THIS IS THE PLACE FOR DISCOVERIES AND DISCUSSIONS OF THE MOST INVENTIVE ART FORMS – ALL KINDS OF ART THAT IS FAR-OUT, FANTASTIC, FREE-SPIRITED, FUN, FUNKY, PHENOMENAL AND GOOD FOR THE SOUL.
RECENT FEATURES
**ROB OBER: NO IDEOLOGY, PLEASE. THIS ART IS REAL.
“I am suspicious of art informed or directed by ideas or any ideology,” the American artist Rob Ober says. Keeping it real, authentic, shot through with a real pulse, and wildly colorful, Ober’s work feels irresistibly spontaneous and fresh. See. React. Paint. Here, the artist, who grew up all over the place, shares some thoughts about his art. Note to self: We’re in love with those gators. Click here to see article.
**JAMAICAN INTUITIVES: IT’S RAS DIZZY’S WORLD
Ras Dizzy (circa 1932-2008) was one of the most important of the Jamaican Intuitives, a group of self-taught artists whose works began to earn recognition in Jamaica in the late 1970s and notably contributed to shaping a sense of the postcolonial, independent island country’s national cultural identity. A selection of Dizzy’s works from a unique private collection. Click here to see article.
**A BIG, BOLD NEW BOOK: FRANÇOIS JAUVION’S TRIBUTE TO ART BRUT AND OUTSIDER ART MASTERS
In 2020, the French artist François Jauvion’s large-format book L’imagier singulier was published. It featured his own illustrations and texts by various specialists about the lives and accomplishments of numerous art brut and outsider artists. Now, a second volume of Jauvion’s big opus is here. See our overview of L’imagier singulier, Tome 2. Click here to see article.
**ARTIST CATHY WARD: IN LONDON, THE PSYCHIC, SOULFUL MESSAGES OF “THE ORACLES”
Like many art-makers, what with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic period and other concerns, the London-based artist Cathy Ward, who works in various media and genres, has wrestled with numerous, big challenges. Recently, as if purging the negative energy surrounding her, Ward sat down in a corner of her home to create a series of bold, mystical paintings. “They allowed me to reset myself,” she says. See a portfolio of these powerful new pictures. Click here to see article.
**PHOTOGRAPHER JOEL SIMPSON: CAPTURING NATURE’S BIZARRE CREATIVE SPIRIT — AND POWER
The photographer Joel Simpson travels widely in search of unusual natural rock formations and strange textures in the surface of the earth. Here, a selection of new photos from Simpson’s latest expeditions to the Southwest of the U.S.A. illustrates a theoretical approach he has developed to appreciating such striking images. As he notes, it leads viewers “from traditional landscape through abstraction, figuration, and finally to fiction." Click here to see article.
**OFF THE WALL: NEW YORK CITY STREET POETS AND VISIONARIES, THE KENNETH GOLDSMITH COLLECTION
In the 1980s, Kenneth Goldsmith, a poet and university professor, began tearing off anonymously made, handwritten ads, religious-themed proclamations, and oddball declarations that he found posted on walls and lampposts on the streets of New York City. A bemusing selection of such bizarre “poetry” was recently shown at Andrew Edlin Gallery. Click here to see article.
**GENEVA, SWITZERLAND: EMMANUEL HERZ’S JELLYFISH INVASION
Earlier this year, at the café/restaurant Remor in Geneva, Switzerland, we stumbled upon a stunning display of Emmanuel Herz’s festive “Fascinantes Méduses” (“Fascinating Jellyfish”), a group of sculptures and paintings that had taken over the old joint’s ceiling lamps and walls. We were smitten — and maybe also bitten. See out photo-filled report. Click here to see article.
HYENA: CAPTURING THE SHAPE-SHIFTERS
HYENA is a new publication from Hexentexte featuring essays about the history of Surrealism created by female artists, along with contemporary poetry and enigmatic forms of writing, illustration, collage, and photography. All of this material evokes and is inspired by the ideas and aesthetics of Surrealism and its enduring legacy. A review by Sarah Fensom, brutjournal’s Los Angeles-based U.S.A. West Coast bureau chief.
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MOTHER NATURE! LAURA McMANUS INTERPRETS THE CHANGING SEASONS IN HER NEWEST, LARGEST PAINTINGS EVER
Based in the riverside town of Hancock, in upstate New York, Laura McManus has spent much of this year working on four large-scale paintings depicting the four seasons. It has been, she says, the most ambitious, most rewarding painting project she has ever undertaken. It’s on view at a gallery space in Hancock in an exhibition that will open on November 2 and run through December 22, 2024. See our art-filled interview with the artist, who told us, “I wish I could always paint this big.”
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IN L.A., SCI-FI MEETS LGBTQ+ IN AN INTRIGUING LOOK AT THE CITY OF ANGELS, DEVILS, ALIENS — AND EVERYTHING IN BETWEEN
From Los Angeles, brutjournal’s U.S.A. West Coast bureau chef, Sarah Fensom, reviews “Sci-Fi, Magick, Queer L.A.: Sexual Science and The Imagination,” an exhibition at the Fisher Museum of Art, on the campus of the University of Southern California. Its subjects: On-the-margins organizations, secret societies, and fan-produced publications, plus the people who were involved with them and the ways in which they brought together L.A.’s sci-fi, occult, and queer communities over the decades of the 20th century. Spiritual seekers and far-out futurists!
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TAKESADA MATSUTANI: THE GUTAI SPIRIT IS ALIVE AND WELL IN A REVEALING, CAREER-SPANNING RETROSPECTIVE EXHIBITION
Takesada Matsutani was a second-generation member of the Gutai Art Association, an influential, Japanese avant-garde artists’ collective of the post-World War II period. Today, their activities are regarded as seminal in the development of action art, site-specific art, and performance art. Based in Paris, Matsutani is still active on many fronts. See Edward M. Gómez’s art-filled report about the big, new Matsutani retrospective that is now on view at Tokyo Opera City Gallery (through Dec 17, 2024).
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ISSA IBRAHIM: ART FOR HEALING, THINKING CRITICALLY — AND SHAKING THINGS UP
The self-taught artist Issa Ibrahim spent nearly two decades as a resident patient in one of New York City’s most well-known — and notorious — psychiatric hospitals. Traumatic events led to and came with that experience, but Ibrahim’s discovery of his creative, expressive, critical voice as an art-maker and communicator has helped what he calls his healing and survival. Our report includes a selection of his punchy images.
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