Evan Mazellan
b. Orange County, CA; Lives and works in Detroit, MI
Evan Mazellan’s paintings grapple with privacy, injury, and ownership, lifting objects and
materials directly from digital media, personal photos, and belongings in and around the
studio. Rendered in oil with a trompe l’oeil effect, familiar objects take on new meaning
as they are fragmented and re-assembled into a pictorial space that highlights the
permanence found in media and mass production.
Long interested in bodily injury and deformity, Mazellan was born with a cleft lip. After
receiving multiple surgeries, the impossibility of perfection set in, and his work
recapitulates such scenes, offering new outcomes that alter the standards of beauty.
Mazellan explores the sought-after transformation found in art restoration and medical
surgery, where the pursuit of enhancement can swing between helping and harming, a
process prone to unexpected outcomes and mishaps.
Since 2017, the artist has worked on a scale that mirrors the parameters of his mobile
phone. The works vary in scale. Some paintings are small and point back to the
intimacy of a personal phone screen. Other paintings are large and create a bodily
awareness as the viewer is enveloped in space. Using digital images to push the
boundaries of painting, such technology becomes a tool to experiment with surfaces
and materials. Mazellan employs paparazzi photographs and news clippings, removing
celebrities to create a sense of privacy. This transformation turns the subject of the
painting, once a celebrity, into a landscape. The images hover on the edge of
recognition, highlighting a sense of absence and erasure to reevaluate the access we
share into each other's lives.
Recently, Mazellan's work has centered on news sources, books, celebrities,
religious figures, and sports icons, all tied together by a common thread of personal
transformation—a desire to leave behind one’s old self and become anew. Expanding
based on scale and charged associations, the work simultaneously revels in and calls
into question the blurred lines of a personal and public life.
Mazellan’s paintings have been featured in solo exhibitions at Bunker East and Bunker West, curated by John Garcia (2021); Indiana Wesleyan University (2021); the Rockaway Artist Alliance in Queens, NY (2019); and Marion Design Co. in Marion, IN (2017); and in a two-person exhibition alongside artist Becca Shmuluvitz at Gallery Diorama in Brooklyn, NY (2020). His work has been included in group exhibitions at the Rockaway Artist Alliance (2021), Shrine Gallery in New York City (2021), The Holy Art in London (2021) and Reis Studio in Queens, NY (2017). Mazellan and his paintings have been published in print and online publications, including Architectural Digest, The Rockaway Times and The Wave. The artist graduated with a degree in Illustration from Indiana Wesleyan University in 2013 and is currently attending Cranbrook Academy of Art for his MFA in Painting.
