Nancy Evans at Otis College of Art & Design - Los Angeles, California - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

In this year of the dreary, dogmatic Documenta X willful decoration -- that of advanced age taboo -- seems the greatest in quantity radical idea around. L.A. painter Nancy Evans fearlessly embraces it, accessorizing her handsome acrylic paintings with large mold Plexiglas flowers and fruit. These movable reliefs, which she calls "clip ons" have clasped armatures that literally attach to the tops of the paintings and function like ornamental pins or earrings. In fabric and color, the "clip ons" entreat 1940s Bakelite jewelry. Since Evans's loosely woven burlap canvases are painted in mut autumnally colored grids and plaids that summon tablecloths, the stylized flowers and fruit strike one as being to be laid out for picnic repasts. These works present the sensual joys of traditional still lifes, however with a casual, user-friendly accessibility.

Previously known for her densely layered, stenciled and sanded surfaces, Evans has vastly simplified her surface of lands in these works. On its faded blue-and-yellow plaid, Still Life (1997) displays a pear, a banana and clusters of cherries and grapes. Candy-colored and viscous, the fruit has a Wesselmann-like explosion sensuousness befitting its loaded sexual symbolism. Dogwood (1997) displays sum of two units ivory-colored blossoms dangling over a brushy grid of Sean Scully-like stripes. through letting these relief elements dominate the works, Evans celebrates the decorative press on embracing its upbeat power.

The exhibition also included a small collection of earlier paintings that use mold acrylic forms to animate underlying patterns. In Lattice (1995) for example, Evans cast acrylic in a grid that advises a chain-link fence; this interstice covers an eye-popping mottle of orange and blue-green pigment. sum of two units horizontal, table-top paintings take Evans's experiments with acrylics and plastics in another direction. upon the surface of her Table with Cast alloy of copper and Porcelain (1997), Evans lays a lumpy cast-bronze grid of woven twigs; placed in the interstices, tic-tac-toe-style, are a cluster of cast-porcelain leaves and fruit.

Animated through a sense of play, Evans's paintings ar imbued with a conviction missing in abstractionists like as Jonathan Lasker and Fabian Marcassio. Outfitted in their finery, her sumptuous works transcend the pretension and self-consciousness that have bogg down abstract painting for above a decade now.

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