Pam Evelyn - New Now New York Wednesday, September 27, 2023 | Phillips

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  • Swaths of terracotta and sandy brown collide with a strip of deep blue and a bright orange oval in Pam Evelyn’s 2021 painting, Anchor. Out of these marine hues emerge allusions to nautical imagery, such as the ship’s anchor evoked by linear geometric forms on the right half of the canvas, or the distinct silhouette of a triangular sail. These details suggest a deep thematic connection to Evelyn’s 2021 solo exhibition, Spectacle of a Wreck­, Peres Project, Berlin, which was inspired by a memory from her “early years living in Scotland. A shipwreck in Ettrick Bay. A mighty punctum in such a vast stretch of land.”i Like yielding to tides that flow over the sea floor, shifting sands and debris, the viewer cannot help but follow Evelyn’s instinct and impulse across the painted surface of Anchor.

     

    Her painting method is time-consuming and iterative, comprised of continual re-working of the canvas, often stretched over months. This process is unmistakably evident in Anchor’s diverse textural passages—blue scrapes revealing the canvas ground, black drawn marks, sage green drips and pools, wispy brushstrokes of fiery yellow, and impasto abound, clearly applied and modified in layers over time. The paint’s material qualities are at the composition’s forefront.

     

    Despite the title’s nod to representation and hints of recognizable forms, Anchor is still indebted to the art history of abstraction. Echoes of JMW Turner’s elusive seascapes mix with traces of more recent influences, like the gestural work of Helen Frankenthaler, whom Evelyn admires for her “immediacy of touch.”ii In the present work, the viewer is left without a figurative anchor, unmoored and disoriented from a clear figural subject. This ambiguity exemplifies Evelyn’s stylistic position both within the history of abstraction and its contemporary revival, led by young female artists such as Jadé Fadojutimi and Lucy Bull. As Evelyn herself says, “as soon as you begin [painting,] you’re taken through a timeline of humanity as well as reaching ahead.”iii

     

    Collector’s Digest

    • Evelyn was recently added to the roster at Pace, and, at just 27 years old, is the youngest artist represented by the gallery. Her work is currently on display in her first solo show with Pace, London, A Handful of Dust, Sep. 2023.

    • In addition to a solo exhibition at Peres Projects, Berlin, Spectacle of a Wreck, Nov. 2021, Evelyn has been included in several group shows internationally, including Action, Gesture, Paint: Women Artists and Global Abstraction 1940-1970, at Whitechapel Gallery, London, Feb.-May 2023.

    • Phillips holds the auction record for the artist with Evening Rain, 2020, realizing over $100,000 in the New Now sale in London in December 2022.

     

     

    i Pam Evelyn, quoted in “Interview with Pam Evelyn,” Wonderland Magazine, Nov. 17, 2021, online.

    ii Evelyn, quoted in Rory Mitchell, “Pam Evelyn in the Studio,” Ocula, Apr. 6, 2022, online.

    iii Evelyn, quoted in “’I don’t think painting should fit in…’: Tim Stoner in the Studio with Pam Evelyn,” Vardaxoglou, Apr. 2022, online.

    • Provenance

      Private Collection, Milan

Property from a Private Collection, Milan

5

Anchor

signed, titled and dated ""Anchor" 2021 PAM EVELYN" on the overlap
oil on linen
27 1/2 x 39 1/2 in. (69.9 x 100.3 cm)
Painted in 2021.

Full Cataloguing

Estimate
$10,000 - 15,000 

Sold for $27,940

Contact Specialist

Avery Semjen
Associate Specialist, Head of New Now Sale 
T +1 212 940 1207
asemjen@phillips.com

New Now

New York Auction 27 September 2023