The People You End Up With Stink

Everything I Have (Closeup) via jamescohan.com

It takes a true cre­ative vir­tu­oso to trans­form a col­lec­tion of pen­cil shav­ings, dead flies, taco shell crumbs and scotch tape into a study of soci­etal angst that leaves view­ers preg­nant with mis­an­thropic neu­roses. Such a genius is British artist Simon Evans — ever hum­ble and almost unwill­ing to appre­ci­ate the sig­nif­i­cance of his scrappy pieces that com­bine ele­ments of writ­ing, col­lage and draw­ing to con­vey engag­ing dis­plays of maps, dia­grams, diary entries, lists and inven­to­ries. They are inim­i­cal illus­tra­tions of per­sonal anx­i­eties and lusts jux­ta­posed against uni­ver­sal human­i­tar­ian themes like war, poverty and racism.  The titles sug­gest help­lessly yet charm­ingly orga­nized dis­or­der that rev­els in the futil­ity of humankind.

“How to live with a loved ones ill­ness — don’t believe them.”

Simon Evans was always doo­dling and sketch­ing as a child yet shunned the thought of for­mal art train­ing. He spent time skate­board­ing on the streets of London.  The pro­fes­sional world of skat­ing soon called him to San Francisco. It seems like expo­sure to the cocky and ego­tis­ti­cal nature of his con­tem­po­raries started a swirling of dis­tem­per and iso­la­tion. He got a crappy job at a lit­tle cof­fee shop and sunk into the starv­ing artist role. Bookish curiosi­ties drew Simon into short story writ­ing. He wrote strange lit­tle tales with fan­tas­ti­cal whimsy. There was a gag about a girl with an arti­fi­cial apple up her bum. Try as he might, Evans was not com­fort­able with the struc­ture of lit­eral cre­ation and resorted back to sketching.

Simon admits to roman­tic notions of the iso­la­tion­ism of Swiss artist Paul Klee — with other com­mon par­al­lels such as mixed media exper­i­ments and the soft, pas­tel color recipes. He was also fas­ci­nated by the fairy­tale satire of Jonathan Swift’s novel Gulliver’s Travels. Simon seemed unable to get a hold of the scratchy and unapolo­get­i­cally rough visions and dis­cover a process to sat­isfy him­self. Even though he never pro­duced much fin­ished work, oth­ers took notice of the churn­ing, gnash­ing and tur­bu­lent brilliance.

“People look at me bet­ter when I carry flow­ers or eat fruit.”

Ordinary Bones via photobucket.com

Amanda Reicher of Adobe Books Backroom, a San Francisco think-tank gallery, gave Evans an oppor­tu­nity to dis­play his work. In typ­i­cal fash­ion, he strug­gled with the frame­work of a fin­ished ven­ture and grew exas­per­ated as the dead­line approached. In a pan­icked frenzy of self-loathing he ripped up his pieces, taped them back together and scrib­bled frag­mented thoughts and sear­ing com­men­taries. He felt strangely sat­is­fied — a pugilis­tic process — a bloody birth. The Adobe Books show led to a spot at the Jack Hanley Gallery in San Francisco. He was also awarded a turn in the pres­ti­gious SECA show at the SFMOMA. Although Simon has been wait­ing — almost eagerly — for bad things to hap­pen, his juve­nile scrib­blings of obses­sive hang-ups, woes, prej­u­dices and pre­ten­sions have become inter­na­tion­ally acclaimed. “Oh, sure — the art world feels bad too”- he winces — “Competition, star­dom, I don’t like it — it fright­ens me”. He also does not appre­ci­ate the pedantries and clas­si­fi­ca­tions of the intel­lec­tual art world. Prizing soli­tary jour­neys above all, he bris­tles at the pop­u­lar notions that the pic­tures he makes belong to the Mission School.

“Success is a big­ger toilet.”

Simon wel­comes the judg­ments of soci­ety. How do we react to things simul­ta­ne­ously ugly and beau­ti­ful? We look at his work and feel help­lessly naked — some­body found our diary that we left out, or the dis­carded love note to our sixth-grade crush, and has pieced it back together for all to see.  To carry the notion of trans­parency and vis­ceral audi­ence con­tact fur­ther, he has even included his phone num­ber in sev­eral pieces. Such a dubi­ous action no doubt ren­ders strange results — but he is not hiding.

“Sex is like fight­ing but wetter.”

There is a com­fort to liv­ing in the moment, a secu­rity in let­ting go of regret­table com­ments, bury­ing past hurt­ful actions. The art of Simon Evans does not allow us that lux­ury. He cel­e­brates the inse­cu­ri­ties of per­ma­nence and dis­play. He breaks down our col­lec­tive exis­tence with flow­charts of all our mate­ri­al­is­tic greed, bad behav­iors and irra­tional fears.  The look is often ado­les­cent and coarse yet leads to pro­found, brood­ing and over­whelm­ing wis­dom. Evans admits to being a ner­vous per­son. Now back in his home­town, he feels so full of infor­ma­tion and com­men­tary that he feels like he is going insane. His cyn­i­cal nature need­lessly frets that he will some­day be exposed as a fraud. Habitually incon­gru­ous, this worry leaves Simon at ease, dream­ing of crawl­ing back to the cor­ner pie shop, mak­ing art and falling in love.