Hold in/ Pour Forth
Boston Sculptors Gallery, 486 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
February 24- March 28th, 2021
My first reaction to Laura Evans’s work was “Wow these are beautiful. I love the play of light on the surface of these strange looking objects. ” Then I thought “What on earth are these amorphous vessels?” I was intrigued and slowly walked around the carefully choreographed small scaled sculptures. Some of them reminded me of body forms, maybe a head, or a chest. Other parts looked and reminded me of kitchen utensils; a teapot, a sieve, a jug or maybe a measuring cup. It didn’t really matter what they were, they are captivating in their quietness.
Each small scaled sculpture has a unique personality. All are animated yet silent, under the radar, yet full of potentiality. A potentially of what? Not sure, doesn’t seem to matter that they are familiar yet unrecognizable. The sense of calm they create slows the hustle of the brain trying to label and categorize everything. The experience of walking among Laura’ Evans small scaled sculptures is akin to being in a zen garden. They just bring you to the present so that that you start noticing details and maybe smile a little at the strange juxtaposition of the objects.
The outside surface texture of each object has a sheer almost a translucent quality to them. They looked both polished and at the same time earthy, like adobe huts but in these small scaled bodies with an off white pale neutral colors. I wanted to reach out and touch the surfaces, but didn’t. They looked too precious, cared for in their ordinary humbleness.
This ordinary humbleness reminded me of Eva Hesse’s “Repetition Nineteen III” installation I had seen in NY years ago. Hesse had installed the floor with these semi translucent fiberglass vessels, that looked similar but were all different. There was something humbling about them the way they were arranged, the way they communicated with each other. They had this quiet indifference to them, and this ability to bring us down to earth and look at light in a different way.
The notion of “absurdity’ is present in both Hesse’s and Evan’s work. If you stare long enough at Evan’s biomorphic sculptures they start looking like an outlines of a teapot, or a body and then shape-shift again. Yet they are neither functional or really representative of these objects. They play on contrast and absurdity.
Evans explains “I enjoy tinkering with /combining odd elements that might not go together in the world of useful things, but I have a formal or associative relatshinshsip within the piece.”
Similarly Hesse talks about absurdity here in an interview with Cindy Nemser ARTFORUM in 1970:
“Now art being the most important thing for me, other than existing and staying alive, became connected to this, now closer meshed than ever, and absurdity is the key word … It has to do with contradictions and oppositions. In the forms I use in my work the contradictions are certainly there. I was always aware that I should take order versus chaos, stringy versus mass, huge versus small, and I would try to find the most absurd opposites or extreme opposites … I was always aware of their absurdity and also their formal contradictions and it was always more interesting than making something average, normal, right size, right proportion …“
Read more on Hesse here.
Hesse’s and Evan’s work are both unconcerned with sculpture as a monument. They both focus our attention to this idea of vulnerability, absurdity, and just being in the present. Both are also very poetic in their ability to evoke emotions of energetic calm.
For more details on the exhibition please click here:
486 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA 02118
For more info on Laura’s work or to contact her directly please click here:
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