Bio: |
Gabriel Shaffer is a young, up and coming, southern self-taught / visionary artist, who lives and works in Asheville, NC. The son of nationally known folk/visionary artist Cher Shaffer (most notable for her appearance in tour/book "O' Appalachia"), Gabriel was raised within the self taught medium and had contact with many folk and self taught masters as a young boy.
His complex work is often classified in the outsiderart genre, but contains many elements of graffiti writing, collage and comic book/cartoon illustration.
Gabriel's unique art is driven by a manic obsession with the relationships between sound, symbol and image, as they are literally layer upon layer of graffiti, free association, collage and various medias, salvaged from assorted locations (abandoned hospitals, factories houses, dumpsters, etc.) which create a circuit board of color, texture and information, used to form haunting characters and communicate strange narratives from his own personal mythology. Gabriel's characters consist of old legends, angels, protectors, tribal totems, dolls, puppets, flying houses, iconography, shapeshifters, ghosts, aliens, animals and any other bizarre form of creature or landscape his mind can conjure. Gabriel is a solitary artist, who lives between planes, using the power of storytelling, to explore his inner worlds and simultaneously exorcise himself from the "madness of humanity". He has no other option than to "create to cope", as it is his belief mankind is living in an "apocalyptic age".
Gabriel first sold his earliest works In January 2004 during the Outsider Art Fair, to several collectors and had his first exhibition in July 2004, at the Broome Street Gallery / Historic Cedar Tavern, New York City.
Since then his work has been received with amazing acclaim. He has already exhibited and sold to many collectors, galleries and museums, in dozens of shows, throughout various major cities nationally and internationally, including a very strong debut, with the Berenberg Gallery, Boston,Ma, at the Outsider Art Fair 2005. He has appeared in several Magazines and Newspapers such as New York Arts Magazine and Raw Vision.
You can expect to see great things from this rising artist as Gabriel continues to redefine and recreate his own world and medium, from the endless hunger of his imagination, while adding to the rich tradition of the self taught art movement.
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