangible places through the marks he makes.
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Jaroslav Ä&#x152;evora Untitled, 2011 Crayon on paper 13.39 x 9.45 inches / 34 x 24 cm JCev 10 MAVERICK! > 18
Jaroslav Ä&#x152;evora Untitled, 2011 Crayon on paper 13.39 x 9.45 inches / 34 x 24 cm JCev 9 19 < MAVERICK!
Jaroslav Ä&#x152;evora Untitled, 2011 Crayon on paper 13.39 x 9.45 inches / 34 x 24 cm JCev 11 MAVERICK! > 20
JOSEF HOFER (b. 1945) Josef Hofer was born deaf and with multiple disabilities. Now in his sixties, he lives in the care home of the Lebenshilfe Oberösterreich in Ried, Austria. For many years he attended a basketmaking workshop, but in 1997 he was introduced to a weekly art group, where his great talent for drawing became apparent. Since then he has put all his energy into his art. Every day, ‘Pepi’, as Hofer is affectionately known, sits at his desk, drawing tirelessly and completely unaided. Pencils in different colours, sharpener and eraser are always in exactly the same place, and he has access to paper in various sizes. He does not appear to mind whether his carer is present or not, but whenever he finishes a new drawing he puts it carefully aside and proudly shows it to her later: her admiration and praise mean a lot to him. He works continuously and with great enthusiasm. His pictures seem to ‘pour’ out of him, and it is hard to get him to stop working so that he can have lunch or go home. To begin with, Hofer drew agricultural machines and figures which resembled ‘Terminator’ on remnants of wallpaper and office paper. His human figures were always built up in the same way: first he would draw a naked body; then he would dress it in several layers, as if he were putting clothes on it; finally, he would add a kind of protective covering, with screws on both shoulders, as if to ‘lock up’ the figure. One day, another member of the art group was copying a female nude from a picture. Hofer kept glancing at his neighbour and eventually he himself began to draw a naked figure. The result was astonishing, because what he had depicted was a male body. Ever since that day, Hofer has not ‘locked up’ his figures. Instead, he expresses his curiosity and interest in the male body through his drawings. He proceeds with a child-like lack of inhibition and an innocence which most of the viewers of his pictures have long lost. He applies the same calm precision to the drawing of his nudes as he does to the depiction of a tractor. -- Excerpt from “Unlocking the Human Form; Josef Hofer” by Elisabeth Telsnig, Raw Vision #55, 2006
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Josef Hofer (Following Pages) Untitled, 2014 Graphite and colored pencil on paper 16.54 x 11.65 inches / 42 x 29.6 cm JHo 40
Josef Hofer (Following Pages) Untitled, 2007 Graphite and colored pencil on paper 19.69 x 27.56 inches / 50 x 70 cm JHo 33 MAVERICK! > 22
Untitled, 2014 Ink on found paper 11.75 x 8.25 inches / 29.8 x 21 cm NoA 106 23 < MAVERICK!
Untitled, 2014 Ink on found paper 11.25 x 8.25 inches / 28.6 x 21 cm NoA 107
JOSEPH LAMBERT (b. 1950) Joseph Lambert was born in the small village of Ardennes, Belgium. For years he took a daily bus to work in a protected atelier, where he focused primarily on woodworking. He continued to focus on this for a long time, making colorful furniture of joined lengths of plank, paneling, and lathes fitting the pieces together like puzzles in a sort of homespun marquetry. This previous experience translates to his drawings. Where before he wasted no piece of wood, in his drawings there is no wasted gesture. He starts a drawing with language and letters though he does not speak very much himself. As he begins one can see the letters with their familiar contours, but he does not stop with a readable paragraph, instead continuing to write over what he has written before until the letters disappear under a mass of marks. He lays his words down in stratumâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;like geological layers until they are abstracted into superimposed lines of color. Visually these compositions could be perceived as vast foggy landscapes that sometimes lead into primary forests, or to the edge of the sea. He sees them as letters and stories...they are his mode of visual speech in lieu of his physical reluctance to communicate verbally.
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Joseph Lambert Untitled, 2014 Mixed media on paper 18.11 x 25.2 inches / 46 x 64 cm JLam 5 MAVERICK! > 26
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Joseph Lambert Untitled, 2015 Mixed media on masonite 18.9 x 38.07 inches / 48 x 96.7 cm JLam 1 MAVERICK! > 28
Joseph Lambert Untitled, 2012 Mixed media on cardboard 25.24 x 14.49 inches/ 64.1 x 36.8 cm JLam 8 29 < MAVERICK!
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LUBOŠ PLNÝ (b. 1961) Luboš Plný is living proof that great art brut is an ever-regenerating active phenomenon in the present day. Though his work coincides with aspects of contemporary art his intentionality has nothing whatsoever to do with a mainstream agenda. His obsession is with the workings of the human body. Art historian Barbara Safarova has called his work anatomical self-portraits. He has expanded on this concept and includes the mother of his child and their son, making fascinating compositions of lovemaking and later the birth process. There is exactitude to the work at the same time that it is bound by no exact laws, which provides a tension that constantly activates the compositions. Often the drawings seem to be right on the edge of ironic humor, especially when the artist incorporates collage. Plny’s work has been readily accepted into contemporary museums and collections in Europe and is also now found in important collections in the United States.
Luboš Plný (Following Page) Untitled, 2013 Ink, acrylic, and mixed media on paper 23.5 x 33 inches / 59.7 x 83.8 cm LuP 58 MAVERICK! > 32
Untitled, 2014 Ink on found paper 12.25 x 8.5 inches / 31.1 x 21.6 cm NoA 116 33 < MAVERICK!
MIROSLAV TICHÝ (1926 - 2011) For me the photographs of Miroslav Tichý are filled with a sense of poignancy and longing. What differentiates this from much of other photography is not so much the longing and poignancy of the subject, though in most of them he has caught the sensual fullness of their humanity, it is, in fact, the intense emotions of the photographer himself. Tichý has designed his process to reflect this result. The condition of the photographs, the constant reminder and evidence of a handmade ethic, the funk of the homemade camera’s conception and the feeling that he is not so much gazing pruriently at the women of his town as he is looking across an empathic chasm, a distance, that ultimately creates and reinforces the idea of his own sense of alienation, disenfranchisement and complete disenchantment with his times. He does not disrespect his subjects. Quite the opposite. There is actually more prurience in his drawings and prints which emphasize the standard fetishes of revealing lingerie and large breasts and buttocks in more or less classic poses. The photographs don’t really touch upon that because they are shot publically in the field. Tichý claimed about all his art that his interests were formal and aesthetic rather than pornographic. When I think of Egon Schiele, Eric Fischl, Richard Prince, or even Pablo Picasso, I can’t contest his comments. He is about worship of what he doesn’t have, about flogging his own alienation from these women at the same time giving an honest portrayal, not of the male gaze per se but of his frustrated yearning and need for connection with the subjects of that gaze. They may be erotic but they have gone somewhere past mere lust. It is easy to get lost in the surface images and the seemingly primitive approach and not take deeper notice of the deliberate and careful control he evidences in his process. Everything that Miroslav Tichý does with and allows to happen to these photographs is deliberate. Once this is accepted and understood the real question to answer is why it amounts to a very complex vision. The concept of “vernacular photography” wasn’t around when Tichý was using his cameras. He is an innovator.
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Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 7 x 5 inches / 17.8 x 12.7 cm MTi 12 MAVERICK! > 36
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 7 x 3.8 inches / 17.8 x 9.7 cm MTi 35 37 < MAVERICK!
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 7.3 x 4.2 inches / 18.5x 10.7 cm MTi 25 MAVERICK! > 38
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 5 x 7 inches / 12.7 x 17.8 cm MTi 59 39 < MAVERICK!
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 3.3 x 3.5 inches / 8.4 x 8.9 cm MTi 40 MAVERICK! > 40
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 12 x 5 inches / 30.5 x 12.7 cm MTi 36 41 < MAVERICK!
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 6 x 4.2 inches / 15.2 x 10.7 cm MTi 48 MAVERICK! > 42
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 7.56 x 10.35 inches / 19.2 x 26.3 cm MTi 51 43 < MAVERICK!
Miroslav TichĂ˝ Untitled, 1960s-1980s Gelatin silver print 10.91 x 8.74 inches / 27.7 x 22.2 cm MTi 52 MAVERICK! > 44
SYLVAIN CORENTIN (b. 1962) Sylvain Corentin is an ex-architect living in the south of France. Corentin takes inspiration from fantastical worlds, constructing imaginary structures and dwellings in his mind’s eye that he then builds in reality. With these, his “anarchitectures”, he evokes the habitats of an imagined early time combining them with constructions of a dreamed future in an often better world. In creating these places, Sylvain seeks to inhabit worlds filled with unseen yet mapped territories, places with still unrecorded histories bearing the wounds and rewards of the trials and tribulations of their human histories, scarred but surviving, still carving markers of time and experience into our weary planet. His sculptures build a bridge between the image of an imagined utopian past and the reality of our future, documenting the ironies and impossibilities of finding a place where visionary thinking can possibly coexist with the reality of survival. There is an optimism built into the pieces that is infectious, perhaps because the kind of optimism they reflect is one of childhood before full comprehension of a complicated world insinuates itself. He does not make the dwellings safe, they are filled with edges and mazes and cryptic writing and blind passageways, and they are kept from being naïve by their complexity and their uniqueness. Watching Sylvain work on a piece one realizes how jazz-like and musical their process is. He moves fast in a kind of whirlwind improvisation that takes them well past anything pre-planned. They build like Coltrane solos, moody, not always smooth, sometimes screechingly sublime. If there is such a thing as action painting then these are action sculptures conceived in music and born in speedy improvisation. They are delicate in their combined strengths.
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Sylvain Corentin Fox on the Roof, 2015 Mixed media 35.5 x 6 x 11 inches / 90.2 x 15.2 x 27.9 cm SCo 58 MAVERICK! > 46
SOLANGE KNOPF (b. 1957) Solange Knopf changed Cavin-Morris Gallery. I donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t say this facetiously. Just before we saw her work for the first time we were being drowned in a sea of false horror-vacuui and cultural appropriations that bore no relationship or knowledge of the cultures they were so freely quoting from; mainly Vodun. We wanted new work in the gallery that was kin to the visionary content in art we have always tried to find and expose. We didnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t believe the real thing had disappeared with the commercialization of the market...how could it? Spirit never dies. Then one day we saw a small drawing by Solange Knopf that was drawn on a page from a book of decadent poetry, a poem by Guillaume Apollinaire to be exact. The drawing resonated with us immediately. We contacted her and through our communication felt the vast deep pool of her consciousness, this incredible mix of pain and insight, wonder, and ineffable joy. Those first drawings were small. Between our first viewing them and showing them and the preparation for her first one-person show with us, something extraordinary happened. She had completely changed her scale from inches to feet. When her first large drawings arrived, we were presented to the artist in her full maturity. Hers is a mind that floats through this world capturing like no other the decadent sensuality of temptation and redemption. This, La Danse des Esprits, is from a most recent series. What I realized when studying this drawing is that Knopf was exploring, through dream and experience, alternate universes that touched upon and involved the subject matters of subcultures all through time, whether they be herbal, spiritual, feminist or literary. She uses her own soul to travel to these places and then shapes them into storytelling for our benefit. She does not hide the frightening and painful parts but blends them into the story naturally. They are both new and familiar. When they are new she weaves (through drawing) an amuletic web around them, and when they are familiar she owns them so that we see them in a new light.
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Solange Knopf La Danse des Esprits, 2015 Colored pencil on bamboo paper 42.75 x 31 inches / 108.6 x 78.7 cm SoK 81 MAVERICK! > 48
Solange Knopf Notebook, 2013 Colored pencil in accordion notebook 8.25 x 5.25 x .5 inches / 21 x 13.3 x 1.3 cm SoK 75 49 < MAVERICK!
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ZINNIA NISHIKAWA In these deceptively delicate, ethereal drawings Zinnia Nishikawa has tapped into a personal dream system populated by animated transparent forms and nature references. What fascinated me about the drawings from the start was that despite their fragile beauty there was often something darker and foreboding just under the surface that pulled me in, never quite revealing all their more profound aspects.
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Zinnia Nishikawa Untitled, 2013-2015 Colored pencil on paper 18 x 24 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm ZNi 1
(Following page) Zinnia Nishikawa Untitled, 2013-2015 Graphite on paper 18 x 24 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm ZNi 16 MAVERICK! > 52
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Untitled, 2014 Ink on found paper 11.7 x 8.3 inches / 29.7 x 21.1 cm NoA 130 MAVERICK! > 54
CAROLINE DEMANGEL (b.1982) â&#x20AC;&#x153;It was during a hospitalization in 2008 that I started to draw brutally. During the months that followed, I have been constantly isolate - by myself - producing visions unknown to me before I put them on paper. This workflow is hatching something buried. I am still exploring.â&#x20AC;?
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Caroline Demangel Mo誰se et les tables de la loi, 2015 Mixed media on paper 15 x 14.5 inches / 38.1 x 36.8 cm CDm 24 MAVERICK! > 56
Caroline Demangel Untitled, 2014 Mixed media on paper 11.75 x 8.25 inches / 29.8 x 21 cm CDm 3 57 < MAVERICK!
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FRANTIŠEK DYMÁČEK (1929 - 2003) The drawings of František Dymáček are a solitary revisioning of the world. It is obvious that in order to make these drawings, in order to allow the intricate imagery to manifest on the page he had to let go and surrender to his stream of consciousness. There are both dark and light elements in these drawings, spirits both benevolent and more worrisome. He had made some of the basic outlines of the drawings early on and stored them carefully. Later, after retirement he began to fill them in. He drew in a cottage he owned, but an ongoing dispute about ownership of the land made this period of his life uneasy. He died at the age of 74 without anyone in the art world having seen his drawings. “It could be said that Dymáček was creating out of defiance to himself. As if an irrational, emotional component of a personality that was otherwise entirely pedantic, orderly, and in every sense reasonable, needed to find an outlet and to reveal itself. A man who, all his life, had professed tidiness and order and above all required factual verification, found himself disorientated by his own sudden rush of creativity. He felt like a split personality and confided with apprehension to his wife that it is not normal. What is this normality in any case? And can it ever possibly be compatible with creativity? Creative talent calls for singularity, which presupposes a deviation from the normal, from the average. The words spoken by Jean Dubuffet: How can the act of artistic creation with the same stress it generates, with its concomitant high fever-be normal? The whole concept of normal art is a contradiction in terms!, he asserted, at the same time concurring with Nietzsche, who was convinced that if we request good health, we inhibit genius.” From the catalog essay “The mental contours of František Dymáček,” by Terezie Zemánková in Art Brut: František Dymáček, 2011, produced by Museum Montanelli.
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František Dymáček Untitled, 1995 Ink on paper 11.75 x 8.25 inches / 29.8 x 21 cm FDy 11 MAVERICK! > 60
František Dymáček Untitled, 1995 Ink on paper 11.75 x 8.25 inches / 29.8 x 21 cm FDy 16 61 < MAVERICK!
František Dymáček Untitled, 1983 Ink on paper 12 x 14 inches / 30.5 x 35.6 cm FDy 21 MAVERICK! > 62
František Dymáček Untitled, 1998 Ink on paper 11.75 x 8 inches / 29.8 x 20.3 cm FDy 3 63 < MAVERICK!
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GHYSLAINE and SYLVAIN STAELËNS (b. 1960 & 1968) Ghyslaine and Sylvain Staelëns first became an artistic team in 1996, when the two self-taught artists decided to move into the remote countryside of D’Auvergne, France. This volcanic region provided them with plenty of materials with which to create sculpture, bas-relief, masks, figurines, totems, and crucifixes. The floating wood, roots, and rusted metals that they found there soon became indispensable to their work. Starting from sophisticated assemblies of tree branches and roots, the couple manufactures creations that give rise to animal and human forms. Often the figures are embedded with nails and wires and oxidized to give the appearance of rusted metal, which they use in reference to the various mental entities that stimulate us or torment us. For the artists, the flexible and solid wire symbolizes attachment, the barbed wire and the nails symbolize suffering, and the branches represent discipline, rigor, and control of the spirit. Visible from their house/studio is the Notre Dame de Claviers Chapel, built before 1109 from the same volcanic stone as used in their sculptures. In it is a crucifix and fourteen stone Stations of the Cross, some of them carved by a nineteenth century hermit named Francois Lesmarie. It was definitely a formative influence. There was also a very famous carving of a dark-skinned Virgin in the chapel, later removed to another location. But the robed influence of that dark figure has never left their town of Jailhac or the imaginations of the Staelëns. She is one of their muses. Nearby is the Bois de Jailhac. The Staelëns call it “the forest”. “When we arrived in Auvergne we were so surrounded by Catholicism. We absorbed the crucifixion, religious souls, and with time and years in Auvergne, we begin to form characters in harmony with the forest and the volcanos, hunters, sentinels, sentries, horsemen, mysterious people, tough, fighting for their survival. All our sculptures are connected to each other from the very beginning when we started.” The work of the Staelëns is a perfect example for us of artists who dig deep within themselves to find the roots of their own cultures without ripping off imagery of other cultures. They copy nothing, they reinvent themselves through the inspiration of the forest and history around them. For us, they have found a place in their art that taps into a spiritual universalism, a respect for all cultures, and a retelling of the magic of their own very European roots.
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Sylvain and Ghyslaine Staelens Totem, 2015 Wood, metal, cloth, and found objects 66 x 29 x 17 inches / 167.6 x 73.7 x 43.2 cm GSS 49 MAVERICK! > 66
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JIM McDOWELL (b. 1945) Potter Jim McDowell, a studio potter/teacher for over thirty-five years, specializes in creating unique face jugs and folk art representative of his family history and African-American background as it relates to slavery in America. He’s the recipient of an Andy Warhol Museum Grant and awards from the Heinz Foundation. He’s taught at the Chautauqua Institution, the Winterthur Museum, and Warren Wilson College, among others, and has presented programs at the Mint Museum in Charlotte, NC, and Touchstone Center for the Arts in Pennsylvania. Jim McDowell lives in Weaverville, NC. and works out of Reems Creek Pottery Studio there. Artist Statement: I’m a potter who makes face jugs that represent an uncomfortable part of America’s history, slavery. I call myself The Black Potter. Once, as a young man, I attended a family funeral and listened to my elders speak of our history. The story they told of my four-times Great Aunt Evangeline, a slave potter and face jug maker from Jamaica, caught my attention and stayed with me. Many years later, after I’d become a potter myself and had settled in Pennsylvania, I was inspired to make a face jug to honor her and my other ancestors. I knew the jugs were ugly and had spiritual connotations for those of us who descended from enslaved Africans. One story I heard was that the jug was used to revere an ancestor and held a spirit of protection. Others said the jug was buried next to the doorway of a house, or used to mark a grave as slaves were not permitted tombstones. So I make my face jugs with Black features like wide noses and thick lips, and give them hideous teeth I fashion out of broken china. I engrave anti-slavery sentiments and various sayings and quotes into the wet clay.What I didn’t know until a few years after I began to make these jugs was that face jugs were made by other American potters, mostly in the southern states, potters without my Black history. One tradition of the historical southern ugly jug was that it would scare children away from the moonshine stored inside. I continue to make Black face jugs and I stick to the story of my people. Researchers are finding out more information about face jugs with African features found in the fields of the pottery district of Edgefield, South Carolina. I believe these jugs were made by enslaved Africans and/or their descendants, and I believe they had religious significance.
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Artwork Statement: The stories of first responders have made an impact on me, especially the past few years. When bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, first responders ran toward the explosions. I thought about the 9/11 first responders, many of whom lost their lives. One night while watching the news after a devastating hurricane, we saw footage of a man rescued from a sinking boat by first responders in a helicopter. Later the man said when he looked up and saw someone coming down out of the sky for him he thought â&#x20AC;&#x153;it was an angel.â&#x20AC;? When a slave went missing sometimes the story would circulate that Jesus gave him wings to fly away. Several old time gospel songs have been written about that. I had made several angel jugs, so when I decided to make a few face jugs to honor these brave rescuers, they somehow became angels. Spike is rough and tough and smokes a stogie. And he deserves to be a First Responder Angel. Inscriptions: If You Want Freedom, Keep Going ~ H. Tubman Spike 1st Responder Angel
Jim McDowell Spike, A First Responder Angel, 2014 Gas fired ceramic in a soda kiln, tamaku with brown glaze 10.5 x 9 x 7.5 inches / 26.7 x 22.9 x 19.1 cm JMcD 1
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Jim McDowell The Watchman, 2013 Clay with shino glaze and rutile blue overlaps 12 x 7.5 x 6.5 in 30.5 x 19.1 x 16.5 cm
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Inscription: Free My People Now Sometimes a trusted slave was used as a watchman to oversee the plantation for fires near the harvest or any other danger. This â&#x20AC;&#x153;watchmanâ&#x20AC;? wears a crown of cowry shells and has a small rough beard. He has long ears and thick ropey lips. The scarification on his face represents tribal markings.
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Jim McDowell A Righteous Judge, 2011 Gas-fired clay with white shino glaze, words written with black stain prior to firing 20.5 x 8.75 x 8.5 inches 52.1 x 22.2 x 21.6 cm JMcD 6
Artwork Statement: When I was in my teens I got into some trouble through some bad influence. I had to go see a judge with m father. The judge looked at my rough hands. He said, “You have calluses. You’re a hard worker. Get out of here and don’t come back.” I was spared from going to a juvenile detention center that day. When I hear certain language and labels used, language that incites violence, I want a righteous judge to set people straight. Words written Jim in black stain: McDowell tobob (sic), dago, boy, spic, coon, wop, honky, tar baby, pale face, rag head, stop, words2011 hurt A Righteous Judge, Gas-fired clay with white shino glaze, words written with black stain prior to firing Inscriptions: Artwork Statement: Free my people now Love is the key to life When I was in my teens I got into some trouble through some bad influence. I had to MAVERICK! > 72
Artwork Statement: The title of this jug is a quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. The jug itself has a couple of horns and five dangerous teeth I make from shards of china. There is a glaze run from the right eye that signifies tears and glaze â&#x20AC;&#x153;droolâ&#x20AC;? running across the mouth. Jugs like this were made ugly to ward away evil spirits. Inscriptions: We Is Free Now A Lie Cannot Live M.L.K Jr.
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Jim McDowell A Lie Cannot Live, 2012 Wood-fired clay with orange flash shino glaze 8.75 x 7.5 x 7.5 in / 22.2 x 19.1 x 19.1 cm JMcD 5
Inscriptions: Yes, I Am A First Responder Angel Station House 6327 USA This is Ol’Pa. I think of him as the Fire Chief. I compiled fire house numbers to include four of them on this face jug. This cigar choppin’ guy has been on the force a long time, but didn’t make it to retirement when he risked and lost his life in order to save someone else. The stories of first responders have made an impact on me, especially the past few years. When bombs went off at the Boston Marathon, first responders ran toward the explosions. I thought about the 9/11 first responders, many of whom lost their lives. One night while watching the news after a devastating hurricane, we saw footage of a man rescued from a sinking boat by first responders in a helicopter. Later the man said when he looked up and saw someone coming down out of the sky for him he thought “it was an angel.” When a slave went missing sometimes the story would circulate that Jesus gave him wings to fly away. Several old time gospel songs have been written about that. I had made several angel jugs, so when I decided to make a few face jugs to honor these brave rescuers, they somehow became angels.
Jim McDowell Ol’ Pa, 2014 Clay with shino glaze and green glass 10 x 11.5 x 8.5 in / 25.4 x 29.2 x>21.6 MAVERICK! 74 cm JMcD 2
Jim McDowell Trayvon, 2012 Clay, gas-fired in a soda kiln with amber celadon glaze, and brown shoestring 10 x 9 x 6.5 in 25.4 x 22.9 x 16.5 cm JMcD 8
Artwork Statement: My statement against the murder of an innocent, unarmed, hoodie-wearing, seventeen-year-old black youth, Trayvon Martin, in 2012. He was stalked and killed by a resident of a gated community in that same community where Trayvon was visiting his father. This piece is my memorial to him. Inscriptions: I am so mad Trayvon was killed for being a hoodie wearing black man And I will wipe all tears from your eyes. Jesus 75 < MAVERICK!
Artwork Statement: Sometimes I’m so angry with the way we can’t talk with each other, or can’t even look at each other. So I find a way to channel my anger through the pottery. Inscription: Mad Black Man
Jim McDowell Mad Black Man, 2015 Soda-fired clay in a gas kiln, amber celadon glaze, red iron oxide, and blue-stained glass runs 18.75 x 7.5 x 7 inches / 47.6 x 19.1 x 17.8 cm JMcD 7 MAVERICK! > 76
KAREL HAVLĺČEK (1907 - 1988) Born into a family of artists, Karel Havlíček studied law and became a lawyer - a career he did not like. He spent most of his life in Kadan, in northwestern Bohemia. He married and had three children. Havlíček worked for the Czechoslovakian government during World War II. The situation became emotionally and morally impossible for him, so he resigned, a political decision that marked him the rest of his life. He began drawing at this time as a way of exorcising his emotional and spiritual conflicts. Working only at night, he followed a ritual reminiscent of automatic practices. His drew without premeditation, spontaneously, as if overtaken by spiritualist production. After 1948, he was forced to leave his job in a ceramics factory where he painted dishes, and he became a laborer. In 1948, the Czech art critic Karel Teige, a major figure in the Czechoslovak avant-garde, became interested in him and planned to organize an exhibition of his drawings, a project crushed by the political authorities. This was a profound disappointment to Havlíček. He died before knowing the freedom that came about with the Velvet Revolution in 1989.
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Karel Havlíček Horla, 1955 Graphite on paper 16.54 x 11.81 inches / 42 x 30 cm KHav 12 MAVERICK! > 78
Karel Havlíček Theseův čin / The act of Theseus, 1960 Graphite on paper 16.54 x 11.81 inches / 42 x 30 cm KHav 11 79 < MAVERICK!
Karel Havlíček Pahýl / The Stub, 1969 Graphite on paper 16.54 x 11.81 inches / 42 x 30 cm KHav 8 MAVERICK! > 80
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KRIANGKRAI KONGKHANUN (b. 1980) Education 2013 – M.F.A. Graphic Art, Silpakorn University, Bangkok, Thailand. 2007 – Diploma, Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze, Florence, Italy. 2003 – B.F.A. Printmaking, 2nd Hon., Department of Fine Arts, King Mongkut’s Institute of Technology Ladkrabang, Bangkok, Thailand. 1999 – Diploma,College of Fine Arts, Bangkok, Thailand. Selected prizes and distinctions 2010 1st Prize, Office of Contemporary Art and Culture, The 56th National Exhibition of Art, Bangkok. 2009 2nd Prize, Silver Medal (Graphic Arts), The 55th National Exhibition of Art, Bangkok. 2006 Italian Goverment Scholarship Solo Exhibitions 2014 2013 2011 2010
“Blood Lands” at L’Entrepot Gallery, Monaco. “Undead” at Number 1 Gallery, Bangkok. “Oceanic Wilderness” at Number 1 Gallery, Art HK 11, Hong Kong. “Spiritual Disease” at Number 1 Gallery, Bangkok.
Selected Group Exhibitions 2014 2013 2012 2011 2010 2008 2006 2003 2002
7th International Printmaking Biennial of Douro-2014, Alijó, Portugal. “Print Resonance” , Canada, Belgium, USA, Japan and Thailand. “Restless 2” Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, USA. “16th International Biennial of Engraving Sarcelles” Paris, France. “Little Big Prints” PSG Art Gallery, Bangkok. “On The Threshold of The Senses”, Tally Beck Contemporary, New York, USA. 10th International Graphic and Ex-libris Exposition, Casale Monferrato, Italy. “Thai Artists” Khaas Art Gallery, Islamabad, Pakistan. Smallery Art Exhibition, ARDEL’s Third Place Gallery, Bangkok. 1st International Competition Exhibition Mini Print and Ex Libris, Milan, Italy. 12th International Biennial Print and Drawing Exhibition 2006, R.O.C. 4th Kyoto International Woodprint Association (KIWA) Exhibition, Kyoto, Japan. 4th Egyptian International Print Triennial 2003, Egypt. International Mini – Print and Bookplate Exhibition, Cluj – Napoca, Romania.
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Kriangkrai Kongkhanun The Golden Flower, Chapter 1 The Lose Moon, 2015 Chinese ink, pen, and graphite on Thai handmade paper 23.5 x 31.5 inches / 59.7 x 80 cm KrK 9 MAVERICK! > 84
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LOU BEACH (b. 1947) Education Spotty Solo Exhibitions 1973 Boston Center For The Arts (as Andrew Lubicz) 2007 “Cover” CULTURE GALLERY, Tarnów, Poland 2012 “Stories and Pictures” OFFRAMP GALLERY, Pasadena, CA. “Collages” DIBDEN ART CENTER, Johnson State College, VT. 2013 “New Fables” ADVENTURELAND GALLERY, Chicago, IL. 2014 “Revelations” Firecat Projects, Chicago, IL. “Lou Beach: White Pink Turpentine” OFFRAMP GALLERY, Pasadena, CA. Group Shows 2015 2009 2010 2011 2014
“Maverick!” Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY “Lou Beach, Hudson Marquez, Jayme Odgers, Mel Weiner” BILLY SHIRE FINE ART, Culver City, CA. “Gene Pool: Lou Beach, Alpha Lubicz, Sam Lubicz” NICKELODEON, Burbank, CA. “Gene Pool: Lou Beach, Alpha Lubicz, Sam Lubicz” LA LUZ DE JESUS GALLERY, Hollywood, CA. “INCOGNITO 2014” Santa Monica Museum of Art, Santa Monica, CA “¡ÓRALE! The Kings & Queens of Cool”, The Harwood Museum of Art, Taos, New Mexico
Publications 2006 “CUT IT OUT” Last Gasp Publishing. An overview of illustration work, including some personal collages. 2011 “420 CHARACTERS” Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. A book of short fiction with ten original collages
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Lou Beach Songs of the Revolving Sun, 2013 Mixed media on paper 18 x 24 inches / 45.7 x 61 cm LBe 17 MAVERICK! > 88
Lou Beach Family Outing (The Holy Oar), 2014 Mixed media on paper 12.75 x 15.75 inches 32.4 x 40 cm LBe 27 89 < MAVERICK!
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MELANIE FERGUSON (b. 1955) Education 2007-2012 Art Center West, Roswell, GA 1984-1987 Northwest College of Art and Design, Poulsbo, WA Workshop Participation: 2012 2010 2008
Serge Isupov: Three-Day Demonstration Workshop Alabama Clay Conference, Birmingham, AL Akira Satake: Slab Construction and Kohiki Slip Technique Three-day workshop, Mudfire Ceramics Studio, Decatur GA Meredith Brickwell: Handbuilt Form and Terra Sigilatta Surface Three-day workshop, Art Center West, Roswell, GA
Ceramic Exhibitions 2014 2013 2012
“Metro Montage XIV,” Marietta/Cobb Museum of Art, Marietta, GA “Praisesongs For The Numinous,” Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY “Inside Chandler’s Cove,” Wiregrass Museum of Art, Dothan, AL “Restless II – a MIX: Group Invitational Show,” Cavin-Morris Gallery, New York, NY “Ambassador J Christopher Stevens Memorial Exhibition,” John Natsoulas Gallery, Davis, CA “Roswell Clay Collective Juried Exhibition and Spring Show,” Art Center West, Roswell, GA “Georgia Artists – A Juried Exhibition,” Abernathy Center for the Arts, Sandy Springs, GA
Publications 2014 2013 2012 2011
2014 Inspirational Magazine – Creative Arts, Featured artist, premier issue, Editor/Author: John Hopper Restless II! – A Mix – Online Catalogue, Cavin-Morris Gallery La Cocina Mexicana: Many Cultures, One Cuisine, Published by University of California Press Artkeramica Russia, Featured International Artist, July 11, 2011
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Melanie Ferguson Ferguson Their Eyes Grew RoundMelanie Like Moons, 2015 Their Eyes Grew Round Like Moons, 2015 Hand built stoneware, flashing slip, oxide stains, stoneware, flashing slip, oxide stains, PierHand Blackbuilt liner, soda fired in heavy reduction Pier soda fired 13 xBlack 16 xliner, 10 inches / 33inxheavy 40.6 reduction x 25.4 cm 13 x 16 x 10 MFe inches30 33 x 40.6 x 25.4 cm MFe 30
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NEK CHAND (1924 - 2015) It is not often that we as gallerists, have the opportunity to exhibit work that we consider a wonder of the world and that has not been pillaged or stolen from its original site. Such is the case with a group of figurative cement, and cloth sculptures made by the late master artist, Nek Chand. Nek Chand, a man of undeniable genius but with no artistic training, came from the humble origins of a small Punjabi village. He fled his home during the partition of Indian and Pakistan in 1947 and settled in India’s most modern city, Chandigargh, the government buildings of which were designed by the renowned architect Le Corbusier. As a government roads inspector, Chand witnessed the building of Chandigargh as it gradually replaced the many rural villages that were razed in the process. From 1958 to 1965 Nek Chand collected the discarded materials that were the result of this urbanization process before beginning his “unauthorized” - secret - rock garden project. When his garden was discovered, the government threatened to remove it. Chand, however, managed to overcome the ire of the officials, who eventually provided the artist with 200 workers for his project. Officially inaugurated in 1976, the garden is now a forty-acre sculptured landscape filled with thousands of human and animal figures made from broken glass, smashed crockery, bicycle frames, Coke bottle tops, colorful plastic bangles, slate and tile, broken earthenware pots, and countless other materials. Surrounded by a densely forested gorge at the edge of Chandigargh, the park also comprises a network of waterfalls, make-believe castles, open air chambers, and connecting paths. Nek Chand’s garden is a resting place for the spirits of God’s creatures. When we look at Nek Chand’s work we are not only seeing what is right in front of us but also seeing the incredible decades-long struggle he went through to preserve his visionary monument, politically, socially, and personally. A mantra is a blessed selected group of words which, when repeated over and over, becomes a prayer, a blessing and/or a form of trance meditation. Anyone who has visited Nek Chand’s Rock Garden, or has seen film or photographs of the site, has been profoundly moved by the magnificence of the garden’s visual rhythms and metaphors. His massive physical poem of recycling, along with of the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, CA built by Simon Rodia (1876 – 1965), Ferdinand Cheval’s (1836 – 1924) Palais Idéal, in Hauterives, France, and Joe Minter’s (b. 1942) African Village, Birmingham, AL, is one of the most well-known sites in the world. Chand generously gifted a number of cloth, and ceramic, and cement sculptures to the Children’s Hospital in Washington D.C. The Children’s Hospital sold those pieces to benefit other programs that needed funding. The gallery is honored and privileged to have some of his work in MAVERICK!
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Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 21 x 7 x 11 inches / 53.3 x 17.8 x 27.9 cm NC 7 MAVERICK! > 96
Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 34 x 12 x 12 inches / 86.4 x 30.5 x 30.5 cm NC 10 97 < MAVERICK!
Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 33 x 8 x 9 inches / 83.8 x 20.3 x 22.9 cm NC 12 MAVERICK! > 98
Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 22 x 22 x 13 inches / 55.9 x 55.9 x 33 cm NC 13 99 < MAVERICK!
Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 27.5 x 15 x 8 inches / 69.9 x 38.1 x 20.3 cm NC 11 MAVERICK! > 100
Nek Chand Untitled, 1950-1980 Concrete over metal armature with mixed media 41 x 15 x 10 inches / 104.1 x 38.1 x 25.4 cm NC 9 101 < MAVERICK!
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ANGKASAPURA (b. 1979) “I am not a religious fanatic. I am a Moslem and I learn. I also learn all kinds of religions that developed in Indonesia, read their books, including some spiritual teachings from Indonesia and other countries, all have valuable teachings. From this I conclude, that I should continue to work (drawing), do something useful for the world, leave something for my children and my descendents, the environment and even the world, something that will be useful for their future.” - Noviadi Angkasapura 2015
Noviadi Angkasapura was born in Irian Jaya, Papua New Guinea in 1979. His mother came from Central Java and his father from East Java. They met in Irian Jaya, settled there and had two sons. Angkasapura lived there through high school. He remembers it as being a cultural polyglot, with immigrants from many of the Indonesian islands like Borneo, Sulawesi, Sumatra, Bali, Madura, Papua New Guinea and others. Irian was a cultural melting pot for these islanders. There is a narrative in Angkasapura’s drawings that instinctively draws upon the Wayang scrolls of Bali as well as the Javanese narrative scrolls, also from the protean Asian drama, the Ramayana. But he copies nothing. In fact he has hybridized it all adding in the cosmic wildness, the powerful and beautiful animism of the local spiritualities of the Indonesian Islands, each with its own motifs and sacred patterns and celestial beings. He has synthesized and reinvented a Pan-Indonesian aesthetic by liberating it with that permission granted by art he has seen in books. “I do not even clearly know the meaning of art brut/outsider, or even contemporary art. I have just kept to my drawing task and the money goes to my wife and child. I follow my feelings. Randall, am not even proud of what I have accomplished or listen to what other people say, this is not a surprise in my life, it is my normal everyday. Some people call me art brut, another outsider, and some say I am contemporary, it hardly matters to me. The important thing is my commitment to draw and deliver the message, to try and make this spiritual message more understandable.” Angkasapura tries to make a drawing a day. It isn’t about the finished drawing, it is about fulfilling the mandate of his vision, received in 2001 from a dreamlike otherworldly presence. He draws to live. So the work, or the process really, is never completed. For Angkasapura the act of making marks on whatever materials he finds are a form of repetitive prayer. The spirit who visited him gave him a phrase that has within its meaning “peace” and patience”. The knowledge that he is drawing to satisfy the calling of this spirit he encountered is more important to him than the finished drawing itself. It is the act of selfmanifestation that fulfills his mandate of artmaking. 103 < MAVERICK!
He began to seriously draw in 2001. He had always drawn but he began to take it really seriously when he had a visitation from a spirit-like being who gave him a phrase/name which one can often find written into the Drawings: KI RADEN SASTRO INGGIL. To Angkasapura this visitation was a moral wake-up call. The spirit gave him a blueprint of ethical living and balance; things like honesty and patience, “up to 45 points” the artist has told me. The presence of this spirit is always with him when he draws, and again points to his body of work as a process of achieving a moral balance in a difficult world. The act of drawing is a meditation and fulfillment of the spirits words while Angkasapura himself is merely a conduit for the messages; he is the mediator between us and the spirit, he does not have to explain them. The figures in his drawings are encounters with internal and external forces. His beings are fanged and clawed. They are spawned by but not orthodox to local imagery. They move singly or in tandem with others, their internal organs often worn on the outside, again the play of internal and external forces exposed. Their bodies appear aggressive and dangerous but never really threatening which gives them the qualities of amulets. Fierce images drive away much fiercer forces. “Although the characters seem different or repeated there is one thing that can never be lost, there are always flowing lines and fibers and spines (lines and filamentous forms always form in my head like tangles). At higher levels when I start drawing I have only one story. It will be split into many stories at the beginning as I draw so there are then a lot of stories here, the images will be irregular, there are a lot of symbols, yes there are a lot of stories here, in the world. Everyone will see it. That’s why I do not have titles every time I finish a picture. (I have a secret. I never project anything when drawing, except a little splash of flavor. This is the spirit’s meaning of “honest” and “patience”…they are the source and the destination end of my journey, which becomes the message, in each drawing).” The calligraphy also affirms the process as the ultimate satisfaction of artmaking for him. He is thinking right onto the paper. It gives each drawing a sense of immediacy. We can universally relate to these drawings in the West because they are NOT traditional Asian images. They are idiosyncratic even if some of the imagery (rows of dancers, demons, spirits, women, animals, long finger-and toe-nails) is seemingly local. They are elaborated upon obsessively. When looking at an Angkasapura drawing the eye moves constantly. It is musical, there is a heavenly rhythm and at the same time a street beat, a 21st Century beat in the timeless forms.
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Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink and graphite on paper 11.2 x 8.5 inches / 28.4 x 21.6 cm NoA 167 105 < MAVERICK!
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink, graphite, and crayon on paper 8.3 x 11.6 inches / 21.1 x 29.5 cm NoA 169 MAVERICK! > 106
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink, glitter, and crayon on paper 10.7 x 7.8 inches / 27.2 x 19.8 cm NoA 171 107 < MAVERICK!
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Colored pencil, graphite, and ink on found paper 16.5 x 11.5 inches / 41.9 x 29.2 cm NoA 181 MAVERICK! > 108
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink and graphite on paper 14.5 x 9.25 inches / 36.8 x 23.5 cm NoA 212 109 < MAVERICK!
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink and graphite on paper 11.5 x 14 inches / 29.2 x 35.6 cm NoA 214 MAVERICK! > 110
Noviadi Angkasapura Untitled, 2015 Ink and graphite on paper 8.3 x 11.6 inches / 21.1 x 29.5 cm NoA 208 111 < MAVERICK!
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JON SERL (1894 - 1993) The painter Jon Serl was an American maverick. His paintings, iconic and seemingly simple on the surface, have always maintained a mysterious power, a glimpse of darkness even when deceptively lighthearted. It is as if a double narrative is being represented; a social one on the surface and another, not so obvious, running like a shadow beneath the simplicity of his forms. This deeper layer is his own added personal history, a picture of a part of America that is no longer around. Jon Serl was born Joseph Searles in Oleans, New York, and spent much of his life intimately familiar with an America in transition during two world wars. His parents and sisters, desperately poor, were a traveling carny-cum-vaudeville family. Serl was never in one place long enough to put down any kind of serious roots. He grew up intimate with cruelty and transience; his parents were cold, self-involved in their desperate need to eke out a survival. An itinerant vaudeville group had a slightly unsavory overtone in those days; part theatre, part burlesque, part travelling bordello, the shows could range from the vulgar to the sublime. Serl was a character player from childhood; he spent half his time on stage in drag or in Native American outfits. He sometimes impersonated females, and his domineering father used to make him vomit to keep a thin girlish figure for these roles. He played Little Eva in Uncle Tom’s Cabin. He was painted gold and rolled out of carpets. Serl was no stranger to some of the more bizarre aspects of life. He witnessed his sister’s bloody abortion when he was nine years old. He played many roles in his life, from chuck-wagon chef in the Pacific Northwest to voice-over in Hollywood. He picked peaches and cherries. He planted gardens. An American apricot somewhere is named after him. His life as a painter, however, was certainly not a role. He painted from the early ‘40s till the day he died. Many of his paintings reflect experiences in life where he constantly questioned the ramifications of gender and expression of personal sexuality. He felt he painted for the salt of the earth. He painted in order to document and keep alive his many personal stories. He painted to keep his soul alive. Before I met Jon Serl, my vision of the field of self-taught artists was romantic and highly idealized. I wanted the fool on the hill, the Buddha, the artist who could hand down pieces of godhead to others with his art, in order to clear a path through the trees in this hard world. I got other things. I got a reality check that enriched my future life with self-taught artists beyond all my own intentions, because it was harsh and real and unromantic. It was heady in its passion and genius, and down to earth in its execution. It was dirt and sweat and piss. I got very close and still I was a million miles away. To me this is very American. It is Greil Marcus’ Old Weird America. Sometimes I was so far into Jon’s world that I forgot one could ever be comfortable in reality, because of the mad lower depths that screamed around in his presence. Then there would appear a handhold, the maternal smile of early summer before its compulsive heat, a falcon hovering in a shimmering Kerouac autumn sky, and I would come back home, exhausted and in awe of the unpredictable magic of what makes men and women artists. 113 < MAVERICK!
Jon Serl Procession, n.d. Oil on canvas 33 x 20 inches / 83.8 x 50.8 cm SJ 492 MAVERICK! > 114
Jon Serl Woman Chasing Purse Snatcher, n.d. Oil on canvas 47.5 x 20.5 inches / 120.7 x 52.1 cm SJ 493 115 < MAVERICK!
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KEVIN SAMPSON (b. 1954) Kevin Sampson was raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey as the son of a civil rights leader. He trained, then joined the New Jersey police force as a sketch artist. He served for 18 years, 10 of those years as a sketch artist. A series of family tragedies eventually propelled him to heal himself with making art. Kevin Sampsonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s work is made of reworked and transformed found objects including cement, bones, tiles, fabric and various painting mediums including acrylics, oils and stains. These objects - living - the bones, the tiles, the tiny specks and leftovers from day-to-day living, are poetic archaeological elements that he sees as part of a conceptual vocabulary of impermanence and memory. In his works one gets the feeling of a barely-harnessed, dangerous energy, crackling with political, religious, and racial apprehension. His subjects are the people that he has known; people who had been part of this world; and people who have lived lives that he thought ought to be remembered. By constructing sculptures of physical memory inspired by Caribbean and American Southern styles, he builds works that are about family in all forms. They are at once political and intimate, frightening and freeing.
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Kevin Sampson The Madjet, 2014 Wood, metal, string, and found materials 27 x 25 x 8 inches / 68.6 x 63.5 x 20.3 cm SK 204
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TONY PEDEMONTE (b. 1954) Tony Pedemonte, born in Oakland, California, started at Creative Growth making abstract drawings, rarely limited by the paper’s edge. Often incorporating his surrounds, Tony would use whatever objects were nearby, including other artists’ paints, windows, and other random materials within reach. It was such tendencies that eventually caused his shift to three-dimensional work and the obsessively wrapped sculptures he now makes exclusively. Despite aesthetic comparisons to fellow Creative Growth artist Judith Scott, Tony never knew of her or how she worked. His first construction consisted of crumpling up his drawings and using cardboard scraps and a stray spool of thread to wrap them together. Tony now works with wooden armatures or repurposed items like bicycle wheels, wrapping with one spool of thread after another until the structural frame is nearly concealed. Distinguished by their smooth texture, a monochromatic palette, and geometrically-driven configurations, Tony’s sculptures exude a presence that is both tactile and enigmatic. Written for Creative Growth by Tom deMaria (reprinted with permission 2016)
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2014 Fiber and wood 33 x 20 x 5 inches / 83.8 x 50.8 x 12.7 cm TPed 10 MAVERICK! > 122
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2015 Fiber and wood 20 x 17 x 12 inches / 50.8 x 43.2 x 30.5 cm TPed 6
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2015 Fiber and wood 27 x 18 x 6.5 inches / 68.6 x 45.7 x 16.5 cm TPed 7
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2015 Fiber and wood 19 x 16 x 9 inches / 48.3 x 40.6 x 22.9 cm TPed 8
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2015 Fiber and wood 19 x 16 x 9 inches / 48.3 x 40.6 x 22.9 cm TPed 13
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Tony Pedemonte Untitled, 2013 Fiber and wood 49 x 13 x 12 inches / 124.5 x 33 x 30.5 cm TPed 14 131 < MAVERICK!
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HUSTON RIPLEY (b. 1961) Education 2000 Pratt Institute, MFA 1995 University of Pennsylvania, BFA, Cum Laude 1988 Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Certificate Solo and Two-Person Exhibitions 2011 Drawings, Adam Baumgold Gallery, NYC 2007 New Drawings, Feature, Inc., NYC Drawn Out and Shot, with Kit Brown, Projects Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2006 Metaphysics and the Virtual, with Joseph Nechvatal, curated by Robert C. Morgan, Lab Gallery, NYC 2000 Tissue Drawings, Monk Gallery, Brooklyn, NY 1997 Paintings and Napkin Drawings, New Arts Salon, Philadelphia, PA Selected Group Exhibitions 2016 Maverick, Cavin-Morris Gallery, NYC 2015 HEADSTRONG, Adam Baumgold Gallery, NYC Abundantia Cornu Copiae, Stephen Romano Gallery, Brooklyn, NY Heaven and Hell, Galerie Toxic, Luxembourg 2014 Galerie Polysémie et Nadine Servant Présentent, Galerie B&B, Paris 2013 Exposition d’oeuvres sur papier & autres, Galerie Quai Est, commissariat Jean Michel Marchais, Ivry sur Seine, France 2012 Face to Face, Adam Baumgold Gallery, NYC 2011 Résumé, Trafic Galerie, Paris 2010 Same:Difference, curated by Julien Robson and Robert Cozzolino, Annenberg Gallery, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA 2009 Punctum Pistorum – Kit Brown and Collaborations, Trafic Galerie, Paris 2008 Sexy Time: A Group Effort, Morgan Lehman Gallery, NYC 2007 Block Party II: An Exhibition of Drawings, Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA 2006 MisCreated, curated by Tina Zlody, Clark University, Worcester, MA 2005 Summer Selections 1, Fleisher/Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, PA 2004 Anatomically Correct, curated by Koan-Jeff Baysa, 473 Broadway Gallery, NYC 2003 Innocence & Transgression, curated by John Zorn, The Proposition, NYC Collections Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA The Collection Art Visionary, Melbourne, Australia Numerous private international collections
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Huston Ripley Untitled, 2014 Ink on Japanese paper 4.72 x 3.15 inches / 12 x 8 cm HuR 32 MAVERICK! > 134
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M’ONMA (b. 1951) M’onma has been working and evolving as an artist for over forty years. His early work consists of rough sketches and still-lifes, focusing on traditional techniques. His methods didn’t change until he was in his forties. M’onma doesn’t speak much about his process, but it would seem that letting go of his own intellectual control of his visual narrative is a very important part of it. He says he has always drawn; he has always made some kind of art, but one day he sat to draw his usual subject: a still-life, when he felt an entity take over his hand while he fell into a hypnogogic state. He didn’t fight it and didn’t return to his old way of making art. He did, however, feel it was a divine force. It was also a form of self-healing. He was living and recording those waking trancelike dreams. After that instance, M’onma left behind the conceptual drawings that he was used to producing. He was suddenly fuelled by an intense desire to explore the nature of this power, and to see where it directed him. As he learned to work with this divine force flowing through him, he had an epiphany that he was being lifted away from much of the doubt and ambiguity he had previously experienced. At this point in his artistic career, he has fully embraced this shift in his aesthetic, and now follows it with complete focus and commitment.
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Mâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;onma Untitled, 2003 Colored pencil on paper 27.25 x 14.5 inches / 69.2 x 36.8 cm IMo 59 MAVERICK! > 138
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Mâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;onma (Previous Page) Untitled, 2004 Colored pencil on paper 13.19 x 20.75 inches / 33.5 x 52.7 cm IMo 70 141 < MAVERICK!
Copyright Š 2015 CAVIN-MORRIS GALLERY
Cavin-Morris Gallery 210 Eleventh Ave, Ste. 201 New York, NY 10001 t. 212 226 3768 www.cavinmorris.com Catalogue design: Sam Richardson & Marissa Levien Photography: Jurate Veceraite Essays contributed by Randall Morris