Western Exhibitions is thrilled to present new work by Courttney Cooper, Jenny Crowe, Andrew Hostick, Michael Pellew, and Cathrine Whited at the 30th anniversary of Outsider Art Fair, March 3-6, 2022.
Metropolitan Pavilion |
Hours VIP & Press Preview: Thursday, March 3rd: 12–4pm Vernissage: Thursday, March 3rd: 4–8pmOpen to the Public: Friday, March 4th: 11am-8pm Saturday, March 5th: 11am-8pm Sunday, March 6th: 11am-6pm |
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Access the Outsider Art Fair website here
To request a preview, please contact Scott Speh: scott@westernexhibitions.com
For images/information, please contact Hannah Cusimano: hannah@westernexhibitions.com
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COURTTNEY COOPER draws large elaborate and exuberant maps from his physical and psychological experiences in Cincinnati, Ohio. Gluing together pieces of found paper from his job at a grocery store, Cooper’s obsessive drawings, rendered with ballpoint pens, map out neighborhoods in his hometown in remarkable detail. Buildings, streets, and conversations are all recorded from memory. His maps depict more than just streets and monuments, often addressing the season in which it was made, current events and projects going on locally, like the WEBN fireworks or the Taste of Cincinnati, even going back into the drawings to update them when new buildings are constructed or torn down. Cooper is always celebrating Oktoberfest in his life and in his work, you will find references to beer, balloons, pretzels, and German culture. Throughout the sprawling maps are written thoughts and phrases hidden beneath the landscape and revealed within the open white space of the paper, as noted in Matt Morris’ review on artforum.com: “But the party above belies the social tensions below: Gradually, one notices scrawled writing layered underneath Cooper’s landscapes, the text erupting in the blank passages of the streets.” Cooper’s work illustrates a sublime moment in time, attempting to understand something as complex as a city.
Courttney Cooper’s Cincinnati Map from 2011 was recently acquired by the Museum of Modern Art in New York. His solo show at Intuit: The Center for Intuit and Outsider Art in Chicago in spring of 2016 was reviewed in artforum.com and New City. His 2-person show (with Cole Carothers) at The Cincinnati Art Museum in 2013 was reviewed in CityBeat and AEQAI and he has exhibited extensively in the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky area including the Contemporary Art Center and The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, Covington, KY and is a studio resident at Visionaries + Voices, a non-profit arts organization that provides support for artists with disabilities, offering them professional studio space and that allows them to grow professionally and personally. His work at Western Exhibitions’ booth at the 2017 Outsider Art Fair was lauded in artnet and Brut Force. Cooper is the recipient of a 2015 Wyn Newhouse award and his work is included in a number of private and public collections including MOMA, The Cincinnati Art Museum and The Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft. He is represented by Western Exhibitions, Chicago.
https://vimeo.com/39887628
http://www.disparateminds.org/blog/2016/5/7/courttney-cooper
JENNY CROWE uses fragments of truth and information to create visually complex and powerful images. Somewhere in between poetry and painting, Crowe’s words are layered and overlap enough to visually flatten itself. She works methodically from left to right and top to bottom filling the void of empty space until the viewer is trapped somewhere between the impulse to read and a pure visual experience.
Crowe lives in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she has been making art at the Visionaries and Voices studio for years. Her first interest in making art came from an early age looking at stained glass. She keeps journals of autobiographical writing, which slowly have become more entrenched, in her artmaking process. Her work has been exhibited regionally in Cincinnati for years but is now beginning to show nationally, including group shows with Western Exhibitions in Chicago and Andrew Edlin Gallery in New York City.
ANDREW HOSTICK is self-taught, taking as his subject the advertisements and reproductions found in various art magazines including Art In America and Artforum. In each drawing Hostick inscribes and scores the mat board with heavy-handed marks, slowly building up a velvety sheen of colored pencil. The resulting works constitute a beautiful collapse of both primitive and contemporary sensibilities, and comment directly on a sort of voyeuristic access to an Art World largely inaccessible to the artist as outsider practitioner.
In an interview for Brut Force, author and Visionary + Voice co-founder Keith Banner writes: “he takes what is there and repurposes it for what isn’t there until he finds what he’s after. He’s very humble about it. The work does not come at you with nostrils flaring, or with a Sherrie Levine satirical smile. Approaching his craft with a workmanlike precision, he utilizes all resources available—including art reproductions and art magazine ads— to create small, vibrant creations that resonate clearly as his own.”
Andrew Hostick originally became interested in creating art in high school. In 2010 he joined the Visionaries + Voices, a progressive art studio for artists with disabilities in Cincinnati, Ohio, and since then has developed a focused studio practice. Exhibitions include a solo show at Morgan Lehman Gallery in New York City;Kentucky Museum of Art and Craft, Louisville, KY; The Carnegie, Covington, KY; EXPO Chicago with Western Exhibitions, Outsider Art Fair in New York with Morgan Lehman Gallery and his work has been written about Disparate Minds. He lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio.
http://www.disparateminds.org/blog/2019/8/28/andrew-hostick-at-western-exhibitions
MICHAEL PELLEW JR, born in 1979, was among the founding members of LAND Gallery in 2005. Raised in Brownsville, Brooklyn, by his mother and father, a nurse and psychologist, Pellew remains an expert on NYC transit, local current events, and pop culture. As a young child inspired by the world around him, Pellew began making drawings of buses and trains, and continued to hone his artistic skills by copying cartoon characters not limited to Schulz’s Peanuts gang, Voltron, and He-man, all popular cartoons in the 1980s. Self-proclaimed the “Godfather of Art,” he is a prolific illustrator and humorist, constantly working on his line of greeting cards, album covers, narrative art books, wooden sculptures and large drawings.
According to Pellew, he draws “punk funk freaks from the East Village and around the Tri-State area.” He derives inspiration from pop culture magazines, reality television, news reports, heavy metal music, and the everyday experience of living in the melting pot that is New York City. Each of the drawings have a similar aesthetic; cartoon-like figures that appear lifeless at first glance, all lined in a row, almost reminiscent of a police line-up. Upon closer viewing each character is assigned a thematic outfit complete with accessories and handwritten text, providing enormous life through simple gestures.
Using mechanical pencil and markers to illustrate each featured character, Pellew then adds a simple text or thought bubble. Superstorm Sandy, depicted as a blond woman born as Cassandra Pearson, wears an “I love myself” t-shirt and asks for a pepperoni pizza. A goth Tom Cruise exclaims about his hair extensions with a speech bubble that reads “Dang It!” All these seemingly unrelated characters combined can tickle anyone’s funny bone, wherein lies the magic.
Since 2005 Michael Pellew has been in numerous local and international exhibitions, most notably Belgium’s MADmusée, the Museum of Modern Art’s Cullman Education Building, The Gallery at Ace Hotel New York, the Christian Berst Art Brut Gallery in New York City, multiple Chelsea galleries, and the Outsider Art Fair. In May of 2016, an entire night of metal music and art dedicated to Pellew at the historic music venue Saint Vitus, located in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. He has been featured in collaborations to create skateboards adorned with his drawings through Make Skateboards and, most recently, Travelers Company designed a one-of-a-kind notebook cover using Pellew’s drawing. His works have been acquired by collectors, actors, musicians, and fellow artists, including Spike Lee and Mos Def. Pellew has been featured in the Huffington Post, VICE Magazine, Disparate Minds, ARTNews, W Magazine and PAPER magazine. His cult following continues to grow as Pellew is forever staying topically current and timelessly amusing.
http://www.disparateminds.org/blog/2018/7/30/michael-pellew-1-under-control-world-tour
CATHRINE WHITED writes lists as the first step in her art-making process. She then draws each item on the list, rendered in her unique way of framing and labeling the item before cataloging the list’s drawings together as a unit. For instance, with a list entitled, “What’s in my fridge?” every possible item that is in the fridge is labeled. She starts a drawing with a ruler, making guidelines in pencil, to then render the imagery and text. Colored pencil is then applied for the right amount of color before moving to the next item on the list. Her renderings are a vehicle for viewers to isolate, experience, and analyze our collective everyday interaction with the objects and culture that surrounds us.
Whited is a studio resident at Visionaries + Voices, a non-profit arts organization that provides support for artists with disabilities, offering them professional studio space and that allows them to grow professionally and personally. Whited has been included in shows at Western Exhibitions in Chicago, The Carnegie Art Center in Covington, KY and Summertime Gallery in Brooklyn, and her work has been written about on the website Elephant.