About the Exhibition

Arusha Gallery presented Conjure, a group show at its new exhibition space in Bruton, Somerset, co-curated with Chantal Powell. It featured hand built ceramics that speak to the artist's hand and realm of the unseen. Shinichi Sawada featured with two works. The full list of exhibiting artists were:

Anna Hughes, Anousha Payne, Ashleigh Fisk, Bea Bonafina, Bella Hunt & DDC, Carl Anderson, Chantal Powell, Hannah Rowan, Jame St Findlay, Katia Kesic, Mel Arsenault, Rafaela De Ascanio, Rosie McLachlan, and Shinichi Sawada

About the Exhibition

The Outsider Art Fair presented Super-Rough, a large-scale group exhibition of close to two hundred sculptural works by approximately 60 self-taught, visionary and vernacular folk artists from around the world. Overseen by Takashi Murakami, in collaboration with several dozen Outsider Art Fair dealers and gallerists, the show took place in a raw, expansive ground floor space in SoHo, New York City.

Super-Rough, a word play on Superflat—Murakami’s highly influential term for a new genre of Japanese Pop Art that emerged at the turn of the millennium, proposes the private andidiosyncratic universe of Outsider Art as an alternative to the ongoing spectacle of contemporary art and popular culture. Also referencing Outsider Art’s DIY dimensionality and handmade aesthetic, Super-Rough offers a diametrical departure from the slick seductive surfaces of a shiny consumer consciousness. At the same time it reflects Murakami’s understanding that in visual culture there is equivalence to all manners of art, a super-flattening of prior hierarchical distinctions between fine art and popular or vernacular arts, between what is professional and institutionally ratified and what is self-taught.

Shinchi Sawada had six ceramic works in this exhibition.

About the Exhibition

After Shinichi Sawada’s successful solo show at Venus over Manhattan in New York, his work was then profiled through Art Basel OVR: Pioneers. This online platform was dedicated to artists who have broken new aesthetic, conceptual, or socio-political ground. The presentation comprised a series of eight cereamic sculptures as a collaboration between Venus over Manhattan and Jennifer Lauren Gallery.

Thirty-eight year old Shinichi Sawada has kept the same schedule for nearly twenty years. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, he attends Nakayoshi Fukushikai, a social welfare facility in Japan’s Shiga prefecture, where he spends the morning working at the in-house bakery, making bread. He spends the afternoons working with clay. Sawada first attended this facility, one of many similar institutions in Japan designed to support people with intellectual disabilities, when he was eighteen years old, shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. In the two decades since, his ceramic beasts – sometimes ghoulish, always fantastical, and deeply redolent of ancient mythologies still coursing through Japanese culture – have attracted the attention of critics and connoisseurs worldwide, notably after a presentation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.

The Art Newspaper’s Tess Thackara selected Sawada as one of five artists to seek out at Art Basel: Pioneers - Read HERE

About the Exhibition

Beginning February 24th, Venus Over Manhattan presented the first United States solo exhibition of Shinichi Sawada’s ceramic sculptures. The showcase of thirty works followed a recent museum solo exhibition that traveled in fall 2020 from the Museum Lothar Fischer, in Neumarkt, Germany, to the George Kolbe Museum, Berlin. On view through end of March, the Venus exhibition was organised in collaboration with Jennifer Lauren Gallery, Manchester, UK, who has worked with the artist for many years.

In conjunction with its presentation, Venus published a generously illustrated catalogue featuring new and recent writing on Sawada’s art.

Thirty-eight year old Shinichi Sawada has kept the same schedule for nearly twenty years. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays, he attends Nakayoshi Fukushikai, a social welfare facility in Japan’s Shiga prefecture, where he spends the morning working at the in-house bakery, making bread. He spends the afternoons working with clay. Sawada first attended this facility, one of many similar institutions in Japan designed to support people with intellectual disabilities, when he was eighteen years old, shortly after he was diagnosed with autism. In the two decades since, his ceramic beasts – sometimes ghoulish, always fantastical, and deeply redolent of ancient mythologies still coursing through Japanese culture – have attracted the attention of critics and connoisseurs worldwide, notably after a presentation at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013.

Building on both personal observations and pure imagination, Sawada continues to accrue a body of work with layers of intrigue and inventive craftsmanship.

This exhibition was reviewed in the New York Times with Jillian Steinhauer saying, “His sculptures are rich with allusions. The cartoonish, sometimes possessed looks of his creatures recall imagery from Japanese mythology and medieval bestiaries. The spikes and lines covering their bodies suggest ritual scarification. The big eyes and gaping mouths of more recent pieces echo shamanistic masks from a host of cultures. Sawada’s sculptures are made in isolation, but they gain resonance and meaning in the wider world.”
You can read it HERE.

This exhibition was also been profiled in T Magazine, through the New York Times by Courtney Coffman, which you can read HERE.

NOTE: With the virtual tour below, please click on the small arrow that says ‘play’ and it will automatically walk you around the space.

Click here to read the press release →

Click here to see the virtual tour →

About the Exhibition

Jennifer Lauren Gallery presented new works for the virtual edition of Intersect Chicago 2020 from 6-12 November 2020. The fair was the evolution of SOFA – Sculpture Objects Functional Art. It was the intersection of art, design and objects. SOFA includes daily highlights on Glass, Contemporary Art, Design, Ceramic and Craft, Outsider Art, Fiber and Public Art / Sculpture.

The Jennifer Lauren Gallery showcased: mystical sculptural creatures from Japanese self-taught artists Shinichi Sawada and Akio Kontani; personal clay beings from British artist Terence Wilde; fun and colourful hand-felted 'Makoot' dolls from Japanese artist Makoto Okawa; layered web-like textile structures from British artist Aradne; symbolic cross-stitch and complex monochrome works by British artist Valerie Potter; imaginative pencil drawings from American artist Margaret Mousseau who only started drawing in her sixties; and not forgetting a new artist Joyce Davies from the Shetland Isles, who has created some powerful mono-screenprints.

Writer Edward Gomez has written about his curatorial selections HERE

About the Exhibition

The Outsider Art Fair Paris went virtual in 2020 due to Covid-19. The Jennifer Lauren Gallery was sorry to be miss people in person in Paris this year, but was pleased to present a gathering of new works, some never seen before, from artists the Gallery supports. You can no longer view the link to the page since the fair is over, but below is a selection of works from the artists I shared at the fair. You will see: eighties colour pop wonders that have never seen the light of day from Valerie Potter, cosmic visions in colour and monochrome from Julia Sisi, Moroccan beings from Mohammed Mrabet, layered communicative works with colour and symbols from Robert Fischer, detailed carved toothpicks from Pradeep Kumar and iconic spiky creatures from Shinichi Sawada. Not forgetting Jesse James Nagel making his debut with a visionary wonder with a fantastic title!

About the Exhibition

Innen Leben - A solo exhibition featuring the clay sculptures of the autistic Japanese-based Shinichi Sawada (b.1982). Without being able to express himself verbally, Sawada shares with us mysterious figures of the outside world.

The exhibition started at the Museum Lothar Fischer, Neumarkt (23.2.-14.7.2020) alongside the ink drawings of Alfred Kremer. Following this, just Sawada’s work travelled to the Georg Kolbe Museum, Berlin ( 13.9.2020-14.3.2021). It was the first museum solo exhibition in Europe for Shinichi Sawada. For both exhibitions the catalogue Shinichi Sawada was published in German and English. Please contact the museums for this catalogue. It is priced at 10 euros, plus shipping.

Below is a short promotional video from the Georg Kolbe Museum about the show. Unfortunately, much of the show’s run at this venue was disrupted by Covid-19.

The Georg Kolbe Museum show was profiled in Monopol Magazine in March 2021, stating “Over the past two decades, he has developed a unique formal language that invites you to question traditional categories and ways of thinking.” Read the piece in German HERE.

About the Exhibition

A new touring exhibition in Tokyo, Japan that toured across six venues was titled ‘In a sky full of shining stars, unknown gems can be found - To feel change and expansion in our universe.’ This exhibition featured 16 Japanese outsider artists and two American outsider artists, Mr Imagination and CJ Pyle. Two of the Japanese artists of note are Shinichi Sawada and Norimitsu Kokubo, who are represented by the Jennifer Lauren Gallery.

“The artists we are introducing create in deeply unique and idiosyncratic ways. Artists that are compelled to fill a page to the brim. Artists that are compelled to tie and bend leaves. Artists that are compelled to draw only on pieces of discarded wallpaper. The logic and systems we see these artists adopt can challenge some of our most fundamental notions of what “art” is. Our reaction is not their concern. These artists are simply compelled to create. This series of exhibitions will travel across 6 different exhibition spaces in Tokyo (including the Kichijoji Art Museum and the Tokyo Shibuya Koen-dori Gallery), featuring the works of 16 Japanese Art Brut artists and 2 artists from overseas. This series of exhibitions also features the input from a range of specialists from folklorist, photographers, and museum director (to be referred to as the “new angle navigators”). They will be offering their professional and multi-faceted insights into Art Brut, the potential of art in society and the human compulsion to create.”

More can be read about this special art brut exhibition HERE in English.

Edward Gomez also reviewed the show HERE.

About the Exhibition

The Outsider Art Fair presented Art Brut Global, a virtual exhibition of artworks sourced through their network of renowned galleries and dealers. A three-phase project, Phase I highlighted works by canonical artists in the field from the world’s leading experts in Outsider Art, the exhibitors. Phase II highlighted artists that have become known to the field in the last three years and Phase III highlighted accomplished outsider artists living around the world.

As a leading focal point of the Outsider Art world, OAF is uniquely positioned to organise an exhibition that assembles the best available works in our field, and rally the passionate community of aficionados, collectors, and fairgoers that have been following OAF since its inception twenty-eight years ago.

Outsider Art dealers have carved out an historically important and influential niche in the art world landscape, thriving on the strength of the powerful art they have unearthed in places where few others were looking. With the help of astute writers and visionary curators, artists who today are the cornerstones of the Outsider Art and Art Brut canon like Aloïse Corbaz, Henry Darger, Thornton Dial, Martin Ramirez, Shinichi Sawada, Judith Scott, Bill Traylor and Adolf Wölfli, have transcended those categories and been recognised as some of the greatest artists of their times. Now, a new generation of dealers and scholars has risen to the fore, making discoveries and using digital technology to reveal and disseminate incredible accounts of self-taught creators and the universes they invent. 

About the Exhibition

Jennifer returned to the Outsider Art Fair in New York in January 2020. Firm favourites returned alongside new artists ...

• Shinichi Sawada

• Akio Kontani

• Makoto Okawa

• Roy Collinson

• Chris Neate

• Leonhard Fink

• Margaret Mousseau

• Norimitsu Kokubo

• Carlo Keshishian

There is a youtube clip of the fair that can be found here, and if you scroll to 35:45 you will see a short walk around my booth.

About the Exhibition

The Jennifer Lauren Gallery made its debut at the Outsider Art Fair in Paris in October 2019 alongside other galleries such as Cavin-Morris from New York, Creative Growth from California and Galerie Atelier Herenplaats from Amsterdam.

Jennifer took nine artists to the fair: Aradne, Hakunogawa, Akio Kontani, Chris Neate, Valerie Potter, C.J. Pyle, Nobuo Sasaki, Shinichi Sawada and Makoto Toya.

About the Exhibition

The Jennifer Lauren Gallery was delighted to present a rare exhibition of the work of Shinichi Sawada, one of the most recognised art brut artists from Japan, as an official event of the Japan Season of Culture. Sawada was displayed alongside the first British showcase of Akio Kontani and Nobuo Sasaki, two fellow self-taught Japanese ceramicists, little known in this country but sharing a complementary style. All three artists’ ceramics feature bold visionary creatures and demons, alongside more recognisable animals. The exhibition was held as a pop-up at Sway Gallery on Old Street in London.

The exhibition, 日本の陶芸家 三人展, included over twenty-five highly individual works taken directly from the artist’s studios in northern and southern Japan alongside photographs of the artists at work, and the studios where they create. Often placed under the label of outsider art, this exhibition asks the audience to look at these artist’s ceramics as contemporary works, to be judged on their aesthetic quality.

At 37, Shinichi Sawada is one of the most recognised art brut artists from Japan. His work recently featured in New York at Frieze Art Fair and in 2013 he featured in Massimiliano Gioni’s Encyclopedic Palace at the Venice Biennale.

Born in 1970, Akio Kontani started creating art in 2015. Since then, he has been working alongside Shinichi Sawada, three times a week, spending up to five hours each day. His works are often representations of animals and demons from his imagination.

Nobuo Sasaki (b.1956) began living in a social welfare institution in Hokkaido from 1970 due to mental health issues. His ceramic motifs often include animals, such as gorillas, bears, birds, or imaginary demons and friends. This was Sasaki’s first exhibition outside of Japan.

On Wednesday 10 July, Mizue Kobayashi, the Art Director of social welfare organisation Aisekai in Japan, gave a talk about outsider art in Japan, its beginnings and where it is today.

Catch a virtual tour of the exhibition by Edward Enayat here

It was one of the top seven exhibitions to visit in London as suggested here

It was reviewed by CL Gamble on here blog here

About the Exhibition

The Doors of Perception focused on the visionary nature of art commonly known as outsider art, art brut, or self-taught art. The exhibition at Frieze New York presented a large constellation of works made by exceptionally gifted artists from five continents, offering a panorama of art created on the margins of society. Whether psychiatric patients, self-taught visionaries, or mediums, each of the artists in the exhibition felt at some point in their life the need to create an artistic language of their own in order to reveal what they understood to be the true nature of things. Often disenfranchised because of their mental condition or social status and without any previous artistic training, many of the artists exhibited here dedicated their lives obsessively to the creation of complex visual representations, often after experiencing a life-changing epiphany. A meeting with a supernatural power—whether an encounter with the divine, spirits of the dead, or extra-terrestrial beings—might have triggered this impulse to create. These remarkable events produced strong centrifugal forces that drove the artists from chaos to order, opening for them “doors of perception” to a transcendental reality that, in many cases, helped them survive their otherwise unstable life.

As William Blake wrote: “If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is, Infinite.”

Shinichi Sawada was selected to be part of the presentation, curated by contemporary artist Javier Téllez. He was in good company alongside artists including: Carlo Zinelli, Judith Scott, Madge Gill, Marcel Storr and Henry Darger.

About the Exhibition

2019 started with a bang with my second appearance at the New York Outsider Art Fair. There were new ceramic works by Shinichi Sawada and automatic black and white drawings by Chris Neate, alongside 1970s mosaicked sculptures by famed outsider artist Nek Chand. Three artists made their debut at the fair too: complex colourful drawings by Japanese artist Norimitsu Kokubo, delicate but dark embroideries by British artist Valerie Potter and overlaid text and block colour drawings by German artist Robert Fischer.

About the Exhibition

Jennifer Lauren Gallery made their debut at the Outsider Art Fair in New York in January 2018. The Gallery brought along five artists’ works including the Japanese artists Shinichi Sawada, Masao Obata, Makoto Takezawa and Shinya Fujii, as well as UK artist Chris Neate.

Below is a brief introduction to each artist but more detail can be found on their artist page, linked through their name.

Born in 1982, Shinichi Sawada started attending Shiga Prefecture (a local social welfare facility for persons with intellectual disabilities) three or four times a week from around the year 2000. At this time, he began creating his ceramic art works at a kiln-equipped pottery workshop in the local mountains. He has created around fifteen different motifs that change slightly each time he makes them.

Masao Obata (1943-2010) only started drawing in his residential care facility (Hyogo Prefecture) in Japan after the age of sixty. His strong urge to create led him to source pieces of large cardboard to draw on from the kitchens in his facility, as the paper was too small. Obata often drew in red as for him this was the colour of happiness.

Born in 1969, Shinya Fujii became interested in art whilst a high school student following reading a magazine article, after which he won a prize for his entry into a comic book design competition. Fujii returned to drawing in 2007 when his father died and he was diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Makoto Takezawa (1970 - 2010) lived in Hokkaido, Japan in a facility for those with intellectual disabilities from 1988. With only a mild intellectual disability he managed to graduate from Junior High School, and it was here, through his art education classes, that he learnt about woodcut techniques.

Chris Neate (b.1954) has been developing his style of drawing since his late teens. During the 1970s he attended Art College in Leeds but never completed a foundation course nor did he feel he was given any formal training. During his time working as a hospital social worker with older people Neate sporadically drew, and this need to draw has intensified over the years. Neate practices automatic drawing and turns the piece as he draws.