Simon Evans™: Online Viewing Room

31 October 2020 - 15 January 2021

  • Simon Evans™ is the artistic collaboration between Simon Evans and Sarah Lannan. Together, the artists create dense text-based collages brimming with poetic handwritten phrases, drawings, and images often scavenged from the detritus of everyday life both inside and outside the studio. The works depict and describe a universe suspended between the poles of earnestness and irony. With deft wit and a wry brand of melancholy, ambiguously personal and fictional narratives are woven into diagrams, charts, maps, taxonomies, advertisements, diary entries, inventories, and cosmologies that plunge the viewer into alternate states of pathos and hope.

     

    These five pictures were made over the last eight months in Brooklyn, NY.  Describing this latest body of work, the artists note, "They are all attempts to map the world in a time of great turmoil and change."

  • This sunset picture is a personal one. The sunset mimics the setting sun during my father's funeral - painfully beautiful. It's also a public picture, as we have all seen something like this. The text, 'Rage against the dying of the light,' is a line from a Dylan Thomas poem, where he’s talking about his own dad dying, and the way that all life strives to persist in spite of the inevitably of death. The Dylan Thomas line has been so absorbed into popular culture that to quote it is cheesy. I was thinking about the noise of the human world now louder than ever, and the contradictory effort of us trying to make a picture about noise contributing to the noise.

     

    - Simon Evans

  • Do not go gentle into that good night By Dylan Thomas Do not go gentle into that good night, Old...

    Do not go gentle into that good night

    By Dylan Thomas

    Do not go gentle into that good night,

    Old age should burn and rave at close of day; 

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light. 

    Though wise men at their end know dark is right, 

    Because their words had forked no lightning they 

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright 

    Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay, 

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,

     And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way, 

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight 

    Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay, 

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

    And you, my father, there on the sad height, 

    Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray. 

    Do not go gentle into that good night.

    Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

  • Things to Do in Hell takes the shape of a remote control or smartphone, illustrating  various choices available to a person navigating Hell, or a hell of their own. Each button on the remote, created by collaging layers of paper and other media, is paired with an explanatory hand-written text. The remote includes familiar symbols, such as arrows to control volume, a button to add "subtitles for noise," as well as those specifically calibrated for the present circumstances - "Facetime of the dead" and "Neighbors panopticon." The available options point to our collective experience, referencing a widespread obsession with smartphones and social media as well as current events. The multitude of choice creates the illusion of autonomy, humorously distracting the viewer from the reality of confinement. The 'Options' button at the center of the remote is accompanied by the phrase "a good hell is not that bad."

  • In Arbitrary Music, Simon Evans™ methodically lists people and places the artist has known, meticulously copying the names by hand...

    In Arbitrary Music, Simon Evans™ methodically lists people and places the artist has known, meticulously copying the names by hand in rainbow colored pencil. The text radiates outward, functioning as a yantra or visual energy diagram traditionally used to direct focus during meditation or ritual. Evans describes the work as a "record of people and places I have known," playing on the multiple meanings of 'record.' Evans admits that "'known' is a joke word, because it's impossible to really know either people or places. Listing feels more honest to me if I consider it as music."

     

    Inspired by Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year, which chronicled London's 1665 Bubonic Plague outbreak, Actual Haunted House: A Record of These Times, (2020) is a written and visual 'record' of the artists' experience in quarantine in their Brooklyn apartment. The work features Simon Evans' diary entries from March 6 - April 2, 2020, as the COVID-19 pandemic shutdown New York City and much of the world. Mimicking the form of a vinyl record, dark blue text circles around a drawing of the pre-2001 New York skyline. Centered on the ghostly outline of the Twin Towers, the scene is an ominous reminder of an earlier collective crisis. Short phrases showcase the artists' dark humor and sharp wit.

  • Excerpts from Actual Haunted House: A Record of These Times (2020) 1042pm March 6 2020 The Coronavirus is one word....

    Excerpts from Actual Haunted House: A Record of These Times (2020)

     

    1042pm March 6 2020 

    The Coronavirus is one word. It makes the media lick its lips in my mouth.
    The virus diaries 
    The plague diaries by Daniel Defoe written by Robinson Crusoe shipwrecked in London.
    A state of emergency has been declared in New York and me and the dogs are barking at the front door.  

     

    March 10 1048pm
    The market sells us a Rosie future but not today and we will feel it tomorrow. I hate the way they make it seem like we are fighting a war against numbers.
    Tom Hanks has the Virus.
    He’s our canary now  
     
    March 24
    Beautiful day outside
    I’m the mister Rogers of instagram.
    Corona or not 
    The city problem is still people 
     

     

  •  In The Portrait of the Artist as a Capitalist Goat 2, Simon Evans™ pairs images, mainly anatomical diagrams, with brief diary entries spanning from early March through October 2020. The artistic duo uses a dark humorous lens through which to understand the world. At times, entries written over several days string together in a loose, poetic form, toggling between interior and exterior. 

     

    I write down the days to be in them
    The body no matter what grounds me 
    I label the anatomy with Diary entries
    I made one [version of this picture] before when things were calmer
    The bodies are tattered from before     

     

    - Simon Evans

  • Excerpts from Portrait of the Artist as a Capitalist Goat 2 (2020): 9:26 AM September 12 Last night twin towers...

    Excerpts from Portrait of the Artist as a Capitalist Goat 2 (2020):

     

    9:26 AM September 12

    Last night twin towers in the sky
     
    Today
    It’s a beautiful day 
    More Panic Buying 
    There are a lot of Dracula’s 
    I love where I live 
     
    August 7 Friday 
    Fuck the police my mum did 
    Zero Healing