Franklin Evans, “lookbackstage,” 2009 painted tape, thread, wood and text 125 x 137 x 66″
“Franklin Evans: 2008/2009 < 2009/2010,” Sue Scott Gallery, Lower East Side. Through Oct. 24. Roberta Smith: Having been mostly confined to elaborate abstract watercolors in his last show, Franklin Evans�s art is now all over the place. It has embraced the popular convention of the ephemeral wall-to-wall-environment, although it makes the genre look archaic and faded. This installation, which Mr. Evans spent about a month creating, covers everything but the ceiling and the gallery�s office. The total effect is of a giant walk-in watercolor, or of an artist�s studio striped and blotted with color that accrued during the making of many paintings…..Mr. Evans is foremost a latter-day Process artist. Thought processes, studio processes and art world processes are all evoked here, and parsing the details can be engrossing. But taken as a whole, or even in larger pieces, the show looks indecisive and creaky. It could be a long-lost precedent for bolder environments being made today, rediscovered and dusted off.
Tim Bavington, “Up in Suze�s Room” installation view
“Tim Bavington: Up in Suze�s Room,” Jack Shainman Gallery, Chelsea. Through Oct. 10. Ken Johnson: Chromophobes � people who hate and fear color � should steer clear of this optically ravishing exhibition. Tim Bavington creates a type of updated Color Field painting. His medium-large paintings most often consist of thin vertical stripes whose edges blur into one another. The colors are so intense that it is as if you were seeing them on a flat-screen television, or your visual perception had been amplified by a hallucinogenic drug. As if to pre-empt criticism that his paintings are just so much eye candy, Mr. Bavington has added notes to the exhibition checklist explaining that his decisions about color and pattern are determined by the structure of certain rock �n� roll songs.
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