Fleisher/Ollman Gallery

About the Gallery
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. The gallery continues to represent significant American vernacular artists of the 20th century, including Felipe Jesus Consalvos and the Philadelphia Wireman, for whom the gallery acts as the primary representative. Since 1997, when John Ollman became the gallery's sole owner, we have endeavored to re-contextualize the self-taught, showcasing this work alongside our contemporary program, which features both Philadelphia-based artists and those from farther afield. We strive to keep boundaries permeable by not overly emphasizing categorical differences. In recent years we have made efforts to broaden the view of what self-taught art might mean in a contemporary context by exhibiting work by living artists from developmentally disabled studio programs. In this regard, the gallery is the exclusive representative of Julian Martin (from Arts Project Australia, a program in Melbourne) and has mounted group and solo exhibitions of Philadelphia-area disability studio artists.

About the Presentation
Fleisher/Ollman’s Independent presentation this year showcases its unique program of bringing together self-taught masterworks and contemporary art. In an Independent first for the gallery, the presentation will include self-taught artists from farther afield (France and Japan—Augustin Lesage and M’onma, respectively) and also the United States (Thornton Dial) alongside Philadelphia-area artists (Sarah Gamble and Molly Metz) and a renowned ceramicist (Toshiko Takaezu). 

Augustin Lesage (1876–1954, France) was a coal miner turned spiritual medium who later devoted himself to painting. Communing with spirits, he was exhorted by them to paint a world beyond our own, depicting images from ancient Egypt and symbols from various religions including Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism, and Christianity—all organized into architectural compositions framed by highly detailed, decorative motifs. M’onma (b. 1951, Hokkaido, Japan) came to his current drawing practice by way of a mystical experience in which his body purportedly became luminescent and he began making drawings of raw energy guided by an unseen force. Decades later, he continues to create works of haunting otherness, fantastical compositions that combine strange beings and symbolic imagery occluded by misty fogs of color. Thornton Dial (1928-2016, Alabama) created dense accumulations of symbolically charged discarded materials often enveloped in expressionistic brushstrokes of color. Dial’s works were inspired by current events and politics filtered through the rich aesthetic traditions of the black South, like found object outdoor sculptural environments colloquially known as yard shows. Sarah Gamble (b. 1974, lives and works in Philadelphia) is recognized for uniting the spiritual and cosmic possibilities of abstraction with figuration, creating hybrid works that evoke a range of histories and mindsets like Surrealism, Victorian fairy painting, the tarot, and astronomy. Molly Metz’s (b. 1992, lives and works in Carlisle, Pennsylvania) multivalent paintings combined with collage elements bring to mind the complexity of existence from the cellular to the astronomical, from the terrestrial to the aquatic, and the nooks and crannies in-between. Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011, Hawaii) transcended traditional ceramics with her attention to abstract, painterly glazes placing her within the context of post-war artists like Franz Kilne, Joan Mitchell and Mark Rothko. Takaezu is best known for closed forms that are more sculptural than vessel-like; scholars have likened them to paintings-in-the-round. One signature later development in her practice are “Momos,” open-slit sculptures that allow the viewer a peek into a dark interior.