Fountain House Gallery at 2022 Outsider Art Fair

By: Camille Tibaldeo

Fountain House Gallery sold more than 30 artworks at the Outsider Art Fair, held March 3-6, 2022 at the Metropolitan Pavilion on West 18th  Street in Manhattan. This year marked the 30th anniversary edition of the Fair, which is the leading art fair featuring self-taught art, art brut, and outsider art from around the world. Fountain House Gallery has had a presence at the Fair for well over a decade. Last year, due to the pandemic, the Gallery’s presentation took place via a “Virtual Viewing Room.” At this year’s Fair, there was euphoria in the air as more than 60 international exhibitors were at last able to gather “in person” to share with visitors a striking array of original artworks.

Fountain House Gallery Director, Rachel Weisman

“For the 2022 Outsider Art Fair we showcased works made in 2020-2021, while the majority of Fountain House Gallery artists were working in extreme isolation, and this presentation provided the first opportunity for these works to be viewed in person,” said Rachel Weisman, Director of Fountain House Gallery. “Creating is a critical element in each of our artists’ lives – an irreplaceable ritual they utilize to process, and relate to, the world around them. While some Gallery pieces presented at the Fair were made in direct response to the pandemic, all of the works were made during the shifting circumstances of the past two years.”

What is “Outsider Art”? In the 1940s, the French artist and curator Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut (“Raw Art”) to describe “works produced by persons unscathed by artistic culture, where mimicry plays little or no part (contrary to the activities of intellectuals). These artists derive everything from their own depths, and not from the conventions of classical or fashionable art." The late English art critic Roger Cardinal, a champion of Art Brut, referred to it as “Outsider Art” in his 1972 book on the genre. The term stuck.