Evan Hecox "The Last Thousand Years"

Joshua Liner Gallery

poster for Evan Hecox "The Last Thousand Years"

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The Last Thousand Years, the Denver-based artist Evan Hecox's first solo show with the gallery, is an exhibition of new paintings and mixed-media works.
Working in gouache on panel, Hecox brings an articulate but gentle eye to the urban landscapes he visits throughout the world (earlier series have referenced Mexico City and San Francisco). With a documentarian’s instinct for framing an evocative scene, the artist pulls forward certain elements by accentuating them with high color in contrast to otherwise subdued tones of gray, tan, cream, and black.

Hecox draws on recent travels to Vietnam, depicting the bustling street life of Ho Chi Minh City and other locales. The scenes teem with pushcarts, bicycles, cars, and people—most hurrying in crisscrossed trajectories, with the occasional long black braid of hair among the cacophony of commercial signs and shop fronts. These cinematic snapshots of urban life are given a uniform visual quality through Hecox’s lovely, muted palette.

But here and there, one or more details pop with emphasis, such as the hanging street sign in the eponymous Red Banner. Announcing the 50th anniversary of the Ho Chi Minh Trail (legendary supply line of the Vietcong), the red banner is at once a historic symbol and just another mundane detail in this complex urban setting. Red Banner teases out the layers of meaning in this otherwise “found” image, with a reference to wartime transport hanging nonchalantly above a contemporary route jammed with European scooters and Japanese trucks. The artist’s treatment of this specific detail retains its historical content while simultaneously emphasizing its abstract visual allure.

Hecox’s interest in travel, exploring, and photography tap into the experience of being a stranger in an unfamiliar locale. By placing himself in a new environment, the artist uses his own inexperience to remove or simplify certain details while emphasizing and exaggerating others. This process produces a graphic clarity in representing humans and human places, both real and within the mind. In addition to the paintings, the artist also brings this process of editing and amplification to smaller, mixed-media-on-paper works, which incorporate painted trompe l’oeil envelopes and real postage stamps paired with isolated images drawn from city streets.

[Image: Evan Hecox "Red Banner Hang Duong Street" (2009) Gouache on panel 24 x 30 in.]

Media

Schedule

from September 12, 2009 to October 10, 2009

Opening Reception on 2009-09-12 from 18:00 to 20:00

Artist(s)

Evan Hecox

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