I used to be first wowed by Emily Eveleth’s work within the fall of 2021. Her debut exhibition at Miles McEnery Gallery, Emily Eveleth (October 21–November 27, 2021), included 14 of them, all measuring 26 by 18 inches. Aside from dimension, what the work shared was a topic that Eveleth has insistently and relentlessly pursued for greater than 30 years: a doughnut, both slathered with frosting or dusted with powdery white sugar, usually leaking a blue or pink syrupy substance from a single orifice. In my evaluate, I wrote that they had been “lurid, funny, unsettling, sexy, off-putting, luscious, puffy, bawdy, and excessive.”
The 32 work in her present exhibition at Miles McEnery, Emily Eveleth: Everything but the Truth, vary in dimension from 5 1/2 by 6 3/4 inches to 92 by 76 inches and, together with oils, the artist has added powdered mica, metallic paint, wax, and silver and gold leaf to her toolbox.
Eveleth’s work provoke wild associations. In her work, debauchery and decadence meet within the lowly doughnut, which we’re invited to learn as a limbless torso with a dripping orifice. These doughnuts bleed for our sins. In one case, it occurred to me that I used to be trying on the physique of a beheaded swan, however extra about that later.
In her earlier exhibition, Eveleth’s topics, depicted in close-up views, had been ambiguous and comically obscene. Working on a bigger scale, and granting an necessary function to the background, the artist’s mute kinds turn out to be characters in a silent opera — passive, tragicomic our bodies unable to find out their very own paths. They fall, slide, pile up, and tip over. They are sofa potatoes (or ought to I say doughnuts?), directly sexual and sexless. It is these contradictions and the uncertainty of Eveleth’s presentation of them that makes the works as singular as Wayne Thiebaud’s work of pies and desserts.
Anyone who sees Eveleth’s artworks will collect how a lot she loves to color. She loves paint’s smeary, buttery materiality, the way in which it will possibly conjure up a layer of pink frosting or syrupy drool. She is a grasp of results, from the scene’s dramatic lighting to the article’s cautious positioning. I think that she has watched plenty of motion pictures, in black and white and in coloration, as every little thing in her portray appears heightened.
Yet although the scenario is staged, none of it appears contrived. That is what’s magical concerning the work. Eveleth all the time convinces this viewer that what I’m taking a look at exists in some world that’s concurrently actual and imagined, a fairy story realm corrupted by adults with their penchant for sweets. For all her portray chops, she by no means takes herself too significantly, by no means devolves into didacticism or makes an attempt to say social relevance.
The exhibition’s largest work, “Storm Clouds” (2023), depicts 4 pink-frosted doughnuts slumped in a pile on a mirrored floor in opposition to a grey background. Some of the frosting has melted and accrued on the reflective floor. Above the pile is an ornate golden archway of what I learn as tarnished, minimize metallic leaves, branches, and fruit. Deep blue above the archway suggests both sky or wall. Where is that this place? Is the portray supposed as a nonetheless life? The setting doesn’t add up. What is outdoors and what’s inside? What is occurring? And but, all of it makes excellent sense in a method, beginning with the outsized doughnuts, which occupy almost 1 / 4 of the portray. Eveleth makes the preposterous virtually atypical.
“Pompadour’s Dream” (2023) portrays a golden yellow doughnut lined with a skinny layer of pink frosting. It rests atop its twin, whose pink coating has dripped down on one facet, forming a puddle on a blue floor. Above the doughnuts we see a part of a patterned blue satin pillow. Are the doughnuts lovers mendacity on one another? There is one thing ludicrous about “Pompadour’s Dream” and its suggestion of luxuriant indolence. The absurdity of the scenario is lovingly and even tenderly depicted.
In “Diary of a Thief” (2023), with its view of the doughnut leaking cherry pink syrup from its powdered white physique, the picture of a beheaded swan got here to thoughts. The grotesque isn’t overt in Eveleth’s work, however it’s all the time there.
Working on a bigger scale, as she does on this exhibition, and evoking completely different time intervals by means of the usually brightly coloured and patterned background, Eveleth has opened up an imaginative area that’s all her personal. As simple and direct because the work are, there may be nothing easy about them. If we’re uncertain whether or not Eveleth is being absurdly humorous or bitingly satirical, she is probably going doing each.
And her work have turn out to be extra outrageous. In a world the place the buildup of limitless wealth is taken into account an honorable pursuit, Eveleth’s work remind us of how weird and ridiculous human beings may be.
Emily Eveleth: Everything but the Truth continues at Miles McEnery Gallery (515 West 22nd Street, Chelsea, Manhattan) by means of March 23. The exhibition was organized by the gallery.
