Andrew Edlin Gallery, Art Basel Paris 2024: Forrest Bess, Dan Miller, Melvin Way
Art Basel Paris 2024
Forrest Bess, Dan Miller, Melvin Way
Grand Palais, Booth F5
October 18 – 20, 11 – 7pm
Dan Miller (b. 1961), Untitled, 2023, Ink and acrylic on paper, 55.5 x 82 inches
October 15, 2024 – Paris, France – Andrew Edlin Gallery is pleased to present the work of three visionary artists for Art Basel Paris 2024: Forrest Bess (1911-1977), Dan Miller (b. 1961), and Melvin Way (1954-2024). All three developed idiosyncratic artistic vocabularies in their attempts to communicate. In fact, both Miller and Way were featured in MoMA’s groundbreaking 2008 exhibition Glossolalia: Languages of Drawing.
Melvin Way, who recently passed away at the age of 70, was living in a men’s shelter in New York City in the 1980s after having descended into drugs and homelessness following the onset of schizophrenia. At an art workshop there, Way began using ballpoint pens to make small drawings filled with chemical and mathematical formulae, abstract designs and cryptic words and phrases. Way’s personal system of meaning is indecipherable to the casual viewer, but a close-enough glance reveals a fervent attempt to divine the secrets of the universe. His works have been exhibited at international galleries and art fairs and are held in the permanent collections of the Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Collection de l’Art Brut (Lausanne), Museum of Modern Art (New York), the American Folk Art Museum (New York), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC).
Dan Miller also uses ballpoint pen as well as paint in his enigmatic text-based abstractions which consist of dense layers of letters, symbols, and words. Though the words and symbols are not always easy to decipher, a drive to communicate lies at the heart of Miller’s work. The artist was diagnosed with autism during early childhood after a protracted struggle to speak. He has spent over three decades working at the Creative Growth Center in Oakland, California, a nonprofit serving artists with disabilities. His works were featured at the Venice Biennale in 2017 and are held in the permanent collections of Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris), Collection de l’Art Brut (Lausanne), Museum of Modern Art (New York), the American Folk Art Museum (New York), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC), and more recently the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Forrest Bess was also known for communicating messages not easily grasped by his viewers. He started by painting his visions, which came to him beginning at the age of four: recognizable scenes of city life, animals, that gave way to washes of color, recurring abstract symbols and hidden truths of human nature. The sensitivity of Bess’s paintings resonated with gallerist Betty Parsons’ roster of upcoming stars like Pollock, de Kooning, and Rothko. Although Bess’s visions would eventually become too far-out for his supporters, over time, the mysterious allure of his paintings would prove transcendent, and he received a surge of recognition posthumously. His works have been exhibited widely and are held in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art (New York), San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Phillips Collection (Washington, DC),The Menil Collection (Houston, TX), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA), the Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), and the Kunst Museum Winterthur (Switzerland).
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About Andrew Edlin Gallery
Established in 2001, Andrew Edlin Gallery gained early recognition exhibiting the works of both emerging and seminal self-taught American artists, and European art brut masters. In 2006, the gallery was awarded exclusive representation of the Henry Darger Estate.
In subsequent years, AEG has championed significant yet under-recognized artists from the 20th and 21st centuries and has steadily produced critically acclaimed exhibitions featuring the works of both trained and untrained artists, including Thornton Dial, Ralph Fasanella (estate), Eugene Von Bruenchenhein (estate), Marcel Storr (estate), Beverly Buchanan (estate), Paulina Peavy (estate), Spain Rodriguez (estate), Joe Coleman, Tom Duncan, Karla Knight, Terence Koh, Dan Miller, Esther Pearl Watson, Melvin Way, George Widener and Domenico Zindato. Committed to documentation and research, AEG has produced publications for Darger, Dial, Duncan, Fasanella, Von Bruenchenhein, Storr, Knight, Peavy, and Zindato, and is in the midst of a major monograph project for Buchanan.
AEG has participated in Art Basel Miami Beach, Paris+ Par Art Basel, the Armory Show, Frieze (NY and LA), FIAC, Art Brussels, The Art Show (ADAA), Independent and the Outsider Art Fair, among other art fairs. The gallery is a member of the Art Dealers Association of America.
For more information, visit https://www.edlingallery.com/.
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