Ben Evans America, b. 1995
"If I'm birthing something, I think I'm trying to birth a language of images that are important to me. I think this image vocabulary that I'm building is becoming an extension of myself and I want to create my own language with my art." - Ben Evans
Ben Evans (b. 1995) is a Los Angeles-based painter. Evans’ neo-noir, campy, Los Angeles house paintings reflect the artists’ output of visual stimulation he’s gathered from a rolodex of iconography that is meaningful to him. Whether it be Shelley Duvall, Slim Aarons’ pool photographs, or moms from his hometown “leasing their white Mercedes” the lexicon of imagery creates a visual language in the works unlike anyone else.
The flat colors and oftentimes extreme lighting in the works add to the drama and bluntness of the large-scale paintings. Drawing inspiration from his interest in anti-natalism, he challenges societal norms by painting "imagined" figures—individuals who exist only within the realm of his imagination and who, in a symbolic gesture, never asked to be portrayed. Be it religious emblems or glamorous isolation, Evans considers himself a “conductor of imagery.”
