The product of three years of organizational finesse by Seattle curator Anne Grgich, the show offers a wide stylistic cross-section. At the gallery's Pearl District location, Salt Lake City artist Lyle Carbajal contributes two large works on panel, both untitled, that highlight Outsider Art's rough-hewn appeal. The crudely rendered figures and gritty surfaces have a primitivist allure—echoed across the gallery in English artist Delaine LeBas' skull-laden works, with their embroidered, be-sequined finishes. Donald Green, who hails from Washington, takes off in an unexpectedly elegant, conceptual direction with Baptism, a photographic installation made up of 15 panels, each protruding at a different distance from the walls and collectively portraying a man clad in a blood-red loincloth. Grgich's own works are on display, most notably Sphera Ameris, with its glittery jewel tones and encaustic surface. Showing the Outsider's disdain for traditional media such as canvas and panel, Grgich prefers to paint on unexpected surfaces like surfboards and jigsaw puzzles. Portland's own Walt Curtis offers the spectacular Our Lady of the Pumpkins, a ravishingly garish riot of reds, oranges and chartreuse, packed with Curtis' playfully erotic imagery. Riding dogs as if they were horses, naked men with erections reach out for one another's hands, yearning for connection as an earth-mother figure floats to the side: Gaia overseeing her creation in all its perverse vitality.
Woolley's Northeast gallery expands the show, with the full space dedicated to other Outsiders such as Michigan-based multimedia artist Douglas Padilla. Padilla's Los Diablitos has a Mexican/American Southwest feel and an overabundance of pictorial elements (collage, text, brightly colored dogs, and, for good measure, uncooked elbow macaroni glued to the surface) that somehow congeal into pleasantly raw eye candy.
120 NW 9th Ave., Suite 210, 224-5475 and 128 NE Russell St., 224-5475.
Both shows close May 27.
