Press Release for Outsider Art Fair 2010

The Work of C.L. DeMedeiros
A New Discovery at The Outsider Art Fair, February 4 -7 New York City

Inside and Outside the Confessional - Talking to God from Both Sides

Since Sanford Smith’s inaugural Outsider Art Fair debuted almost two decades ago to an unfamiliar audience, Outsider Art has been demystified and is now keenly sought after by a public who increasingly crave the raw authenticity of self-taught works.

Still the only fair of its kind in the world, it has been a venue for hitherto hidden works from unknown obsessives as well as a stage for the now well established stellar self-taught artists such as Traylor and Edmonson.

The Outsider Fair has changed the vocabulary of the art world, established a hierarchy of excellence in the field and has become a bellwether for the value of works by untrained artists - compelled yet untrained to create. A disparate universal group, singular yet connected, who are outside the mainstream, removed from tradition and uninformed by the art world.

Dealers keenly search for new names and original work, hoping to find the unlikely - another undiscovered untrained artist whose visionary work can perhaps extend our own limited view. This new decade seems to herald one of these times.

In 2010, Marion Harris is delighted to introduce the work of C.L. DeMedeiros. His constructions of small scale confessionals, accompanied with hand-written confessions (real or imagined) in sealed envelopes, are unlike anything the art world has seen.

Opening the door, literally and metaphorically, into his life of church and religion, we are offered a rare insight to that world.

Born in Brazil in 1963, C.L. DeMedeiros grew up in a small fishing village, Arraial do Cabo near Rio de Janeiro. This was followed by his entry into religion, living the simple life of a monk for 15 years in Bolivia - still one of the poorest places in South America.

He reluctantly left the monastery for a secular life - conflicted by his own idea of religion and the one he was obliged to follow. As a way of coming to terms with this ambivalence, DeMedeiros constructs miniature confessionals from found objects. Reaching into his own religious history and experiences, he shines a bright light into an often dark place that is hidden from most of us.

While his imagery is at first sight simple, the subtext is complex and multi-layered. The actual narrative, the unseen confession, remains a written secret.

With the confessionals C.L. DeMedeiros reveals a stark truthful reality.

In a different ongoing series he allows his imagination to show itself with miniature scenarios constructed inside discarded empty Altoid tins. Using a variety of found tiny items, the surreal tableaux seen only when the lid is lifted, seem for all the world like tiny stage sets for the the theatre of the absurd.

Both the confessional series and Altoid Box narratives will be shown for the first time at The Outsider Fair, February 4 - 7 in its new location at 7 West 35th Street, New York City.

For additional information and images please contact:

Marion Harris, Art and Antiques, New York City 212.348.9688 info@marion-harris.com www.marion-harris.com