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Van Doren Waxter is pleased to present an installation by California-based artist Evan Nesbit in the gallery's first floor lobby, on view from October 1 – November 14, 2020. Featuring a small group of new paintings, all dated 2020, Nesbit has installed his new mixed media paintings on burlap against a colored backdrop, activating the walls and architectural details of the gallery's historic 1907 townhouse space.
Evan Nesbit's practice is based on the tenets of perception of field (color) and structure (support). The simplicity and radiance of his paintings belie a complicated and deliberate process which involves numerous initiatives and calculated decisions to arrive at a stage where phenomenology becomes background to a potent visual and sensory experience. This experiential nature of Nesbit’s practice highlights the 'moments' in which objects appear in a wholly new type of spatial reading, engendering a hyper consciousness of perception, activated by the viewer.
At the core of his experimentation with visual perception, the artist mines the primordial origins of image making and process: how to make painting. Nesbit plays with the basic support (burlap) and destabilizes its regimented woven properties by dyeing it in different hues, pulling on its weave, cutting, and stitching. The "ground" of his paintings are fully transformed from within and behind before they become host to paint, while simultaneously disrupting the rectangular grid structure. Paint is hand mixed to specific densities and saturation. The syntax of his process is further undermined by how each picture is composed: shapes and areas of the composition are masked or covered, and paint is applied from behind the burlap, inside out.
Material, structure, texture, and color all combine deftly to produce a generous and haptic experience in Nesbit's work. By presenting his new paintings in this calibrated lobby installation, Nesbit’s principles of abstraction are pushed forward by an unexpected dialogue with the period setting. Transforming abstraction into concreteness, Nesbit’s installation cements the union of painting and architecture, challenging physical space and visual perception.
EVAN NESBIT (b. 1985) lives and works in Nevada City, California. He was educated at Yale University, New Haven, CT (MFA) and The San Francisco Art Institute, San Francisco, CA (BFA). In 2012, Nesbit received the Ely Harwood Schless Memorial Fund Prize from Yale University. The artist has held solo exhibitions at Weiss Berlin, Berlin, Germany (2019, 2017), James Harris Gallery, Seattle, WA (2018, 2015), Koki Arts, Tokyo, Japan (2016, 2014), Annarumma Gallery, Naples, Italy (2016) and Roberts & Tilton, Culver City, CA (2020, 2016, 2014). His work has been presented in group exhibitions at Praz-Delavallade, Paris, France; Brand New Gallery, Milan, Italy; Sean Kelly, New York, NY, among others.