FRANKLIN EVANS
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fugitivemisreadings - solo exhibition, at Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY, June 24 - July 31, 2021)

fugitivemisreadings consists of new paintings with a fully illustrated catalogue featuring an essay by Raphael Rubinstein, Franklin Evans: The Studio as Episteme.

We inhabit a highly visual world where images substitute words as vehicles for communication and interpretation. Embracing the nature of hybridity and relishing in unexpected juxtapositions, Evans is an artist who rejoices in painting's ability to assimilate new visual languages and technologies. His painting celebrates this time-tested medium as powerfully coexistent to the visual overload of digital media. His work lives between digital and material, process and object, thought and action, and present and memory. Analogous to an art historical lexicon, Evans has long explored the artist's studio. He uses art history as a significant input to his practice as investigations of specific artists become content and media within his unfolding world. His latest body of work is rich with details from modern masters and accomplished contemporaries. Evans gives new energy to the many artists who inspire him. Ranging in "stylistic diversity from geometric abstraction to trompe l'oeil, the paintings yield little resemblance to the artists they reference," and are fusions of signatures and cross references. In decenteringfacespace, Evans emphasizes a view of the art world that flattens hierarchy as emerging and underrecognized artists decenter a canon of established artists. Recalling Matisse's Joy of Life, 1905, the painting joyoflife2019 breaks down, doubles and reconfigures Matisse's masterpiece in a digitally mediated maneuver in homage to a twentieth-century tour de force. In reference to his painting pigmentpolymersplatspace, Evans states that "a dizzying repetitive world explodes, an untethered splat of repeated faces extracted from art: Alice Neel, Roy Lichtenstein, and Kerry James Marshall, and, most poignantly Jacob Lawrence." In his essay on Evans, Rubinstein asserts, "In his anthological paintings and installations woven from countless art-historical citations, Evans subsumes his own identity into the visual heritage of the past (and present), confronts questions of originality and innovation and - last but not least - invokes the artists in his own pantheon with an intensity that borders on obsession."

Artists referenced in fugitivemisreadings: Albert Bierstadt, Alex Katz, Alice Neel, Andre Normil, Andy Cross, Anna Glantz, anonymous 1980's east village artist, Anton Raphael Mengs, Bill Traylor, Charles Ray, Chris Ofili, Dana Schutz, Diego Rivera, Edouard Duval Carrie, Edward Hopper, Ellen Altfest, Fairfield Porter, Francis Bacon, Frank Lobdell, Frieda Kahlo, Gene Davis, Gina Beavers, Grace Hartigan, Grant Wood, Hans Hofmann, Hector Hyppolite, Hellenistic busts, Henri Matisse, Jack Goldstein, Jackie Gendel, Jackson Pollock, Jacob Lawrence, Jasmin Joseph, Jennifer Coats, Joan Brown, John Dilg, John Steuart Curry, Jose Clemente Orozco, Joseph Elmer Yoakum, Joseph Patrick, Karl Jones, Karl Wirsum, Kathe Burkhardt, Keith Haring, Keith Mayerson, Kenneth Noland, Kerry James Marshall, Laura Owens, Lester Johnson, Lewis Baltz, Lou Fratino, Marc Chagall, Mark Rothko, Marsden Hartley, Matthew Fischer, Max Beckmann, Mesoamerican stone reliefs, Milton Glaser, Mimi Gross, Patrick Caulfield, Paul Cezanne, Paul Claude Gardere, Paul Klee, Phillip Guston, Philome Obin, Pierre Bonnard, Pre-Columbian, Richard Diebenkorn, Roger Brown, Roy Lichtenstein, Sarah Charlesworth, Scott Kahn, Sigmar Polke, Steve Hicks, Susan Rothenberg, Titian, Tomas Hart Benton, Tomoo Gokita, Tony Feher, Wolf Kahn, Yayoi Kusama. THANK YOU ALL

 

Link to Miles McEnery Gallery fugitivemisreadings, 2021 PRESS RELEASE

Link to fugitivemisreadings catalogue and essay by Raphael Rubinstein - Franklin Evans: The Studio as Episteme, June 2021

Link to video In Conversation - Franklin Evans fugitivemisreadings, Miles McEnery Gallery, June 2021

 

PRESS COVERAGE

Link to Artforum Review: Franklin Evans, Colby Chamberlain, October 2021

Link to Hyperallergic What to Do About the Artists in Your Studio, John Yau, July 2021

Link to Whitehot Magazine Podcast Franklin Evans at Miles McEnery Gallery, Alexandra Goldman, July 2021

Link to Artifactoid Franklin Evans, Alexandra Goldman, August 2021

Link to ARTnews Artist Franklin Evans Amplifies Joy in His Immersive Paintings and Installations, Francesca Anton, June 2021

Link to Art in America Six Must-See Shows in Chelsea this Summer, Francesca Anton, May 2021

Franklin Evans Amplifies JOY, ARTnews IGTV with Brooke Jaffe, May 2021