In this video interview, Franklin Evans discusses his installation timecompressionmachine (2010), in which he covered the floor and walls of the gallery with unstretched canvas, screens made of painted strips of tape, and old newsprint and press releases from gallery exhibitions. Composed of numerous overlapping parts, the installation gives the sense of a work in progress. Additionally, the ephemeral nature of the installation, which exists solely for the duration of Greater New York 2010, is highlighted by Evans’s use of materials that are typically considered disposable. As the artist puts it, his environments suggest “the not-quite-finished, the in-transition, the nearly-emerging, the slowly-evolving, the near-end, and the move-towards-erasure.”

Franklin Evans. timecompressionmachine. 2010. Mixed mediums, dimensions variable. Courtesy the Sue Scott Gallery and Federico Luger Gallery. Photo: Matthew Septimus. Courtesy MoMA PS1

Interested in what he describes as the equalizing of product and process, Evans’s considers his installations as attempts to probe the nature of the artist’s studio. Utilizing a range of materials, including common art supplies such as paint, canvas, tape, paper, and Bubble Wrap, as well as art books and press releases from galleries he has visited, Evans creates environments that provide insight into his working process and treat the studio as the site of exploration and possibility.