Monthly Archives: March 2010

Ned Evans

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Ned Evans, Bingo, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas, 41 x 41 inches

Ned Evans, Bingo, Acrylic and Mixed Media on Canvas, 41 x 41 inches

When a surfer catches a wave perfectly, for a few ecstatic moments his body, the surfboard and the sea become one, flying with the wind toward the implacable beach. Malibu, Baja, El Salvador, Hawaii: the Meccas of surfing have been the classrooms of Ned Evans for nearly a half-century, just as were the art classes of Robert Irwin, Ed Moses, Larry Bell and Craig Kaufman at the University of California at Irvine.

Evans’ exuberant canvases, inspired by surf and strand, evolved from “natural influences of the ocean, transferring its movement and energy into abstracts of color, strokes, patterns and layers,” according to the artist, who states:

“The physicality of surfing and the immersion in the medium translate into what happens in the studio. It’s not conscious—it just happens for me. I like to immerse myself in the process of the painting and the liquidity of the paint. Everything’s done wet on wet, and it carries right over into a similar sensation when you’re surfing. In other words, it’s about getting lost, losing the gravitational pull, or at least suspending it all for a moment.”

Evans’ paintings have been featured in more than 100 exhibitions in such leading venues as the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, the La Jolla Museum of Art, and the Laguna Beach Museum of Contemporary Art.

See more artwork by Ned Evans here

Five Abstract Visions

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Andy Moses, Departure at Dawn, 20 x 30 inches, 2007, Acrylic on Concave Canvas

Andy Moses, Departure at Dawn, 20 x 30 inches, 2007, Acrylic on Concave Canvas

By Margery Gordon
Published in ARTnews

The quintet of abstract painters sharing this space use distinct techniques that complement one another’s work and ultimately amplify the impact of each individually.

The compositions of Andy Moses and Linda Touby share a motif of horizontal bands of color. Touby’s thick swaths of primary and earthy hues come together in rough edges that reveal distressed layers. This ongoing series, titled “Homage to Giotto,” evokes the texture of eroding frescoes. In contrast, Moses (son of Los Angeles painter Ed Moses) applies aerospace paints in thin strokes to create subtle gradations of color that achieve a shade-shifting effect, especially on the concave surfaces of Departure at Dawn (2007) and Nocturne Latitude 20 30 03 (2008).

While those works hint at aeronautical views, this subject is treated more literally in the fluorescent-tinged paintings of Florian Depenthal, a German glider pilot. Some of his paintings’ vertiginous angles and mysterious forms are inspired by his airborne perspectives of the earth’s planes and by everyday shapes distorted by distance. His recent bright canvases give way to the dark, moody 1995 gem Fellow Conspirator, which is tucked into a back corner to allow for solitary contemplation.

Michelle Concepción paints mysterious dreamscapes resembling blood platelets enlarged under a microscope. A video documents how she delicately drips semitranslucent acrylic pigments onto canvas, letting the biomorphic blobs change color as they drift across one another in ever more layers. This engagement with the accidental contrasts with Aaron Karp’s optical illusions, exuberant works featuring celestial shapes overlaid with painted screens that look like raised rectangles. The resulting wavy grids make the saucers and stars in Cuchara Dancer (2004) and Dry Smokey (2004) appear three-dimensional.

This smartly curated show lets each artist shine individually while highlighting the subtle connections linking their diverse styles.