Evan Reed
June 5 – 27, 2015 On my daily dog walks through the neighborhood I routinely encounter household articles that have been discarded out on the curb; most commonly these are old mattresses, rear projection televisions and particleboard furniture. However on occasion there are items set out for collection that show potential for creative reuse; maybe not for anything as utilitarian as they had originally been designed but something about them exhibits possibility. As the old axiom goes “Matter/Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only transformed”. I’m interested in the potential transformation from household contrivance to art. Usually the dogs and I pass by an item several times before a plan is conceived. Often an idea brews for days before the ambition to act reaches its peak and on several occasions this hesitation has caused a forfeit of my curbside treasure to the county garbage collectors. Once the mind is made up to act I get the dogs home and fed, then jump into the truck for a recovery mission. I usually like to collect at night because I don’t like the judgmental looks of neighbors who see me picking through their trash. When home with the goods I set them out in the backyard to become cleaned and bleached by the elements. This cleaning process is beneficial because I need to look at the thing for a while before getting a feel for how to intervene with it. I’m not interested in a “Ready Made” approach to the artifacts where alteration is kept to a minimum. For my purposes, ultimately they become conceptual platforms or springboards for other sculpted elements that I pair up and join to them. These pairings draw on the artifact’s original function, becoming a starting point for interpretation. I’m not concerned with trying to force any particular direction to go, some combinations might lean towards social commentary, some have a personal narrative at their core, others are visual non sequiturs or more formal explorations. The visual puzzle is there for the viewer to engage with and where new meanings can be discovered. Evan Reed lives and maintains his studio in Falls Church, Virginia. He has presented his sculpture in solo and group exhibitions in the U.S. and abroad, most recently at Field Projects in NYC, The American University Art Gallery in Washington D.C. and GRACE in Reston, Virginia. He received a Franz and Virginia Bader Fund Grant in 2011 and was an artist in residence at the Arlington Arts Center from 2004-2010.
He received an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and a BFA from the Corcoran School of Art.
