Franklin Evans by Miles McEnery Gallery

FRANKLIN EVANS

FRANKLIN EVANS fugitivemisreadings

525 West 22nd Street New York NY 10011

511 West 22nd Street New York, NY 10011

520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011

FRANKLIN EVANS: THE STUDIO AS EPISTEME By Raphael Rubinstein Every artist, every writer, every practitioner in any creative field, assembles a pantheon of predecessors and contemporaries. The art gods that are given a place of honor in such aesthetic temples can be welcome influences or potent adversaries, they can be figures to emulate or foils to rebel against, or they can be all of these things at once. Various models have been theorized to describe how such relationships function. In his influential 1919 essay, “Tradition and the Individual Talent,” T.S. Eliot argued that a poet’s full engagement with literary tradition entailed a process of depersonalization: “What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality.” A little more than a half century later, Harold Bloom, in his 1973 book The Anxiety of Influence, depicted the dialogue with one’s predecessors as a Freudian battle for psychic and artistic dominance that often hinges on intentional misreadings. The same year that Bloom’s book was published, Philip Guston, by then deep into his late figurative period, created Pantheon, a medium-size oil-on-panel painting of a lightbulb and a tiny canvas on an easel surrounded by the names of the artists who had nourished him: Masaccio, Piero, Giotto, Tiepolo, and de Chirico. Of course, Guston had many more influences, many more inspirations, than these five Italian artists. We know, for instance, that he loved the work of Max Beckmann and that Sung-era Chinese painters were his supreme ideal, but in no other painting is he so explicit about his artistic debts. If Eliot portrays tradition as a means of escaping from the self and Bloom argues for influence as a tense struggle, Guston expresses something more like gratitude and love for the artists who inspired him. Franklin Evans, an artist who has long grappled with questions of tradition and influence, avails himself of all these approaches. In his anthological paintings and installations woven from countless art-historical citations, he subsumes his own identity into the visual heritage of

the past (and present), confronts questions of originality and innovation and—last but not least—invokes the artists in his own pantheon with an intensity that borders on obsession.

Like all of us, Evans inhabits a culture increasingly defined by its networks of innumerable, instantly available images. As a painter—that is, as someone who produces unique analog objects that belong to a medium with roots in a pre-digital, pre-Internet, indeed, pre-photographic culture—Evans has a choice of whether to reject or embrace current technological realities. He could become one of those painters who define painting as a mode of resistance to the visual overload of digital media, or he could join the artists who rejoice in painting’s ability to assimilate new visual languages and technologies. In fact, he partakes in both stances: Evans is at once an upholder of painting’s traditions (it’s hard to think of another contemporary as deeply enmeshed in art history) and an innovator guiding (or dragging?) this venerable medium into the 21st century. As one becomes involved in recognizing (or failing to recognize) the myriad borrowed motifs in one of Evans’s tightly packed compositions, it is easy to miss a crucial point: Evans’s paintings actually look nothing like the work of the artists he is citing. His canvases might be rich with details from Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, and other modern masters, and from accomplished contemporaries such as Laura Owens and Kerry James Marshall, but taken as a whole, in what might be an extreme instance of Bloomian “misreading,” the paintings bear little or no resemblance to any of the artists they reference. Instead, they offer patchwork arrangements that often resemble crazy quilts or messy desktops. (The only artist who immediately comes to mind when I look at an Evans composition is Edouardo Paolozzi, whose collage-based screen prints of the 1960s bear an uncanny resemblance to some of Evans’s paintings— I say “uncanny” because until very recently Evans was unaware of Paolozzi’s work.) It is, thus, in the structure of the paintings—and in the organization of Evans’s studio and installation environments—that we encounter the essence of his work. ***

As we look at Evans’s paintings, our usual habits of viewing and categorizing can fall short. The paintings are not solely abstract nor are they solely figurative; compositionally, they are not exclusively relational nor are they all-over. Many of them contain more visual information than we can assimilate, more citations than we can trace, more cross-references and juxtapositions than we can keep track of, more stylistic diversity (from geometric abstraction to trompe l’oeil, and everything in between) than we can make sense of. Nor does it help that many of the images are positioned upside down or sideways in kaleidoscopic jumbles. We also have to contend with how Evans embraces what he calls “provisional studio processes” by basing his paintings and installations on the teeming temporary arrangements of taped-together collage material he creates on the walls and floors of his studio. All of this results in a marvelous instability that requires constant adjustment on the part of the viewer. Rather than trying to parse these works in relation to painting alone, we need to expand our scope to encompass video, film, installations, and the sprawling wilds of social media. In 2014, Evans presented an ambitious well-received exhibition titled “Painting as Supermodel” at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery (now the Miles McEnery Gallery) in New York. While the primary reference for this show was Yve-Alain Bois’s 1986 essay “Painting as Model,” Evans was looking at models outside of the medium of painting. In a 2013 interview in The Brooklyn Rail, Evans mentioned his interest in the speed and “discontinuous focus” of Ryan Trecartin’s mid-2000s work and the “multi-viewed” effect of installations by Jon Kessler and Yayoi Kusama. More recently, he has expressed a strong affinity with the work of Arthur Jafa, specifically his rapid-fire video Apex (2013). Evans’s willingness to look beyond painting has resulted in a powerful cross-fertilization of mediums. Different kinds of extra-painting references appear in some of his new paintings in the form of sculptural imagery, chiefly classical busts and pre-Columbian heads. Intentionally or not, the scattered, fragmentary heads evoke the ritualistic practice among the Mixtec and other Mesoamerican peoples of intentionally breaking apart and discarding fired-clay figurines. As well as reminding us of the debt that Western modernism owes to non-Western cultures, and positioning the painting as a kind of

Roy Lichtenstein, I...I’m Sorry!, 1965–66, Oil and Magna on canvas, 60 x 48 inches, 152.4 x 121.92 cm The Eli and Edythe L. Broad Collection, Los Angeles, CA © Estate of Roy Lichtenstein, Photo by Douglas M. Parker Studio, Los Angeles

archaeological dig, the presence of this Mesoamerican imagery is also a reference to Evans’s own Mexican heritage. Further examination uncovers allusions to current politics—for example, an “I Voted” sticker (surrounded by a Kusama Infinity Net painting) just a few inches away from a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. As usual, the paintings are littered with the signatures of other artists. (One could devote an entire essay to how Evans deploys signatures.) Provocatively, Evans pursues autobiographical content via appropriated images. Sometimes this can be a covert operation, as in a recent painting referencing only works from the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, which Evans frequented when he was a graduate student at the University of Iowa. As usual, Evans relishes unexpected juxtapositions, here planting what looks like a ’57 Chevy taken from a painting by a local Iowa artist, John Shepperd, in front of a Matisse detail. Letting no square inch go to waste, he turns to a Fairfield Porter landscape for the path of green lawn just in front of the Chevy-and-Matisse image. A surprising insert in a painting that is otherwise a joyful remix of Matisse’s Le Bonheur de Vivre and a Paul Cézanne landscape is a grid of X’s from a napkin drawing by Tony Feher (1956–2016), whose signature, along with the date, is also visible, albeit upside down. I never

Henri Matisse, The Piano Lesson, Issy-les-Moulineaux, late summer 1916, Oil on canvas, 96 1/2 x 83 3/4 inches, 245.1 x 212.7 cm, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund. © 2021 Succession H. Matisse/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

would have connected Feher and Matisse, but Evans’s painting makes me aware of their similar love of direct, unadulterated, luminous color. I can also see why Evans would be drawn to Feher, who was known for, among other things, incorporating blue painter’s tape into his work. Among the new paintings are several that feature more open, non-grid compositions. In one, a ground of large biomorphic shapes from Matisse cutouts is overlaid with elliptical target motifs, green and red apples (from Cézanne and Patrick Caulfield), proliferating copies of Roy Lichtenstein’s 1965–66 portrait of art dealer Holly Solomon, that strange child’s head from Matisse’s The Piano Lesson, and other shapes and images (some from California abstractionist Frank Lobdell, with whom Evans studied). There’s a kind of centrifugal energy being unleashed, threatening to send the elements of the painting spinning off into adjacent spaces. In other paintings, Evans depicts a work in progress on the floor of his studio, rendering it as we would see it in a close-up photograph where the edges seem to fall away. Here, more pre-Colombian motifs appear, although they are taken from painted codices rather than clay figurines. Intensely patterned, the painting begins to resemble

a map. A different kind of distortion is visible in a recent group of watercolors where Evans depicts increasingly pixelated versions of his own paintings. *** Ultimately, painting is not so much Evans’s medium as it is his subject, or one of them. He pays as much attention to the site where his paintings get made—the studio—as he does to the paintings themselves. In 2017, he explained in a statement written for his “paintingpainting” exhibition (also at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, now the Miles McEnery Gallery) how during the previous decade he had made “the studio in the round” the subject of his paintings. Another way to think of the studio is as one of Evans’s primary tools, along with traditional paints and brushes, and an inkjet printer that he relies on to print out hard copies of his source images. 8

Because of Evans’s practice of sourcing images online, some might think of him as a “post-studio” artist who needs only a laptop and a highspeed Internet connection, but he is emphatically a studio artist. The conditions of his workspace (its light, its walls, its ceiling, its location, and, perhaps most importantly, its floor) are as crucial to his art as canvas size and type of paint are to his paintings. Another important distinction: Rather than working from digital images, Evans always turns to his printer to make hard copies before painting them. As he succinctly explains, “Everything gets printed, so I can see it.” For Evans, the studio is the support that receives material and the frame that unites it. As such, it is a contemporary mutation of the “flatbed picture plane” that Leo Steinberg identified in the work of Robert Rauschenberg and other postwar artists. Like the artists Steinberg discussed, Evans alludes to “hard surfaces such as tabletops, studio floors, charts, bulletin boards—any receptor surface on which objects are scattered, on which data is entered, on which information may be received, printed, impressed—whether coherently or in confusion.” (Not surprisingly, Evans is well aware of this affinity: He titled a 2012 show in Milan “flatbedfactum02,” a dual reference to Steinberg and to Rauschenberg.) Significantly, Evans’s “flatbed” material

is by no means limited to screen grabs of paintings. Along with his ever-expanding reservoir of painting details, Evans has corralled documents from the day-to-day operations of the art world (like gallery press releases), texts from the domains of literature and art history, photographs of artists, photographs of his own neatly ordered bookshelves, and various accumulations of information and data. He has also incorporated sound into his exhibitions through audio installations of actors reading from texts that have influenced his work. Another useful reference is Daniel Buren’s essay, “The Function of the Studio.” It is a mark of changing circumstances that while Buren proclaimed in 1971 that all his work proceeded from the “extinction” of the studio, Evans has built a radical painting practice not on the ruins of the studio but from its repurposed survival. For Evans, the studio is like a Foucauldian episteme, less a space than a condition that establishes what it is possible for him to say within his work. 9

Clearly there is an archival dimension to Evans’s practice. His thronging compendiums of art history belong to a tradition that encompasses Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas, Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project, Gerhard Richter’s Atlas, Christian Boltanski’s Lessons of Darkness, Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum, and Jean-Luc Godard’s Histoire(s) du Cinema, to which we could add more recent contributions by Thomas Hirschhorn, Walid Raad, Tacita Dean, Loren Munk, and Arthur Jafa. We might also add André Malraux’s Museum without Walls—nothing is more Evansian than Maurice Jarnoux’s famous photograph of Malraux surrounded by the loose pages of his soon-to-be-published volume of art reproductions, a scene that scholar Walter Grasskamp refers to as “the book on the floor.” Yet even as we note Evans’s fluency in this archival discourse, we need to recognize the subjective, personal aspects of his work. For all their precise visual quotations, Evans’s paintings are not “gallery pictures” in the manner of the 17th century painter David Teniers the Younger, nor are they exercises in “art as critique” in the manner of so many late-20th century artists. Think of them, rather, as citational self-portraits. Evans’s subtle fusion of autobiography and appropriation is yet one more instance of the radically hybrid nature of his project. Raphael Rubinstein is a New York based writer and critic. Since 2008 he has been the Professor of Critical Studies at the University of Houston School of Art.

Title of Painting, 2018 Oil on canvas 78 3/4 x 59 inches 200 x 150 cm

franklinfootpaths15to20, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 78 x 57 1/8 inches 198.1 x 145.1 cm

fugitivefacespace, 2020

Acrylic on canvas 36 1/2 x 27 3/8 inches 92.7 x 69.5 cm

verticalandzip, 2020 Acrylic on canvas 55 1/2 x 28 5/8 inches 140.3 x 72.4 cm

decenteringfacespace, 2021

Acrylic on canvas 80 5/8 x 68 5/8 inches 204.8 x 174.3 cm

iowapaintnotes, 2021

Acrylic on canvas 45 1/2 x 41 3/4 inches 115.6 x 106 cm

joysdivision, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 30 3/4 x 32 5/8 inches 78.1 x 82.9 cm

misreadinglandscapeintoart, 2021

Acrylic on canvas 53 1/2 x 49 1/4 inches 135.9 x 125.1 cm

pigmentpolymersplatspace, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 70 x 68 3/4 inches 177.8 x 174.6 cm

sorrynotsorryrecursion, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 73 3/4 x 68 3/4 inches 187.3 x 174.6 cm

titianatilt, 2021 Acrylic on canvas 79 1/2 x 68 3/4 inches 201.9 x 174.6 cm

selfportraitwithmatisse, 2019 Watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 15 1/8 x 11 1/4 inches 38.4 x 28.6 cm

joyoflife2019, 2019

Watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 14 1/4 x 15 inches 36.2 x 38.1 cm

paintingassupermodelaswatercolor, 2019

Watercolor, ink and graphite on paper 15 1/4 x 16 3/8 inches 38.7 x 41.6 cm

FRANKLIN EVANS Born in Reno, NV in 1967 Lives and works in New York, NY

EDUCATION 1993 MFA, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

2012 “houstontohouston,” DiverseWorks, Houston, TX “UNTITLED,” Federico Luger, Miami, FL “flatbedfactum02,” Federico Luger, Milan, Italy “eyesontheedge,” Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY

1989 BA, Stanford University, Stanford, CA

2011 “timeoutin,” PM Foundation, Dorado, Puerto Rico “ARCO MADRID: acertaintypeoflandscape,” Sue Scott Gallery, Madrid, Spain

SOLO EXHIBITIONS

2010 “times2,” Federico Luger, Milan, Italy

2021 “franklinfootpaths,” Figge Art Museum, Davenport, IA “fugitivemisreadings,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY

2013 “timepaths,” Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV

2018 “selfportraitas,” FL Gallery, Milan, Italy 2017 “paintingpainting,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery, New York, NY “XLtime,” Abrons Art Center, New York, NY 2015 “spreadsheetspace,” Prosjektrom Normanns, Stavanger, Norway “headandhandinhand,” Spazio 22 - FL Gallery, Milan, Italy “fourpaintingstwowallsiowatonewyork,” Steven Zevitas Gallery, New York, NY 2014 “juddpaintings,” Steven Zevitas Gallery, Boston, MA “juddrules,” Montserrat Gallery, Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA “paintingassupermodel,” Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe Gallery, New York, NY

2009 “2008/2009 < 2009/2010,” Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY 2007 “manscape,” Federico Luger, Milan, Italy “watermoreorless,” Gregory Lind Gallery, San Francisco, CA 2006 “play/work/space,” Katharine Mulherin Projects, Toronto, Canada 2005 “freakout,” Jeff Bailey Gallery, New York, NY

GROUP EXHIBITIONS 2020 “HyperGames,” FL Gallery, Milan, Italy 2019 “Pole Santa Marta,” Contemporary/Contemporary, Verona, Italy “Parameters,” The Clemente LES Gallery, New York, NY “Rulers,” Coco Hunday, Tampa, FL “Notebook,” 56 Henry, New York, NY

2018 “Manet to Maya Lin,” Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV “Color Compositions,” Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY “Windows,” Next to Nothing, New York, NY “Freestyle,” Atelier Les Copains, Milan, Italy “The Nature Lab,” LABspace, Hillsdale, NY 2017 “re.volt.ing,” The Distillery Gallery, Boston, MA “La lama di Procopio,” Nuovo Spazio di Casso, Cosso, Italy “Weekend,” Mindy Solomon, Miami, FL “Legacy: Highlights from the Roanoke College Permanent Collection,” Olin Gallery, Salem, VA 2016 “Stark Naked,” Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA “2 Years of Looking,” New Art Projects, London, United Kingdom “RELEVANT NOTES,” Cara Gallery, New York, NY “Dynamic Pictorial Models,” 101/Exhibit, Los Angeles, CA 2015 “Shelf Life: Kate Gilmore and Franklin Evans,” P3 Studio at The Cosmopolitan, Las Vegas, NV Mykonos Biennale, Mykonos, Greece “Re/Post,” Storefront Ten Eyck, New York, NY “Rock, Paper, Scissors, and String,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC 2014 “Abstraction,” Fondation pour l’art contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon, Alex, France “Premio Lissone 2014,” Museo d’arte contemporanea di Lissone, Lissone, Italy “Material Images,” Johannes Vogt Gallery, New York, NY 2013 “Come Together: Surviving Sandy,” Industry City, New York, NY “The Glass Delusion,” De La Cruz Projects at Carter & Citizen, Los Angeles, CA “Paint Things,” deCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA

“How I Wrote Elastic Man,” Invisible-Exports, New York, NY “Decenter: An Exhibition on the Centenary of the 1913 Armory Show,” Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY “Utopia: Paisajes Imaginarios,” Despacio De La Cruz, San José, Costa Rica “Experiment 2,” The Immigrants, Venice, Italy “Experiment 3,” The Immigrants, London, United Kingdom 2012 “Space Invaders,” Lehman College Art Gallery, New York, NY “Rockslide Sky,” Fordham University, Lincoln Center, New York, NY “Fuel For The Fire,” Human Resources LA, New York, NY “Paper Band,” Jason McCoy Gallery, New York, NY 2011 “you are here forever,” Carol Jazzar Contemporary Art, Miami, FL “Children of the Grid,” Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning, Queens, NY “Towards The Third Dimension,” David Floria Gallery, Aspen, CO “Drawings Wall,” Paolo Maria Deanesi Gallery, Rovereto, Italy “The Thingness of Color,” Dodge Gallery, New York, NY “paper a-z,” Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY “L’AUR’AMARA,” Générale en Manufacture, Paris, France and Centro Ricerche Accademia di Brera, Milan, Italy “The Last Book,” Staats-und Universitätsbibliothek Carl von Ossietzky, Hamburg, Germany “NY/Prague 6,” Czech Cultural Institute, New York, NY 2010 “Greater New York 2010,” MoMA PS1, New York, NY “Collision,” RISD Museum, Providence, RI “Inquiring Eyes: Greensboro Collects Art,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC “The Pipe and the Flow,” Espacio Mínimo, Madrid, Spain “L’AUR’AMARA,” MC Gallery, New York, NY “NY/Prague 6,” Futura, Prague, Czech Republic “the backroom,” MoMA PS1, New York, NY “Born to Die,” Secondhome Projects, Berlin, Germany “Precarity and the Butter Tower,” Ctrl Gallery, Houston, TX “Stuck Up,” Islip Art Museum, East Islip, NY

“The Last Book,” Zentralbibliothek Zürich, Zurich, Switzerland “A Reluctant Apparition,” Sue Scott Gallery, New York, NY

“The General’s Jamboree,” Guild & Greyshkul, New York, NY “Decipher: Hand-Painted Digital,” Rotunda Gallery, New York, NY

2009 “Cool, Collected & In Context,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC “Lover,” On Stellar Rays, New York, NY

2004 “Exhibition 10,” Champion Fine Art, Los Angeles, CA “Freehand,” Marvelli Lab, New York, NY

2008 “The Last Book,” The National Library of Argentina, Buenos Aires, Argentina “Blue Balls,” Art Production Fund LAB, New York, NY “There is no there there,” Rivington Arms, New York, NY “fluidspace,” Morgan Lehman Gallery, Lakeville, CT

2007 “El Museo’s 5th Bienal: The (S) Files 007,” El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY “True Faith,” Greenberg Van Doren Gallery, New York, NY “Videos and Beers,” Federico Luger, Milan, Italy “Franklin Evans and Jiha Moon,” Miki Wick Contemporary Art, Zurich, Switzerland “Greener Pastures, Permanent Midnight,” Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, NY 2006 “Art on Paper 2006,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC “Metaphysics of Youth,” Arte Nova - Fuoriuso, Pescara, Italy “Summer Kamp: K48,” John Connelly Presents, New York, NY “Block Party: An Exhibition of Drawings,” Daniel Weinberg Gallery, Los Angeles, CA “Meghiddo,” NotGallery, Naples, Italy 2005 “LineAge: Selections Fall 2005,” The Drawing Center, New York, NY “The Zine Unbound,” Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, CA “Hurricane,” Federico Luger, Milan, Italy “Yab-Yum Estetica e Concupiscenza,” La Maggiorana Contemporary Art Factory, Rivoli, Italy

2003 “Beyond the Flaneur,” ISE Foundation, New York, NY

PERFORMANCES AND PUBLIC PROJECTS 2016 “readingroomincolor,” Crossroads Art Show, London, United Kingdom 2012 “Trajal Harrell: Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church(s),” Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 2011 “The Big Draw: tapeandtrees,” The Drawing Center & Wave Hill, New York, NY “nOtHERE” (collaboration with Niall Noel Jones and Paul David Young), Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY “Trajal Harrell: Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church(s),” The Kitchen, New York, NY 2010 “Trajal Harrell: Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church(s),” Institute of Contemporary Art Boston, Boston, MA “BalconyScene2010” (collaboration with Paul David Young), MoMA PS1, New York, NY 2009 “Trajal Harrell: Twenty Looks or Paris Is Burning at the Judson Church(s),” New Museum, New York, NY 2008 “Balcony Scene” (collaboration with Perverted by Theater), LMAK Projects, New York, NY

2003 “Dialogue,” Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, NY 2002 “Sans Exhibit: Set in Motion,” apexart, New York, NY

AWARDS AND RESIDENCIES

CURATORIAL PROJECTS 2021 “You Again,” Miles McEnery Gallery, New York, NY “paperspace,” Platform Project Space, New York, NY 2020 “proust, time and 10 works on paper,” Platform Project Space, New York, NY

2017 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY The Fountainhead Residency, Miami, FL

2019 “perspex: american shift,” Spazio 22, Milan, Italy

2016 National Endowment for the Arts Fellow at The MacDowell Colony, Peterborough, NH

2016 “Stark Naked” (organized by Robert Moeller), Gallery Kayafas, Boston, MA

2015 Cosmopolitan/Art Production Fund P3Studio (collaboration with Kate Gilmore), Las Vegas, NV NYFA Fellowship Painting, Suldal, Norway

2012 “Art on Paper 2012,” Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC

2012 NYFA Fellowship Painting Finalist, New York, NY 2011 P. M. Foundation, Dorado, Puerto Rico Rome Prize Fellowship Finalist, American Academy, Rome, Italy 2010 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, New York, NY Třebešice Artists in Residence, Třebešice, Czech Republic 2009 Yaddo, Sartoga Springs, New York, NY 2008 The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation: The Space Program, New York, NY 2004 LMCC Workspace: 120 Broadway, New York, NY

2010 “Lush Life” (co-curated with Omar Lopez-Chahoud), Nine LES Galleries: Sue Scott Gallery, On Stellar Rays, Invisible Exports, Lehmann Maupin, Salon 94, Scaramouche, Collette Blanchard, Y Gallery and Eleven Rivington, New York, NY 2009 “Data Panic” (co-curated with Amanda Church), Cuchifritos, New York, NY 2008 “Perverted by Theater” (co-curated with Paul David Young), apexart, New York, NY 2006 “Twist It Twice,” Moti Hasson Gallery, New York, NY “Regeneration Room,” LMAK Projects, New York, NY

LECTURES/VISITING ARTIST 2020 West Chester University of Pennsylvania, West Chester, PA 2019 Pratt Institute, New York, NY 2018 Artist Lecture Series 57, New York, NY 2017 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA New York Studio School, New York, NY

2016 Kennedy Artist in Residence, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL Yale University School of Art, New Haven, CT Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, MI Franklin Pierce University, Rindge, NH Fordham University, New York, NY 2015 Art College of Stavanger, Stavanger, Norway Here Arts Center, New York, NY 2014 Ox-Bow, Saugatuck, MI Montserrat College of Art, Beverly, MA 2013 deCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA Abrons Arts Center, New York, NY School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

2012 DiverseWorks, Houston, TX University of Houston, Houston, TX Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL Anderson Ranch, Aspen Snowmass, CO Cornell University in New York, New York, NY School of Visual Arts, New York, NY 2011 School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 2010 University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 2009 Purchase College State University of New York, Purchase, NY 2007 University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA

SELECT COLLECTIONS AGI Verona, Verona, Italy Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York, NY El Museo del Barrio, New York, NY Fondation pour l’art contemporain Claudine et Jean-Marc Salomon, Alex, France Nevada Museum of Art, Reno, NV Orlando Museum of Art, Orlando, FL Pizzuti Collection, Columbus, OH Progressive Art Collection, Cleveland, OH Roanoke College, Salem, VA Sweeney Art Gallery, University of California, Riverside, Riverside, CA Weatherspoon Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven, CT

Published on the occasion of the exhibition

FRANKLIN EVANS fugitivemisreadings 24 June – 31 July 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery 520 West 21st Street New York NY 10011 tel +1 212 445 0051 www.milesmcenery.com Publication © 2021 Miles McEnery Gallery All rights reserved  Essay © 2021 Raphael Rubinstein Director of Publications Anastasija Jevtovic, New York, NY Photography by Christopher Burke Studio, New York, NY Color separations by Echelon, Santa Monica, CA Catalogue layout by McCall Associates, New York, NY ISBN: 978-1-949327-49-6 Cover: franklinfootpaths15to20, (detail), 2020