The field of outsider art continues to expand its parameters, encompassing not only the output of self-taught artists, visionary artists, folk artists, vernacular artists, and artists with developmental, mental, and physical disabilities, but that of virtually any maker working outside the mainstream, whether by choice or by circumstance. At the same time, however, outsider art is going mainstream itself: in recent years it has been a focus of, or significant presence in, institutional exhibitions and biennials such as the upcoming Minnie Evans show at the Whitney and the 2024 Venice Biennale.
Perhaps most tellingly, it is attracting attention from the art market as well, with Christie’s even holding an annual auction dedicated to work by outsiders. In line with these developments, and somewhat paradoxically, the Outsider Art Fair has become both more clearly a stakeholder in a growing market category and, at the same time, more wide-ranging than ever in its definition of “outsider.”
This year’s installations run the gamut from a resurrection of Susan Cianciolo’s Run Store (2000), which features clothing and home goods created by the indie fashion designer and 40 of her friends, students, and past collaborators, to the Gallery of Everything’s solo booth of works by self-taught Gullah artist Sam Doyle (1906–1985).
As it does every year, the fair has likewise made room for a variety of price points and approaches. Ricco Maresca’s spare installation of big-ticket pieces by Bill Traylor, Martín Ramírez, and Henry Darger, for example, rubs shoulders with Keith de Lellis’s crowded, salon-style hang of affordable vernacular photographs, fashion illustrations, and other works on paper, including an astonishing early silkscreen by photographer Roy DeCarava. Elsewhere, a scholarly presentation of proto-Surrealist art at Cavin Morris exists comfortably beside the exuberantly chaotic booths of workshops like New York’s Fountain House Gallery.
Below are five more standout booths.
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“From the North”
Image Credit: Feheley Fine Arts. The community of Kinngait (known as Cape Dorset until 2020) in Nunavut, northern Canada, has produced such renowned Inuit artists as Kananginak Pootoogook, Pitseolak Ashoona, and Kenojuak Ashevak, largely through the West Baffin Eskimo Cooperative, an art studio established in 1959. This year, the fair’s annual curated booth has been organized by Canadian galleries Elca London and Feheley Fine Arts (which also has its own booth nearby). Titled “From the North,” it presents a selection of stunning works by Kinngait artists, including prints made between 1959 and 2009 at Kinngait Studios, Canada’s oldest fine art printmaking facility. Notable pieces include Rabbit Eating Seaweed, an early print by Ashevak showcasing the artist’s signature curvilinear forms, and Carrying Suicidal People (2011), a devastating colored-pencil drawing by Shuvinai Ashoona (b. 1961), who frequently addresses the sometimes bitter realities of contemporary Indigenous life.
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Fleisher/Ollman
Image Credit: Courtesy Fleisher/Ollman An Outsider Art Fair veteran, Fleisher/Ollman gallery is showing exceptional works by William Edmondson, Joseph Yoakum, James Castle, and other 20th-century giants, as well as a group of seven sculptures by the Philadelphia Wireman, an unknown maker whose drawings and constructions were found abandoned in an alley in Philadelphia in the late 1970s. Each of the Wireman’s creations is a collection of found objects, including pens, nails, jewelry, scraps of plastic, and other small items bound together with wire, tape, or rubber bands. This artist rarely included printed packaging of any size in their works, which is what makes this Pop art–adjacent piece so unusual.
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Galerie Bonheur
Image Credit: Courtesy Galerie Bonheur Galerie Bonheur of St. Louis; Palm City, Florida; and Sapphire, North Carolina, is featuring two works—a still-life and a landscape—by Trinidadian-born actor, theater director, and costume designer Geoffrey Holder, perhaps best known for his Tony award–winning work on The Wiz (and his 7up commercials). The gallery is also showing an exceptionally large beaded Voudou flag from Haiti, which shares a wall with contemporary interpretations of traditional flags by Haitian artist Mirelle Delice, the daughter of a Voudou priest and a mentee of famed flag artist Myrlande Constant.
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Dutton
Image Credit: Courtesy Dutton One wall of Dutton gallery’s booth is committed to works by Australian bushman Selby Warren (1887–1979). Warren, who took up painting at age 76 and was discovered at 85, created memory paintings—executed with brushes made from his wife’s hair—that incorporate such materials as mud, sand, cardboard, and grass clippings. In them, he recorded his life as an itinerant laborer and the countryside and wildlife of rural New South Wales. Hovering between folkish and abstract, they at times appear startling modernistic. More of Warren’s art is on view at Dutton’s New York space through March 29.
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Pol Lemétais
Image Credit: Courtesy Pol Lemétais In addition to examples of classic Art Brut, French gallery Pol Lemétais is offering a selection of atypically abstract works on found postcards by visionary British artist Madge Gill (1882–1961) and spellbinding ink drawings on vintage maps by French outsider Evelyne Postic (b. 1951). Lemétais is also showing a group of sketchbook pages by newcomer Roman Vissalavski, which provide one of the few political moments in the fair. Born in Belarus in the 1990s, Vissalavski fled first to Poland before moving to France in 2024. His comic book–like renderings, filled with armed soldiers and activists in miniskirts, provide trenchant commentary on his country of origin and, by extension, contemporary society as a whole. “To create, you need talent,” reads the text in one drawing. “to ruin, all it takes is malice.” Truly words for our times.
