Franklin Evans
b. 1967, United States
1967 Born in Reno, Nevada. Lives and works in New York. Franklin
Evans wants viewers to walk all over his floor-to-ceiling and wall-to-wall installations. These immersive works are obliquely autobiographical, constructed from amassed art supplies and materials found in his studio space—including artists’ tape, bubble wrap, old newsprint, unstretched canvas, and press releases from gallery exhibitions. According to the artist, the purpose of his conceptual practice to “de-heroize” the artistic process and the artistic genius. Evans, who was trained as a painter even though he considers himself a materialist above all, uses paint to create hyper-realistic, illusionistic effects of layering and wear in these works. He thinks of his work as “the not-quite-finished, the in-transition, the nearly-emerging, the slowly-evolving, the near-end, and the move-towards-erasure.”
PUBLIC COLLECTIONS
The Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina, Greensboro, NC Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT Roanoke College, Salem, VA Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside, CA Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH The Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH Fondation pour l'art conteporain Salomon, Annecy, France Collection AGI, Verona, Italy