Archive Evan Holloway

Catalogue Essay | Images from the Exhibition Evan Holloway Home Page | Spring 2008 Archive

Project Series 35: Evan Holloway
 

	Evan Holloway Installation View

For over fifteen years, Evan Holloway has been producing art that investigates the history and theory of modernist sculpture, perceptual and psychological phenomena, and the ways context and intention can affect the reading of artworks. Holloway considers the relationship between his objects, the meanings of those objects, the viewer’s body and perceptions, and the social environment and physical spaces surrounding these elements. Holloway’s practice—including sculptures, drawings, sound works, and videos—is as diverse as his personal research, material choices, and the objects themselves. Grounded in Conceptual art, art history, pop culture, funk assemblage, and music, Holloway’s works—from the abstract to the figurative—are fabricated from materials such as steel, plaster, rope, wood, and often include found objects—batteries, furniture, musical instruments, etc.

The artist’s creative process reflects a more humble approach to sculptural materials than the traditional modernist view of sculpture as a solid, unified object. Moving beyond the purely formal, Holloway employs a funky, handmade aesthetic that begins by collecting found and scrap materials, continues in the intuitive process of designing and fabricating the objects, and culminates in the objects themselves—a thoughtful consideration of material and formal properties with astute commentary on sculptural issues.

For Project Series 35, Holloway has transformed the gallery into a sculptural and perceptual installation that expands on ideas found in his earlier work. Holloway states his intentions for this exhibition as the following: “This was an opportunity to make an artwork with different parameters than the sites I normally work within: the gallery, the art fair, and the museum group show. These locations often require works with portability and clearer boundaries. In this exhibition, the artwork is constructed over a very large and varied terrain. I see the work as the interrelationship of the publication, the installation, the downloadable mp3, the students, and the college as a location of discourse between ideas.”

Drawing on sources such as Minimalist sculpture, Light and Space art, Op art, and Conceptual art, Holloway’s untitled installation creates dramatic optical—almost psychedelic—effects from the most ordinary of materials—steel panels, newspaper sheets, and painted cardboard. The artist-designed book that accompanies the exhibition not only documents the exhibition—with a conversation between the artist and critic Bruce Hainley—but it is in fact an integral component of the exhibition—dot pages from the “newspaper” cover the gallery walls. Available free of charge, the newspaper serves as art object, artist’s book, and, potentially, wallpaper, gift wrap, or craft material, linking the viewer directly to the artist’s project.

Evan Holloway’s exhibition is the thirty-fifth in the Pomona College Museum of Art’s Project Series, an ongoing program of focused exhibitions designed to introduce experimental art with new forms, techniques, or concepts to the Pomona College campus. I extend special thanks to Professor Mercedes Teixido and students in her class Installation: Art and Context for their assistance in creating the installation: Jessie Bigelow, Margy Boll, David Brynan, Kendall Fleisher, Janelle Grace, Elly Harder, Kayley Hoddick, Casey Hood, Naqiya Hussain, Becca Lofchie, Rody Lopez, Leia Steingart, Nancy Townsend, Amy Vazquez, and Anna Wittenberg.

Rebecca McGrew
Curator