Evan Reed: Traveling Past PROUN

The show Evan Reed: Traveling Past PROUN at Project 4 Gallery is a solo show featuring the work by artist, Evan Reed. Through wood sculpture and other media, Reed investigates the expressive potential attained by transforming familiar everyday objects into new forms. His work is informed by architectonic structures and driven by his penchant for the fantastical and visionary. The title of the exhibition is a nod to the Russian Constructivist El Lissitzky whose drawings titled Proun (pro-oon, meaning " project for the affirmation of the new") are two-dimensional works that transitioned the artist into sculpture and architecture. Reed’s work does not carry the revolutionary rhetoric of the Constructivist movement; rather their core formal ideas serve as the historical great-grandparents for this body of work. Reed moves beyond the constraints of Proun by using his imaginative structural drawings as the springboard to large architecturally based sculpture. Artist: Evan Reed Title: Burj al Shawq (Tower of Desire) Detail Year: 2009-2011 Medium: Wood Dimensions: 13 x 7 x 5' Reed allows the creative impulse to originate from a variety of sources. The foray into more architectonic forms began with visits to Dubai, London and Mayan ruins in the Yucatan. In the sculpture Burj al-Shawq (Tower of Desire), Reed explores the dichotomy between an old and new Middle East by combining the imagery of the Malwiya Tower at the site of the Great Mosque of Samara in Iraq with his direct experience in Dubai during the fevered construction boom. Not all of the work is tied to biographical events. As the group of sculptures develop, more of his interest in purely fantastic architecture has begun to dominate. The specifics of a location or context are less important so that his work is not confined to limiting interpretations. The viewer encounters familiar representational forms in an unfamiliar presentation while experiencing Reed’s art. He plays with their sense of space, perspective, place, and time. Without strong references to the past or future the viewer is forced to exist purely in the present with the art. Artist: Evan Reed Title: October Hive Year: 2010 Medium: Wood Dimensions: 40 x 72" Evan Reed: Traveling Past PROUN will be on view at Project 4 Gallery, 1353 U Street NW, Suite 302, Washington, DC 20009. The exhibition runs June 10 to July 15, 2011 with an opening reception on Friday, June 10, 6:30 pm - 9:00 pm. Project 4 is open Wednesday to Saturday 12 pm - 6 pm and by appointment. Brittany Lawrence Yam, Director