EVOL “Unreal Estate”
Jonathan Levine Gallery (557C W 23rd St.)
This event has ended.
Jonthan LeVine Gallery presents Unreal Estate, a series of new works by Berlin-based artist EVOL in what will be his second solo exhibition at the gallery.
EVOL’s layered stencil paintings on used cardboard and site specific locations portray unpopulated cityscapes with photographic precision. Drawing in his background in graffiti, he carefully selects materials with a weathered appearance to use as a canvas and applies spray paint to depict the unrenewed state of ordinary housing. Deftly incorporating torn edges, dents, tape fragments, box markings and the exposed corrugated textures of found materials, EVOL achieves convincing architectural illusions that convey elements of urban decay, allowing us to view our surrounding with a new perspective.
In Unreal Estate, EVOL comments on the ambiguity arising from the transformative stages of post-wall, pre-gentrified East Berlin to the new accomplishments of the burgeoning real estate market. The artist describes:
“Society is constantly being pulled into an ever-expanding circuit of consumption. Fast real estate profits in city centers only target an exclusive and wealthy demographic, causing simple housing in traditional working class neighborhoods to also get the “luxury treatment.” These homes are often just dumbed in yellow paint and fake wood floods to achieve a certain standard, just enough to multiply the rent. The old dirty fuzz is replaced with something new and shiny, artificial and impersonal. Like a non-place, the traces of existing life, past history and their creators are erased. I see my pieces as portraits of areas within this stage of transition and I search for details and remnants that tell me a neighborhood is still alive.”
Evol was born in 1972 in Heilbronn, Germany and currently lives and works in Berlin. In 2000, he received a degree in product design from HFG Schwäbisch Gmünd. In 2010, EVOL won the Arte Prize at Slick Art Fair in Paris and that same year his first solo exhibition took place in the German pavilion at the World Expo in Shanghai. In 2011, one of EVOL’s installations was exhibited at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art and in 2014 he was invited to create a permanent site-specific installation at Palais de Tokyo in Paris. In 2015, a solo exhibition of his work was presented at Aedes Architecture Forum in Berlin. His works have also been exhibited at Berlinische Galerie (Berlin 2015), Pera Museum (Istanbul 2014) and other European museums. EVOL has been featured in publications such as BBC, Art Forum, The Independent, Interview Magazine, Harper’s Magazine, Kunstforum, Deutschlandradio Kultur, and Arte TV, Canal+.
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Schedule
from June 25, 2015 to July 25, 2015
Opening Reception on 2015-06-25 from 18:00 to 20:00