Additional Images

Provenance:

Private Collection, Ontario
Sable-Castelli Gallery, Ltd., Toronto

Literature:

Literature: Centre for Contemporary Canadian Art, Canadian Art Datbase. Ric Evans, “Biography,” and “Artist Statements.”

Note:

diptych

Toronto-based artist Ric Evans' minimalist paintings deal primarily with the presence of art and its space as an object. His influences range from an interest in Renaissance perspective to the minimalism of the 1950s, creating a sub-genre of minimalism unique to his own work. Between 1970 and 1974, Evans frequently visited New York, eventually befriending Art & Language: a conceptual artist collaboration critical of the bureaucracy of Modernism, and the conservatism of Minimalism. This translated into Evans' work as he sought to create art that spoke for itself, rather than falling into the hedonistic tendencies of the Toronto art scene during the 1970s. Evans commented on this during his exhibition in Alberta, stating that, “... a painting should be approached empirically. It contains information and produces sensation." By using geometric abstraction and reductivist ideas, Evans' large canvases of colour take on as much presence as the viewer, and even more space.

Evans studied at the Ontario College of Art from 1967-69. He has held solo shows at the University of Toronto, Southern Alberta Art Gallery, the ICA in Los Angeles, and in Sydney, Australia.