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The Morris Museum is pleased to collaborate with Pavel Zoubok Gallery, New York to present this New York artist who has contributed greatly to the history of collage and assemblage in the twentieth century – JOHN EVANS.
For almost forty years, John Evans devoted himself to a practice of daily artistic production that resulted in one of the most substantial bodies of work in the history of collage. The current exhibition ushers in 2008 with a broad survey of the artist’s “daily collages,” spanning four decades, as well as early works on canvas that illuminate the painterly roots of his unique vision.
Beginning in 1964 and ending at the much-anticipated and ultimately anti-climactic millennium, Evans made a collage every day on the page of a bound sketchbook, rubber stamping each with the date. The austere red covers of his Acle notebooks (procured over many years from a small Paris firm of the same name) open onto a world of brilliantly colored collages that , in their masterful juxtaposition of press clippings, business cards, stickers, labels, snapshots and all manner of printed ephemera, tell the story of the end of the Modernist century.
 Using colored inks, he builds upon the pasted elements to create page-sized paintings that combine the formal rigor of geometric abstraction with an anarchic sense of fun rooted in the soils of Dada and Surrealism. On the pages of Evans’ diary, we see ourselves reflected in the discarded fragments of mass culture, forming attachments both real and imagined. His literary sensibility transforms these seemingly disjunctive arrangements into poetic phrases that can be read on many levels. The Ursuline ducks which inhabit his collages in homage to a close friend bear witness, like Evans himself, to the changing faces, places, and things that define daily life. Avenue B School of Art: The Collages of John Evans is accompanied by a full-color catalogue.
February 24, 2008
1-4 p.m.
FREE
Join us for a reception celebrating the opening of four new exhibitions!
March 13, 2008
7 p.m.
FREE
In conjunction with Avenue B School of Art: The Collages of John Evans and Ridiculous Portrait: The Art of May Wilson, join Robert M. Murdock and Bill Wilson for an evening of engaging conversation about the lives and work of artists John Evans and the late May Wilson. Meet Pavel Zoubok of Zoubok Gallery, New York, the foremost venue for collage works in the United States. Pre-registration is recommended, as space is limited. Call 973.971.3720 to register.
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