John Evans made collages every day for nearly forty years using discarded material found on the streets of New York. Inspired by Hannah Höch, Joseph Cornell, and Kurt Schwitters, Evans developed a highly site-specific practice that responded to materials found in his immediate environment, and he earnestly recorded life by capturing the minutiae of his changing neighborhood, art scene, and city. His collages were made with a range of detritus, including business cards, fortune cookie aphorisms, newspaper clippings, receipts, passport and family photographs, box labels, stickers, embroidered fabric, envelopes, and pencil shavings. Each collage, dutifully stamped with the day, month, and year of its making, marks a singular moment in time as well as the evolving vision of an artist living in and of the world. Evans was a key artist in the mail art movement and recorded correspondences with his contemporaries in his detailed diary.
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Biography:
BIO
John Evans (1932–2012) was born in Sioux Falls, SD, and lived most of his life in the East Village in New York City, NY.
He has mounted solo exhibitions at the New York Historical Society in New York City, NY; the Morris Museum in Morristown, NJ; The Arts Club of Chicago in Chicago, IL; Pavel Zoubok Fine Art in New York City, NY; Cordier & Ekstrom in New York City, NY; Gracie Mansion Gallery in New York City, NY; and elsewhere.
He has participated in group exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY; Elizabeth Leach Gallery in Portland, OR; Pavel Zoubok Fine Art in New York City, NY; P.P.O.W. in New York City, NY; the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, NY; the Nassau County Museum of Art in Roslyn Harbor in Long Island, NY; and the XVI Bienal de São Paulo in Brazil.
His work resides in the collections of the Archives of American Art, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., and the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, NY.