Outsider Art Fair Announces Lead Sponsorship of The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection On View at The Drawing Center Oct 10, 2024–Jan 19, 2025
Outsider Art Fair Announces Lead Sponsorship of
The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection
On View at The Drawing Center
Oct 10, 2024–Jan 19, 2025
The Outsider Art Fair (OAF) is pleased to announce its role as a lead sponsor of The Way I See It: Selections from the KAWS Collection, on view at The Drawing Center from October 10, 2024 to January 19, 2025.
The Drawing Center has a long, ongoing history of championing self-taught artists, and OAF is pleased to lend support to this kindred institution and its presentation of more than 350 works from the collection of Brian Donnelly, the artist known as KAWS.
Donnelly is a stalwart supporter of Outsider artists and the galleries that are an integral part of the OAF community. As an artist, collector, and board member at the American Folk Art Museum, he understands what is precious and influential about this corner of the art world. OAF’s sponsorship of this exhibition is an acknowledgement of the significant role that Donnelly has played in increasing the awareness of Outsider Art in the contemporary cultural landscape.
Donnelly’s stature as an artist is rooted in his uncanny capacity to convey the complexity of life today in an accessible visual language that transcends cultural boundaries, which is reflected in the art with which he surrounds himself—more than 3000 works that serve as a visual library of personal and artistic inspiration— and not just his big name peers in the art market, but a connoisseur’s treasure chest of vernacular expressions including underrecognized greats from graffiti art, underground comics, skate and surf culture, and the rich cosmos of visionary artists, self-taught and otherwise, including, in this exhibition, outstanding examples from Nicole Appel, Eugene Von Bruenchenhein, Joe Coleman, Henry Darger, William A. Hall, Susan Te Kahurangi King, Helen Rae, Martín Ramírez, Yuchiro Ukai, and Adolf Wölfi.
OAF has a history of engaging the art world with events throughout the year beyond the timeline of the actual fair. In 2021, it produced Super-Rough, a large-scale group exhibition of some 200 sculptural works by self-taught artists curated by Takashi Murakami. In 2019, OAF collaborated with artist Javier Tellez to curate The Doors of Perception on Randall’s Island at Frieze New York. In addition, the annual OAF Talks series embraces renowned figures from the worlds of art, music, science, and literature, most recently, David Byrne, Jean Hanff Korelitz, and Warren Zanes for the panel Culture and the Uncultivated, moderated by Carlo McCormick at the New Museum.
Collections like this do not come about often. The Way I See It offers a rare encounter with the idiosyncratic vision of an artist whose influence continues to shape contemporary art. We hope you will join the Outsider Art Fair in sharing our appreciation of this landmark exhibition.
For a full list of artists in the exhibition see The Drawing Center’s full press release here.
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