Daniel Johnston's Outsider Art at Lieu Unique, Nantes

The exhibition at Lieu Unique in Nantes, from April 7 to May 20, 2012, offers a rare comprehensive overview of Daniel Johnston's three decades of creation. Johnston, who developed a passion for comics and pop music as a child to cope with manic-depressive tendencies, became a cult artist after moving from Virginia to Texas. His bipolar hyperactivity fuels drawings made with ballpoint pens or felt-tip markers, obsessively parading characters as alter egos battling evil forces. The show, organized with Arts Factory, features original drawings, sketchbooks, and gifts to fans, including a signed Bible. Johnston's graphic craftsmanship vividly exposes contradictions of American society—violent yet fun, puritan yet hypersexualized—like a magnifying mirror on the American Way of Life.