Fleisher/Ollman Gallery is pleased to announce the first exhibition of the gallery's 2008-2009 season, Castle in Context, on view from October 10 through December 6, 2008. As a counterpoint to norms of categorization and distinction, the exhibition places James Castle in the context of art historical discourse by enabling the viewer to connect the artist's soot-and- spit drawings and found-object constructions with the work of contemporaries, many of whose practices were (or are) firmly rooted in the art world. Castle, who was born profoundly deaf and never learned to speak, read or sign, remained isolated from these mainstream communities. This exhibition aims to complement the James Castle retrospective at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the first comprehensive museum exhibition of the artist's work.

Intuitive pairings of works from a diverse range of artists, whose careers and lives span multiple generations, places, skills and training and practices both decontextualize and recontextualize our understanding of art and artistic practice, making connections where none seemed to exist and breaking with conventions that have historically limited dialogue.

When one sees Tristin Lowe's sculptures 1.5 Liter and Can next to Castle's three- dimensional constructions of bowls or Ed Ruscha's use of sharp and loaded text next to the artist's drawings of words, striking commonalities can be seen, felt and discovered. Uniquely, this exhibition reveals that James Castle's deconstruction of meaning, his reduction of forms to simple elements, his economic use of uncommon materials, exploration of text as object and book as art, along with the choice of subject matter, and interest in spirit and symbology, parallel major developments and innovations in a range of 20th Century Art.

Artists in the exhibition include: Forrest Bess, Marvin Bileck, Pearl Blauvelt, Oscar Bluemner, Charles Burchfield, Anthony Campuzano, Joseph Cornell, Philip Guston, Eva Hesse, Alfred Jensen, Jasper Johns, Tristin Lowe, Agnes Martin, Emily Nelligan, Jim Nutt, Christina Ramberg, Ed Ruscha, Anne Ryan, Richard Serra, Donald Sultan, John Walker, Terry Winters, Grant Wood, and Joseph Yoakum.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Fleisher/Ollman will offer a small, limited-edition publication for sale in the gallery.