Grant Wallace: Over the Psychic Radio

Press release

INTRODUCTION

Ricco/Maresca is excited to present the first gallery exhibition ever to be mounted of the work of Grant Wallace (1868–1954). Over the Psychic Radio features 31 works from a collection that was recently discovered by the artist’s great-grandchildren.

Only ten works by Wallace have been previously seen by the wider public. They were exhibited between 1997 and 1998 at the American Visionary Art Museum in Baltimore as part of The End Is Near! Visions of Apocalypse, Millennium, and Utopia and are illustrated in the eponymous catalog, published by Dilettante Press. The exhibition and publication were curated and authored by Roger Manley.

ABOUT THE ARTIST

Grant Wallace was born in Hopkins, Missouri, in 1868, one of 9 children. He set out for New York City at age 19, where he studied and developed his interest in the occult. Wallace eventually made his way to California, where he worked as an editorial illustrator and reporter for the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle. He graduated to editorial writer for the Evening Bulletin and covered the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 among a group of war correspondents that included Jack London and Richard Harding Davis.

Just before World War I, Wallace settled with his family in Carmel, California, where he began experimenting with telepathy, or what he referred to as "mental radio.” Over the next two decades, he channeled his visions and messages into elaborate portraits, texts, and complex diagrams and calculations. Through his work, Wallace endeavored to prove reincarnation, extraterrestrial life, and the coexistence of the living with the dead.

Over the Psychic Radio is accompanied by a print catalog with an introduction by the artist’s great-grandson and family curator Matt Berger, and an essay by the critic and scholar Lucy Sante. Both texts are reproduced below to provide context on Wallace’s exceptional biography, larger-than-life persona, and important oeuvre.