Fleisher/Ollman

Presentation Details
Fleisher/Ollman’s group presentation focuses on formal and conceptual affinities across the works of five artists: Ron Nagle, Jesse Harrod, Dorothy F. Foster, Julian Martin, and James Castle. Nagle and Harrod both mine hobbyist craft traditions in the creation of very different bodies of work. The stunning finishes in Nagle’s cups bely the humble origins of his mastery: he first learned techniques such as slip-casting, china painting, and the use of decals from his mother’s basement ceramics club. Harrod’s wall sculptures embrace the material vernacular of macramé with a keen awareness of the irony of using paracord, a synthetic cord devised by the military, for their queer imaginations of the body. Fleisher/Ollman recently organized the first solo exhibition of Foster’s work since her death in 1986. She made hundreds of small, iridescent drawings during the last decade of her life, blending cartoonish and ethereal figuration and pattern with the underlying imagery of magazine and newspaper clippings. Martin’s vibrant pastel drawings—resonating strongly with the color sensibility of Harrod and Nagle—testify to his vigorous process with visible smudges, fingerprints, and tool marks. The presentation will also include previously unseen color drawings exploring the space between representation and abstraction by Castle (1899-1977), who was born deaf in rural Idaho and found his primary means of expression through art-making. 

About the Gallery
The Fleisher/Ollman Gallery opened in Philadelphia in 1952 as the Janet Fleisher Gallery. Over the next four decades, the gallery established a reputation as one of the premier galleries devoted to self-taught art, defining the field and helping to develop major public and private collections of this once-marginalized group of artists. Fleisher/Ollman was among the first to mount major exhibitions of artists such as Henry Darger, Sister Gertrude Morgan, Bill Traylor, and Martín Ramírez, and published early catalogues on James Castle, William Edmonson, and Joseph Yoakum. In 1997, John Ollman took over the gallery as its sole owner, and shifted the emphasis of its program toward the exhibition of contemporary artists whose work reflects the influence of the self-taught, including Anthony Campuzano, the Dufala Brothers, Jennifer Levonian, Isaac Lin, Tristan Lowe, Jayson Musson, Paul Swenbeck, and the late Bill Walton. Past exhibitions have explored the profound influence of artists like Joseph Yoakum and Martín Ramírez on the Chicago Imagists, while the more recent Castle in Context placed James Castle's soot and spit drawings and constructions alongside the work of such artists as Jasper Johns, Grant Wood, Terry Winters, and Forrest Bess.