Memories, in John Brill’s work, are things — photographs, often grainy and myopic, enshrined in everyday reliquaries: vintage frames, candy dishes, glass bowls, teacups and saucers. Nostalgia is the lure — the madeleine of antique dressers crammed with knickknacks and family photos — and the imagery, which becomes squirmier and more incomprehensible the closer you look, is the trap.
A common misconception about so-called “outsider art” is that all of the people who make it are either cut off from the world (because they’re crazy) or dead. And so, a common concern in discussions of the outsider art market is exploitation. Are dealers taking advantage of artists who are alive but disabled or exploiting the estates of those who were once mentally ill and are now deceased? “Today’s new art market stars are either dead, mentally impaired, or can barely speak for themselves,” critic Christian Viveros-Faune oncewrote in the Village Voice.
The Pursuit of Art, 2013
Matt Freedman, “Hats and Broom on Bed with Drinking Glass Reflecting Full Moon” (2013), epoxy…
From Lynch to the Lynchian and the Dreams in Between
David Lynch, “Two-Tongue Johnnie” (2012), mixed media, 27 x 31 inches (all images courtesy Kent…