Eva Bovenzi

Roll Up Project is pleased to present recent works by Eva Bovenzi. Bovenzi’s abstractions are a distillation of her observations of both the natural world and the art of various spiritual and cultural traditions. Recognizable forms like shields, fonts, and drapery interact in her work with sheer layers of color or brushy indistinct shapes that can be read as alluding to the unknown or unseen.

Bovenzi describes herself as being in the lineage of artists who attempt to give “visible form to the invisible.” She uses color and opacity to create opportunities to consider the invisible world pulsing behind the visible. In Green Scrim (2021), for example, four gray pointed ellipses come to life when covered in a green scrim, as if seen through a colored lens. The viewer’s perception is altered, revealing texture and shadow. Conversely, Eight Corners (2022) presents a black rectangular shape that nearly eclipses the delicate green and gray shape peeking out behind it. The rectangle, with its pointed tips in black and bright orange, could be interpreted as an unfolded box, a doorway painted in perspective, or an abstract space for meditation and observation.

In the window on Third Street, six works distill Bovenzi’s study of frescoes by Giotto and Lorenzetti in the Basilica di San Francesco, which she visited on a daily basis while on an artist’s residency in Assisi. Over the course of a month, Bovenzi was struck by how frequently the frescoes depicted a literal movement between heaven and earth – angels descended from the clouds, saints rose to them. The horizon line of the landscapes depicted in the backgrounds served to separate the two realms. Bovenzi also became fascinated by the myriad representations of drapery in the frescoes, and the effect of light and shadow on the gold leaf of their backgrounds. Returning to her studio, Bovenzi distilled her observations into geometric abstractions with radiant colors. Works like Solitary Stone (2022) and Green Wing (2022) reference draped garments, but they could also be viewed as objects from nature—feathers, wings, an enormous cliff.

Though the works in the Roll Up Project windows represent two distinct bodies of work, they both reflect Bovenzi’s ongoing studies of the natural world and the art of spiritual traditions, and the ways that abstraction can distill and communicate observations and feelings.

About the Artist

Eva Bovenzi explores the intertwined themes of nature and spirituality in her collages, works on paper, and paintings. Bovenzi has lived in the Bay Area since receiving her MFA at California College of the Arts in Oakland. Her work has been exhibited at the Oakland Museum, Kala Institute, the Berkeley Art Center, Pastine Projects, Toomey Tourell Fine Arts, the Phoenix Museum of Art, the ICPNY in New York City, and the San Antonio Museum of Art, among others. Internationally, her work has been exhibited in the Fifth Annual Biennal of Painting in Cuenca, Ecuador, the Assisi International Contemporary Art Exhibition, and the Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy.

Through the support of artists’ residencies—the Djerassi and Ucross Foundations, the Lucid Art Foundation, Pt. Reyes National Seashore/NEA, and the Manilva and Valparaiso Fundaciones in Spain— Bovenzi has spent time living and painting in natural environments, which has been important to the development of her work. Since 2004 she has summered in rural Colorado, in a high river valley in the Sangre de Cristo mountains.

Learn more about Eva Bovenzi at evabovenzi.com or on Instagram at @evabovenziart.