The Art of Others

Korine and Max E. Ammann have collected Outsider Art for nearly 20 years. The Art of Others, an exhibition based on the collection, will be seen in summer 2015 in Serlachius Museum Gösta in Mänttä.

Outsider Art offers a different perspective on art and the world. The works are characterised by fantasy, curiosity, creativity, sights and visions. The subject might be the politics or ideology of the day, public life, fairy tales, or the unconscious paths of the human mind.

The artists are self-taught individuals working outside the institutions of art, and who sometimes live isolated in the world. Even so, Outsider Art has also influenced the institutional art world.

The Korine and Max E. Ammann Collection nowadays has around 6,000 works by 600 artists. Before Mänttä, the exhibition has been seen in Thurgau in Switzerland, Erfurt in Germany, and in Lille and Sables d’Olonne in France. It is curated by the Director of the Thurgau Museum of Fine Arts, Markus Landert.

Outsider Art is known by many names around the world. In Finland, the name ITE art is used. The Finnish abbreviation stands for self-made life. This exhibition provided a global background to the Finnish ITE art phenomenon. In connection with the exhibition, Serlachius Museums arranged in Mänttä a seminar on international Outsider Art in cooperation with the Union of Rural Education and Culture. At the same time, the Union of Rural Education and Culture brought a group of Finnish ITE artists to the Serlachius Residency.