On View

In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

“James Turrell: Into the Light”at MASS MoCA through 2025
What the museum says: “In James Turrell’s hands, light is more than simply a source of illumination: it is a discrete, physical object. His sculptures and architectural interventions elevate our experience and perception of light and space. Squares of sky seem to float, suspended, in ceilings or walls; architecture disintegrates; and brilliant geometric shapes levitate in mid-air.
“Turrell began using light as a sculptural medium in 1966, painting the windows of his studio in Santa Monica to seal off the natural light and experiment with projections. His practice has been shaped by the ongoing manipulation of architecture, framing and altering the way viewers engage with the environment.”
Why it’s worth a look: In MASS MoCA’s extended exhibition, “Into the Light,” one Turrell work from each decade of his years-long career is on view, revealing how his practice has evolved. Early works—such as Afrum from 1967, in which a beam is projected into the corner of a gallery—were revolutionary for Turrell’s use of architecture, and for making seemingly three-dimensional objects simply out of light.
In later works, Turrell mastered the Ganzfield (whole field) effect, in which viewers are fully immersed in light that changes color. Turrell’s controlled environments are a full sensory experience—which is just what the artist intends. With a background in perceptual psychology, he has dedicated his work to calling attention to light and space in all its majesty.
MASS MoCA is now building a Turrell Skyspace in a concrete water tank on its campus. The project has been more than 30 years in the making, and began when Turrell first visited the (then empty) museum, and imagined one of his colored sky works there.
How it can be used as an empathy workout: Being inside one of Turrell’s light spaces can be disorienting, like walking out of a dark theater into the harsh daylight; the drastic light change is often jarring. But as a shared experience, it can be extremely rewarding. Many of the artist’s inspirations come from his study of the cosmos, but not only that. Turrell is also a devout Quaker who emphasizes silent contemplation as a means to enlightenment.
Turrell’s works invite viewers to consider their own place in the world, which ultimately means considering those around us, and how we impact one another. The artist is especially invested in having viewers feel the same wonder and appreciation he does; he wants them to “enter the realm of the artist.”
“This world that we inhabit has a lot to do with the reality we form through vision,” Turrell said in a 2011 interview. “It’s taking your thinking to this other level. This happens in flight, and this is what art does… it broadens our perspective.”
What it looks like:

James Turrell, Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld), (1991). Gift of Jennifer Turrell© James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld), (1991). Gift of Jennifer Turrell. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld), (1991). Gift of Jennifer Turrell. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Dissolve (Curved Wide Glass), (2017). Collection of Hudson C. Lee. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Afrum (Projection), (1967). Collection of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Raethro II, Magenta (Corner Shallow Space), (1970). Collection of Myffanwy Anderson. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Once Around, Violet (Shallow Space), (1971). Collection of Tallulah Anderson. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Once Around, Violet (Shallow Space), (1971). Collection of Tallulah Anderson. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

James Turrell, Perfectly Clear (Ganzfeld), (1991). Gift of Jennifer Turrell. © James Turrell, Photo by Florian Holzherr. Courtesy of MASS MoCA.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

As galleries and art institutions around the world begin to slowly reopen, we are spotlighting individual shows—online and IRL—that are worth your attention.

“Awol Erizku: New Visions for Iris”Citywide in New York and Chicagothrough June 20, 2021

What Public Art Fund says: “Awol Erizku’s distinctive visual language emerges from thoughtful, contemplative underpinnings into layered, colorful, and striking photographs. Erizku (b. 1988, Gondar, Ethiopia) has created a new body of 13 photographs for 350 JCDecaux bus shelters across New York City’s five boroughs and throughout Chicago. ‘New Visions for Iris’ marks Public Art Fund’s first simultaneous presentation in two cities, and first ever in Chicago.
Growing up in the Bronx and influenced by its diverse milieu, Erizku’s approach to photography is informed by both contemporary life in the United States and global culture. In ‘New Visions for Iris,’ Erizku highlights the paradoxes of how hybrid identities are treated within American society. His bold and vibrant images contain evocative juxtapositions and compositions with highly saturated colors that call to mind the improvisational expressiveness and poetic nuance of his adopted forefathers: David Hammons, Sun Ra, Miles Davis, Kobe Bryant, Nas, and others.”
Why it’s worth a look: In the midst of the confusion, sadness, and anxiety of 2020 on an international scale, artist Awol Erizku was managing a tectonic shift in his personal life: the birth of his first child, a daughter named Iris. The experience profoundly affected the photographer, who rose to superstardom with his dramatically lit, meticulously staged images that challenge historical Western narratives by re-framing them through contemporary arbiters of identity.
Recalling early genre paintings and still lifes, Erizku’s tableaux feature a melange of icons and objects, including cowrie shells, African masks, Egyptian busts, colorful plastic toys, and Ethiopian letterforms, all references to aspects of personal and global identity, religion, nationality, and consumerism.
“As a father, I think about how to raise a daughter in this world and explain cultural parameters and gray areas,” the artist said in a statement. “I want my daughter Iris to grow up with these images so they’re the norm for her.”
Also included in the suite of photos are contemplative portraits, including one of Michael Brown Sr., pictured in profile and cast in shadow against a green backdrop. In another, a man is seen from behind wearing a Kobe Bryant jersey as he kneels in prayer on a small rug in a park. A great bird is perched on the seat of a motorcycle next to him. Birds occur frequently in the series, wings outstretched, either about to take off in flight, or just alit. These, like many aspects of the works in the show, serve as symbols of renewal and transformation.
“With ‘New Visions for Iris,’ I want to reflect a less fixed, rigid, institutional understanding of the spaces we occupy,” Erizku says.
What it looks like:

Awol Erizku, Deep Shadow (Michael Brown Sr.) (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Awol Erizku, Letters for the Nigist (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Awol Erizku, Visions for the Nigist (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Awol Erizku, 13 Months of Sunshine (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Awol Erizku, Park Match (2020) in New York. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Awol Erizku, Zuhr (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Awol Erizku, Pharaoh Whispers (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Awol Erizku, Arrival (2020) in New York. Photo: Nicholas Knight, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020) in Chicago. Photo: David C. Sampson, Courtesy of Public Art Fund, NY.

Awol Erizku, Going Home (2020). Commissioned by Public Art Fund. Courtesy of Awol Erizku.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

“teamLab: Digitized Kairakuen Garden”at Kairakuen Garden in Ibaraki, Japanthrough March 31
What the collective says: “teamLab’s art project, ‘Digitized Nature,’ explores how nature can become art. The concept of the project is that non-material digital technology can turn nature into art without harming it. Humans cannot recognize time longer than their own lifespans. In other words, there is a boundary in our understanding of the long continuity of time.
The forms and shapes of nature have been created over many years and have been molded by the interactions between people and nature. We can perceive this long duration of time in these shapes of nature themselves. By using the shapes, we believe we can explore the boundary in our perception of the long continuity of time.”
Why it’s worth a look: Japan’s Kairakuen Garden, which is lauded as one of the three great gardens of Japan, was created in 1842 at the end of the Edo Period. The botanical park is built around a pond and boasts 3,000 plum trees of more than 100 varieties that explode into stunning blooms in the spring.
In this already exquisite environment, experiential collective teamLab’s new installation plunges visitors into a multi-sensory experience that uses colored light to transform the garden into a mystical botanical wonderland.
How it can be used as an empathy workout: Part of teamLab’s purpose is to help visitors experience the organic beauty of the natural world by enhancing their connection to it. Spending time in nature increases one’s spatial awareness, understanding for how actions can directly affect the world around, and learning things outside of one’s typical day-to-day. Nature truly is a metaphor for how to practice compassion and empathy toward other people and living things. Using colored lights that are responsive to the ebb and flow of a visitor’s presence, the collective uses technology as an innovative way to—literally—shine a light on the garden’s unique landscape.
The art installation is sensitive to its inhabitants, and responds to them as individuals in order to create the most fulfilling experience. The exhibition only takes place at night, which enhances the dramatic lightscapes as they illuminate the centuries-old trees in various stages of bloom.
What it looks like:

teamLab, Life is Continuous Light – Plum Trees (2021). © teamLab. interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

teamLab, Life is Continuous Light – Plum Trees (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

teamLab, Abstract and Concrete – Between Yin and Yang (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digitized nature, sound: teamLab.

teamLab, Walk, Walk, Walk – Moso Bamboo Forest (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digital installation, endless, sound: Hideaki Takahashi. Voices: Yutaka Fukuoka, Yumiko Tanaka.

teamLab, Ever Blossoming Life Tree -Giant Taro Cedar (2021). © teamLab. Digitized nature, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

teamLab, Enso in the Natural Spring – Togyokusen (2021). © teamLab. Digital installation, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

teamLab, Resonating Pine and Azalea (2021). © teamLab. Interactive digital installation, endless, sound: Hideaki Takahashi.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

“i.de.al.is.tic”Through April 3 at the University of Albany
What the gallery says: “The University Art Museum, University at Albany, is pleased to present ‘i.de.al.is.tic,’ a new exhibition that features three rising Black artists and explores each artist’s acceptance of imperfection and their relationship to idealism.
“Curated by Michael Mosby, ‘i.de.al.is.tic’ brings together the work of artists Anthony Olubunmi Akinbola, Sean Desiree, and Marcus Leslie Singleton. The exhibition explores each artist’s relationship to the concept of idealism—the unrealistic aim for perfection. Singleton deals with the everyday, while Akinbola abstracts the concept of a Black identity, and Desiree objectively describes the inherent beauty in public housing units. In each of these artist’s practices there is an acceptance of imperfection, and through this resolve a true picture of a complex Black narrative emerges.”

Why it’s worth a look: In distinct and innovative ways, all three artists bring visual tropes and signifiers long associated with Black American life and identity under the microscope, juxtaposing joy and hardship in glimmering snapshots of day-to-day life.
There are Akinbola’s collaged durags, which are a symbol of Black excellence and respectability within the community, but have been criminalized in the wider culture; Desiree’s tender (and sometimes claustrophobic) woodworked depictions of public housing, and the spirit of connection it provides; and Singleton’s highly emotive and sensitive paintings of figures living their lives as authentically as possible.
“These are works that make you think,” Mosby says. “They require more looking. It may not be obvious at first why they are connected, or what they mean. But together, they weave a narrative that’s rooted in pursuing our highest selves and our dreams, all while contending with the imperfect contexts that inform our stories.”
What it looks like:
Anthony Akinbola, Camouflage #020 (Chorus) (2020). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Anthony Akinbola, Chopped and Screwed #02 (2019). Photo courtesy of the artist.

Marcus Leslie Singleton, Love Letter to the Dogon (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

Marcus Leslie Singleton, Guard at the Guggenheim (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

Marcus Leslie Singleton, Love Letter to the Dogon II (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

Sean Desiree, Marble Hill (2020). Photo courtesy the artist.

Sean Desiree, Franklin (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

Sean Desiree, Greenwood Manor (2019). Photo courtesy the artist.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art. 

“Albers and Morandi: Never Finished”at David Zwirner, New Yorkthrough April 3
What the gallery says: “Both [Josef] Albers and [Giorgio] Morandi are best known for their decades-long elaborations of singular motifs: From 1950 until his death in 1976, Albers employed his nested square format to experiment with endless chromatic combinations and perceptual effects, while Morandi, in his intimate still lifes and occasional landscapes, engaged viewers’ perceptual understanding and memory of everyday objects and spaces.
‘Albers and Morandi: Never Finished’ will put each artist’s distinctive treatment of color, shape, form, morphology, and seriality in dialogue. Looking specifically at the stunning palettes of Morandi’s celebrated tabletop still lifes depicting humble vessels and vases and Albers’s seminal ‘Homage to the Square’ series, the exhibition will elucidate how the two artists’ careful daily acts of duration and devotion allowed each to highlight the essence of color and the endless possibilities of their respective visual motifs.”
Why it’s worth a look: Albers and Morandi, contemporaries born two years apart, diverged in many ways. While Albers focused, especially at the end of his life, on a proto-postmodern exploration of relationships, stressing that all things are affected by their context, Morandi brooded over still lifes and landscapes, somehow managing to capture the anxieties of the 20th century in seemingly quiet forms.
Both artists were concerned with color especially, and each one used it as a structuring and restricting element: Albers in his sometimes brash juxtapositions of blocks of pigment, Morandi in his more subtle, often monochrome palette. This show reveals the underlying mechanics that drove the artists in their differing yet crucially overlapping pursuits. Beyond that, the exhibition also reveals the emotional intelligence of two artists who figured out ways to be enormously emotive without using expressive marks.
How it can be used as an empathy workout: Both artists believed in cultivating observational powers to better understand the world around them. As Morandi once noted: “One can travel the world and see nothing. To achieve understanding, it is necessary not to see many things, but to look hard at what you do see.” And for Albers, the interactions between a work’s materials allowed the development of what he called “visual empathy.”
“Respect the other material, or color—or your neighbor,” he told his students.
Make sure to take time to look at each work carefully, noticing how the artists captured light, shadow, and their objects’ relationships to the spaces in which they sit. A sense of lonely beauty runs through Morandi’s 1947 work Fiora, for example, while Albers’s 1954 Study to Homage to the Square captures a kinetic kind of energy in bright, warm-toned hues.
What it looks like: 
Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life) (1957). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

Giorgio Morandi, Natura morta (Still Life) (1953). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

Giorgio Morandi, Fiori (Flowers) (1947). © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/SIAE, Rome. Courtesy David Zwirner.

Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1973). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

Josef Albers, Study to Homage to the Square (1954). © The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Courtesy The Josef and Anni Albers Foundation and David Zwirner.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

One of the defining moments of Iraqi-American artist Michael Rakowitz’s career happened when he was just 10 years old.
“I remember my mother bringing us to the British Museum in London,” Rakowitz recounts in an exclusive new interview with Art21. She led him to the Assyrian galleries and pointed out a relief depicting the lion hunt of Ashurbanipal.
“What is this doing here?” she asked.
That was when Rakowitz began to understand that museums are not always neutral repositories for artifacts, but can also be tombs for objects that colonizers wrested from their homes and the people who created them.
The artist has since attempted to replicate the thousands of cultural artifacts looted from the National Museum of Iraq—a project which he acknowledges may be impossible to complete—as part of an ongoing series titled “The invisible enemy should not exist.”
One of the works, the bas-relief Room F, section 1, Northwest Palace of Nimrud (2020), is made from Middle Eastern food wrappers that the artist used as papier-mache to recreate a wall relief from a palace in Mosul that was destroyed by ISIS in 2015.
“I started to think about what it would mean for those artifacts to come back as ghosts to haunt Western museums,” Rakowitz says in the interview, which is part of Art21’s Extended Play series, adding that since he began the project in 2006, scores more cultural sites, like the Mosul palace, have been decimated by ISIS and other extremist groups. 
Production still from the Art21 “Extended Play” film, “Michael Rakowitz: Haunting the West.” © Art21, Inc. 2021.

Rakowitz often dresses his “ghosts” in the contemporary guise of imported food. “If a ghost is going to properly haunt,” he says in the video, “it has to appear differently than the entity appeared when it was living.”
At Hamilton College’s Wellin Museum, the artist was commissioned to recreate another of the palace’s chambers: Room H, which was originally a reception area filled with steles, sculptures, and reliefs. In the 19th century, many of those objects were shipped out of Iraq to institutions like the British Museum, the Louvre, and even the Wellin Museum itself. In Rakowitz’s reproduction, only the objects that were still in situ when ISIS destroyed the palace in 2015 are replicated, haunting the very kind of Western museum that now houses the objects of his own past.

Watch the video, which originally appeared as part of Art21’s Extended Play series, below. The brand new 10th season of the show is available now at Art21.org. “Michael Rakowitz: Nimrud” is on view at the Wellin Museum through June 18, 2021. [embedded content]
This is an installment of “Art on Video,” a collaboration between Artnet News and Art21 that brings you clips of newsmaking artists. A new series of the nonprofit Art21’s flagship series Art in the Twenty-First Century is available now on PBS. Catch all episodes of other series like New York Close Up and Extended Play and learn about the organization’s educational programs at Art21.org

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

Today marks the opening of Omega Mart, Meow Wolf’s long-awaited Las Vegas follow-up to its wildly popular Santa Fe immersive art installation the House of Eternal Return, which helped kickstart the art world’s experience economy.
“It’s really up to you to write your own story,” Emily Montoya, one of Meow Wolf’s co-founders and Omega Mart’s creative director, told Artnet News during a robot-led Zoom tour of the 52,000-square-foot space. Montoya recommends a two-hour stay, probably more than one: “You can’t really see everything on your first—visit multiple trips are encouraged to get the full thing.”
The main attraction at Area 15, a retail and entertainment complex that opened off the Vegas strip last summer, Omega Mart bills itself as “America’s Most Exceptional Grocery Store.”
At first glance, guests might mistake the exhibition’s entrance for a normal supermarket, with its shelves lined with ordinary comestibles. But a closer look reveals that they are stocked with more than 100 custom-made products, each more bizarre than the last, including “Who Told You This Was Butter?” air freshener, “Nut-Free Salted Peanuts,” and “Plausible Deniability Laundry Detergent.”
Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

“They’re all real and you can buy all of them,” Montoya said.
And if one ventures over to the store’s “Frosty Drinkables” section for a cold beverage, you’ll step inside a refrigerator—almost as if passing through the wardrobe to Narnia—and reemerge in the otherworldly “Projected Desert.” Slip behind the lockers in the store’s employee break room, and you’ll find the futuristic headquarters of Dramcorp, the fictional corporate giant that runs the store.
“Omega Mart is a subsidiary of the cyber-spiritual corporation Dramcorp, which is innovating technologies to revolutionize the supply chain,” Montoya explained. “These technologies have opened up portals which serve as the gateway from Omega Mart into other worlds.”
Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

The vaguely threatening nature of Dramcorp implies a critique of consumer culture. It appears to be lacing its products with an addictive “Additive S” ingredient, derived from a mysterious fount of energy called “the Source,” located in the bowels of the factory.
Guests are welcome to tease out the details of this mythology if they like, or they can stick to posing with the Instagram-friendly displays for photos.
“Our goal is to create an environment to let people come in and have their own interpretation,” Montoya said. “Our intent is to portray  a very nuanced and rich narrative that sprawls across multiple parallel dimensions of reality.”
Those realities include 60 different environments spread throughout four thematic sections, all set to a soundtrack featuring Brian Eno, Santigold, and Beach House. More than 325 artists and other collaborators contributed 250 unique projects.
A double helix slide at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

The experiential attractions include three massive slides for guests to ride. A sled outfitted with spray guns that release a sanitizing mist is sent down after each rider as part of health precautions, which also include timed tickets at 25 percent capacity and mandatory masks and temperature checks.
The Las Vegas opening is a big step for Meow Wolf, which, since its founding in 2008, has evolved from a scrappy art collective to a multimillion-dollar operation backed by Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin. Omega Mart is the first new site to open in a planned series of expansions in Denver, Phoenix, and Washington, DC.
But the company’s explosive growth has been threatened over the past year. In April, citing the pandemic’s “devastating economic impact,” more than half of Meow Wolf’s staff was laid off or furloughed. The Santa Fe flagship, which had been attracting 500,000  visitors annually, remains shuttered due to health regulations.
There have also been rumblings of discontent among staff. Some announced an intent to unionize in September. Those efforts, Montoya said, “are still in talks and it’s still progressing, but that’s all I can really say.”
See more photos of Omega Mart below.

[embedded content]

Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

The Juke Temple at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

The Projected Desert at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

A desert environment at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

“Deli meats” that look like famous paintings at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo by Kate Russell, courtesy of Meow Wolf.

A worm character at Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Meow Wolf’s Omega Mart at Area 15 in Las Vegas. Photo courtesy of Meow Wolf.

Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More

It’s been more than 70 years since Jean Dubuffet introduced the idea of Art Brut, and the art world is still learning to embrace the genre of art made outside of more industry-approved avenues of production. Now, there’s another evolution of the genus to consider: Photo Brut. 
So posits a new exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum in New York. The largest survey ever to consider photographic art emerging from outside the mainstream art world—and often outside society itself—it may be the best photo show you see all year. 
“Photo Brut,” as the exhibition is titled, brings together some 400 works culled from the unparalleled collection of French filmmaker Bruno Decharme, as well as the museum’s own holdings. In includes works by 40 artists, many unknown, who found in photography a space to reconstruct their lived realities into new worlds. (A larger version of the show was staged at the Rencontres d’Arles summer photo festival in 2019.)
In defining the genre, curator Valérie Rousseau, who co-organized the show, recalls the words of art historian Michel Thévoz, who previously oversaw the Dubuffet-founded Collection de l’Art Brut in Lausanne: These artists “use the camera to play against type, by making their daily life an unreality or making their chimeras hyperreal,” Thévoz once said. “They use photography in spite of or beyond its presumptive objectivity, to imbue fantasy with the stamp of realism or, inversely, to sublimate an ordinary subject.”
For these artists, Rousseau explains, “art making and the way they are living on a daily basis is fused; art is not a separate activity.” 
Morton Bartlett, Untitled (Girl Reading) (2006). (Original c. 1955.) Photo courtesy of the Bartlett Project, LLC. © The Bartlett Project, LLC.

The work of Morton Bartlett, one of the best known artists in the exhibition, is a helpful entry to the subject. From 1936 to ’63, Bartlett meticulously fabricated a series of lifelike plaster dolls, all styled as young girls and boys, and photographed them in tableaux alternately sweet and sexual, pure and prurient—in a way that recalls Balthus’s Thérèse paintings.
A freelance photographer and graphic designer by trade, Bartlett was clearly aware of the camera’s capacity for world creation. His work was undeniably artistic in its craft and concept, but whether or not it was intended for an audience beyond himself is unclear. His biography also invites a psychological reading of the work: He was adopted at the age of eight after both of his parents died.
Similar points could be made for nearly all of the artists in the show. They operated from a place of marginality, made work with little intention to show it, and, with few exceptions, experienced a great deal of trauma in their life. (The show, to its credit, focuses less on this latter point than does its catalogue, which was produced for the 2019 exhibition in Arles and never passes up the opportunity to mention possessive parents, abandonment, developmental disabilities, or homelessness.)  
Many turned to the camera to capture performance, transformation, or role play. Czech artist Lubos Plny, whose work was included in the 57th Venice Biennale, used it to document extreme physical acts, such as sewing his head to his arm. Meanwhile, Japanese artist Ichiwo Sugino, now in his mid-50s, uses tape, markers, and other crude tools to mold his face to look like famous figures—Keith Haring, Jack Nicholson,  Louis Armstrong—then photographs the results for his Instagram. The ingenuity on display in Sugino’s pictures is remarkable. He currently has just over 1,000 followers. 
Miroslav Tichý, Untitled (between 1960 and 1995). Courtesy of AFAM.

These two artists have found an outlet for their creations, but the same can’t be said for many of the artists in the show. Czech artist Miroslav Tichy, for instance, who made his own low-quality cameras to surreptitiously photograph women in public places, resisted showing his work even as curators took a liking to it late in his life. He lived on the streets while his apartment sat packed with prints, most degraded to the point of abstraction—an apt complement to his lascivious gaze. 
Tichy’s work, and other examples in the show like it, raises the question, should we be looking at this art? Rousseau, for her part, has a positive take on the subject.
“When I see these works in isolation, it can be raw or tough or crude; it can be a painful experience. But also I see a transformation,” she says. “I see a way that they have shaped their own trauma while building a reality that is absolutely positive and absolutely constructive. Everybody can look to these examples as inspirations, as… a desire to connect with people that are real around them.”
Artist unidentified, known as Zorro, Untitled (c. 1940). Courtesy of AFAM.

“Photo Brut” is on view through June 6, 2021 at the American Folk Art Museum in New York.
Follow Artnet News on Facebook:Want to stay ahead of the art world? Subscribe to our newsletter to get the breaking news, eye-opening interviews, and incisive critical takes that drive the conversation forward. More