31 May 2018

Laura Evans: Greater Than

Boston Sculptors Gallery

Reviewed by Stace Brandt

A multicolored, multi-textured network spiders across the wall in Laura Evans's Greater Than (2018). The materials used in the drawing could be euphemistically called "another man's treasure" - bubble wrap, burlap, old carpeting, and electrical wire, among other things. Evans joins these disparate fragments in meticulous and mysterious harmony, inciting a succession of delightful shocks to vision from all the points of juxtaposition.

The key to Evans's work is balance. Equal consideration of the components and the whole keeps it from falling flat. In Some of Its Parts (2017) - pun, I think, intended - the artist offers ten iterations of wall sculpture in which leather-like scraps of rubber hang from sticks, plywood, and wire. The arrangements recall Dali's timepieces in Persistence of Memory, particularly the one draped over a barren tree branch.

Evans's objects possess a quiet yet unmistakable vitality. They also have humility, though not without a Duchampian wink.