Nick Evans has returned from his residency at Tate St. Ives to mount a typically en­gross­ing, complex and, best of all, enjoyable show.

There are just three works on show, but all are mo­nu­ment­al in scale. In the first space at Mary Mary, are two teetering towers in brushed aluminium that stretch from floor to ceiling. At first glance, King and Queen are a closely-matched pair. Both are built up of curved panels, pre­car­i­ously balanced, as if a heavy step on the gallery floor might bring them crashing down. Some panels are smooth, machine-like, others are peppered with pock marks, others still are grooved and crenelated, like tree bark or weathered stone. Spend some time with them, though and it is the di­f­fer­ences between the two totems that leap out. The six forms that are heaped up upon each other to make King are flatter than the seven that make Queen. Queen’s more stable, balanced and solid curves are countered by its, or her, top-most panel, which sits askew, adding further fragility to an already fragile form. Similarly, a crack in the base of King heightens the sense of in­st­a­b­il­ity, of potential motion, that counters the stolid, lumpen aspects of the two towers.

In the next room, in marked contrast to the cool mono­chrome metal surfaces of King and Queen, Worm is a mul­t­i­co­l­oured coiled form that threatens to overwhelm, and perhaps escape from the gallery, rendered in polyester resin and fibre­glass. Built in four sections, Worm is a rather feverish piece. Its scale is almost threat­en­ing, and besides the form suggested by its title, the work resembles an in­test­in­al tract, the curls of a brain, even the double helix of DNA. Each coiled section is built up from further coils, their surfaces gnarled and knotted. The sections are dis­t­in­guished by colour - mucous green, black, blood red and blue - each one un­der­mined by a grubby, ap­par­ently careless dis­co­l­our­a­tion which, as with the first pair of sculp­tures, suggests weath­er­ing, as if the work has spent time elsewhere, becoming what they are now.

This apparent weath­er­ing, and the de­lib­er­ate nature of every mark on the surface of Evans’ work makes for a dis­t­inc­tly tactile viewing ex­per­i­ence. Standing before the gnarled surfaces of Worm or the fragile piles of metal that make up King and Queen, it is hard to resist the urge to break the cardinal rule of gallery-going, and reach out to cop a feel. Setting up this tem­pta­tion is in part, one suspects, a de­lib­er­ate tactic on Evans’ part. His sculp­tures elo­quently com­mu­n­ic­ate their own con­struc­tion - one can almost sense the in­st­inc­t­ive formal decisions behind each loop and knot of Worm being made - a tendency that sets up a direct con­ver­sa­tion between viewer and artist that verges on the per­form­at­ive, as if Evans might pop into the gallery at any moment to re­con­fig­ure his work. Not that they appear un­fin­ished. For all their physical, intuitive, form-led making, if Evans knows one thing, it is when to stop.

He also has a way with a title. His last solo show in Glasgow, was called Some Newer Form­al­is­ms, and a pair of works shown there were dubbed Pieces Of The Di­a­lect­ic­al Terror Machine, dis­play­ing Evans’ ambiguous re­la­tion­ship with critical theory, and, by extension, with art history, demanding that the viewer engage with his work not simply as sculpture, but as a critique of sculpture. This time, though, we are faced with the gnomic show title Rational Slab, the glibly de­script­ive Worm, and the an­thro­po­morph­ising heraldry of King and Queen. The works that make up Rational Slab continue Evans’ in­vest­ig­a­tion into a way of working that adopts and combines contrary in­flu­ences - there is a whiff of Futurism about the metallic sheen of King and Queen, im­me­di­ately countered by their primitive, totem-like form - in an almost ag­gress­ive attempt to engage with art-his­t­or­ic­al in­flu­ences. But that ag­gres­sion is tempered by the simple, sug­gest­ive titles granted to these new works, in place of the de­clam­at­ory naming Evans has plumped for in the past.

This might seem to be a small shift in practice, but it brings Evans the sculptor, as opposed to Evans the thinker, to the fore. The result is a con­ver­sa­tion, rather than a lecture, and a three-way con­ver­sa­tion at that. Evans makes work by entering into a dialogue with his materials, each sculp­tur­al action leading to the next, and then passes that dialogue on to the viewer, thanks to that tem­pt­ingly tactile aspect to King, Queen and Worm. This is not to say that Evans has abandoned the injection of dense layers of possible meaning into his work, or given up on his tendency to question the accepted tenets of critical analysis. Instead, it is as if Evans has withdrawn just enough to allow his sculp­tures to truly breath, becoming things to spend time with, as well as things to be thought about.

This review was first published in The Herald on March 16th, 2007.