Chase Ferguson, Mixed Vehicles 2 (2012–13). Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.
Chase Ferguson, Mixed Vehicles 2 (2012–13). Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.

Outsider art in New York is reaching new highs in recent weeks. The 24th edition of the Outsider Art Fair opened to acclaim January 21, and the next day, Christie’s hosted its first major self-taught artist auction, led by the $785,000 sale of William Edmondson’s limestone sculpture Boxer.

Brooklyn’s City Reliquary is also shining a light on the genre, with “Visionary Streetscapes,” a four-person exhibition from Pure Vision Arts (PVA), a space that focuses on the work of artists with developmental disabilities.

Oscar Azmitia, Untitled (2015).
Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.

The show spotlights four of the studio and exhibition space’s artists: Oscar Azmitia, who paints street scenes and biblically-inspired works, sometimes on outdated technology such as vinyl records; Susan Brown, an artist known for her New York cityscapes; Chase Ferguson, a painter and sculptor with work in the permanent collection of the New York Transit Museum; and Howard Schefflin, who works largely in pen and pencil.

“The City Reliquary presents the history of New York city through encounters with everyday objects of the past,” wrote Sarah Celentano, the museum’s manager, in an e-mail to artnet News. “The works featured in ‘Visionary Streetscapes’ encapsulate the frenetic energy and quiet beauty of daily life and are powerful precisely for their representations of commonplace people, places, and things.”

Susan Brown, Times Square (2015).
Photo: Sarah Celentano, courtesy the City Reliquary.

Though PVA is the first Manhattan art studio and exhibition space to specialize in developmentally-disabled, a similar program, Oakland’s Creative Growth Art Center, saw one of its members, fiber artist Judith Scott, who died in 2005, receive a solo show titled “Bound and Unbound” at the Brooklyn Museum in 2014.

All four artists featured in the City Reliquary exhibition will be present at the opening reception for the exhibition being held on Saturday, January 30, at 6 p.m.

See more work from the exhibition, all of which is for sale, below:

Chase Ferguson with some of his sculpture in 2013.
Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.

Susan Brown, Skate at the Rock (2011).
Photo: Sarah Celentano, courtesy the City Reliquary.

Howard Schefflin, Music in Subway (2014).
Photo: Sarah Celentano, courtesy the City Reliquary.

Oscar Azmitia, Untitled (2014).
Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.

Chase Ferguson, Parking Meters.
Photo: courtesy Pure Vision Arts.

“Visionary Streetscapes: Works from Pure Vision Arts” is on view at the City Reliquary, 370 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn, January 21–May 15, 2016.