Cerith Wyn Evans

Cerith Wyn Evan’s conceptual practice incorporates a wide range of media, including installation works, sculptures, photography, film and text.

Wyn Evans began his career as a video and filmmaker, initially assisting Derek Jarman, and then making short, experimental films during the 1980s. Since the 1990s, his work could be characterised by its focus on language and perception, as well as its precise, conceptual clarity that is often developed out of the context of the exhibition site or its history. For Wyn Evans, installations should work like a catalyst: a reservoir of possible meanings that can unravel many discursive journeys. Moreover, his work has a highly refined aesthetic that is often informed by this deep interest in film history and literature. Indeed, Wyn Evans’ earlier creators often inhabit his work, an indication of his desire to keep their ideas in play or bring them back to life in order to use them as raw material for future thought. Often his works harness the potential of language to create moments of rupture and delight, where romantic longing, desire and reality conjoin. His ‘Firework’ pieces, for example, are wooden structures that spell out open-ended texts that burn over a designated period of time. His ‘Chandelier’ sculptures evoke notions of otherworldly communication by using sections of texts that have been translated into the flashing light signals of Morse Code. In his film and slide installations, such as The Curves of the Needle (2003), Wyn Evans manipulates sound to form a parallel ‘text’ to the visuals, where meaning is opened up by the unexpected slippage that occurs when the soundtrack is dislodged, changed or removed.

Cerith Wyn Evans was born in 1958 in Wales. He lives and works in London. He has participated in numerous group exhibitions internationally, including the Venice Biennale (1995 and 2003), 9th International Istanbul Biennial (2005) and Documenta 11 (2002), Galeria Luisa Strina, Brazil (2008), Mori Art Musuem, Tokyo (2009), 53rd International Venice Biennale with Florian Hecker (2009)The Power Plant, Toronto (2009). Recent solo exhibitions include MIT List Visual Arts Centre, and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2004), Frankfurter Kunstverein (2004), Kunsthaus Graz (2005), Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris, Paris (2006), MUSAC, Leon (2008), Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2009) and Tramway, Glasgow (2009).

http://www.whitecube.com/artists/wynevans/