Unreal Realms

Curated by Jan Petry and David Syrek

As a jumping-off point, Unreal Realms takes the world Henry Darger imagined in his Tolkien-esque novel, In the Realms of the Unreal, and provides a view into the otherworldly places created in the artworks of Adolf Wölfli, A. G. Rizzoli, Charles A. A. Dellschau, Ken Grimes and Darger. The nature of these works, which often are described as “visionary,” call attention to their makers’ sensibilities and outlooks.

“The focus of this exhibit is to posit a group of artists, like Henry Darger, whose body of work was a narrative of an alternative reality,” said Jan Petry, who co-curated the exhibit with David Syrek.

According to the art critic and author of the exhibit’s accompanying essay, Edward Gomez, “To encounter even a single image by any one of these artists, all of whom were or are primarily picture-makers, is to enter into the distinctive, imaginary world to which each one of them gave lasting, visible form.”