| One gets a sense of the unabashed intensity of real outsider art when one sees it. The show at Andrew Edlin Gallery had so much of that hard core outsider oddness that it made me giddy. Anchoring the show is Adolf Wölfli’s Untitled, 1925. Like a magic carpet ride, Wölfli can take you to more places than most artists can imagine. Malcah Zeldis offers Seder Table, 1984, a painting dominated by intense patterns and odd angles, which create a powerful perspective that reminded me of an out of body experience I once had. You know, when you float above it all. Shivers. |  |
Shivers, Wild, Yikes, Cool, Ahhhhh! – D. Dominick Lombardi
One gets a sense of the unabashed intensity of real outsider art when one sees it. The show at Andrew Edlin Gallery had so much of that hard core outsider oddness that it made me giddy. Anchoring the show is Adolf Wölfli’s Untitled, 1925. Like a magic carpet ride, Wölfli can take you to more places than most artists can imagine. Malcah Zeldis offers Seder Table, 1984, a painting dominated by intense patterns and odd angles, which create a powerful perspective that reminded me of an out of body experience I once had. You know, when you float above it all. Shivers.
Carl Binder’s Plowing, 1964 is incredibly cinematic and built on pure emotion. Complete with frenzied crows and an impossibly still silhouette of a farmer. Then there is that dusty haze dominating the composition, covering the hind quarters of two horses. Makes these two steeds look like they are joined at the hip, they try to release themselves from that impossible situation. And that smoky sludge, that clumsy cloud and the odd angle that the wild eyed horses take gives the whole narrative this sort of vortex feel, like the center is sucking everything in. Wild.
Michael Ryan’s Zoo, 2003, is a ghostly master work of guts and guile. It’s like: screw color, it’s about emotion. So he pushes paint around, scratching and clawing until it almost all disappears. But it doesn’t go away. It stays like a stain on your grandmother’s couch. An unforgettable and somewhat forgivable action that impresses all who see it, but it’s something you can’t forget and must deal with some day. Yikes!
Then there is Vahakn Arslanian’s Broken Wine Bottle, 2000. Now the anger is ramped up. It’s a drawing of a broken and hopelessly realigned wine bottle framed behind a repeatedly smashed sheet of glass that looks like it is ready to come apart at any moment. It’s pure energy.
T.V. Tommy Vision’s (I love that name) offers a Self Portrait, 2001, that is as endearing as it is absurd. It is all off, everything, yet it is held together by this will, this desire to create something—to make something that represents the artist more on an emotional level than anything human. Cool.
Then there is Ghost of Chance, 1995, by John Spinks. A classic Spinks that mixes an earthy surface which cradles book pages and bindings. A beautiful medley of forms and perspective that is truly timeless and intelligent. Ahhhhh.
