The Christian Berst art brut gallery presents from 5 March to 18 April “in abstracto #2” a group exhibition of abstract artworks produced by twenty-five established and contemporary artists.

Art brut and abstraction, far from any figuration

Previously the notion of abstract art brut has been at best an oxymoron; at worst an antinomy. Yet, if we are now willing to look at the works closely, rather than blindly admit the exclusions on which Jean Dubuffet based his theory of art brut, we must face the facts: many works of art brut escape greatly from the figuration in which we thought we could keep this field locked up.

As early as 1922, psychiatrist Hans Prinzhorn preferred the works of his patients who manifested a ‘purer’ state to those that were overly narrative, in that the process that gives rise to them would not be subject to the interference of cultural conditioning and artistic know-how. This is empahsized in Raphaël Koenig’s exhibition catalogue for “in asbtracto #2”.

In forging his conception of art brut in opposition to the abstract art that was popular at the time, Dubuffet certainly did not appreciate the extent to which non-figurative art brut considerably broadened his quest for essentiality: at most he accepted the seismographs of the spiritualists.

In this second part of “in abstracto”, Julius Bockelt’s stunning, undulating drawings will be introduced for the first time as well as the roundabout tracings of Séverine Hugo and the elliptical graphics of Alexandre Vigneron. To these will be added other remarkable pieces, such as the “divine marks” by Frédéric Bruly-Bouabré, the Siamese blue stars of Johann Hauser, the hieratic composition of Vlasta Kodrikova or the Philadelphia wireman’s magnetic assembly.

“If you look at the ‘prehistory’ of art brut, you may be surprised to find that some actually tend to focus on abstract art at the expense of artistic depiction.”

- Raphaël Koenig

Raphaël Koenig is currently fellow at Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. He has a Ph.D. in comparative literature from Harvard University where he produced a thesis discussing the reception of ‘outsider art’ and ‘art brut’ by French and German avant-gardists, from Prinzhorn to Dubuffet. He is also an alumnus from the École Normale Supérieure, Paris, where he graduated with a degree in Modern Languages.

https://www.christianberst.com/