When I was in Turin over the summer I discovered the incredible Museum of Everything in the Pinacoteca Agnelli. If you haven't come across it, the Museum is an amazing insight into the artistic world of the outsider and the self-taught artist, many of whom have Asperger's, autism, obsessive compulsive disorders, learning difficulties or live reclusive lives.
The exhibition felt very honest, unpretentious, often funny and insightful. I felt warm inside when I left after a good two hours browsing, like I'd discovered a secret gem I wanted to keep for myself.
One artist I was drawn to in particular was Hiroyuki Doi. In the words of The New York Times, Doi creates "Abstract drawings... products of trance like concentration, but their method is free-form and incremental. Each design is built up from countless small-to-tiny black ink circles drawn in dense, foam-like clusters, with the clusters coalescing into larger forms that suggest mountains, galactic clouds or fleshy mounds."
They say it better than I do, all I can say is that I spent maybe 20 minutes with my jaw hanging open, awed by the amount of work that had gone into such detailed, faultless pen drawings.
