Cerith Wyn Evans
dal 19/9/2006 al 28/10/2006
Segnalato da
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts
19/9/2006
Cerith Wyn Evans
ICA - Institute of Contemporary Arts, London
Wyn Evans has conceived a set of entirely new works in direct response to the history, location and architectural particularities of the ICA. "Take my eyes and through them see you" is also an opportunity for the artist to examine a personal relationship with the institution, which has played an important role in his development.
Take my eyes and through them see you
The ICA is delighted to present the exhibition take my eyes and through them see you
by the highly influential artist and filmmaker Cerith Wyn Evans.
Although his background is predominantly in filmmaking, which clearly informs and
shapes his work to this day, he also harnesses an impressively wide knowledge of
literature, philosophy, music and photography to create a unique and distinctive
artistic vernacular. His erudition is both implicit and explicit as he creates works
whose outward simplicity and elegance disguises radical and complex socio-political
content. Philosophical and literary influences are most evident in his series of
language-based works that contain remnants of ideas proposed by significant
avant-garde movements of the Twentieth Century from Surrealism to Conceptual art and
are marked by an extreme minimal beauty which on closer inspection reveal deeper,
more troubling content. His sculptural 'chandelier' pieces - for which he is
probably best known - conceal a personal canon of literature from the last century
including poems, letters, short stories and philosophy - the texts being transmitted
through
Morse-code translated into pulsing light bulbs.
For this exhibition, Wyn Evans has conceived a set of entirely new works in direct
response to the history, location and architectural particularities of the ICA. take
my eyes and through them see you is also an opportunity for the artist to examine a
personal relationship with the institution, which has played an important role in
his development. He first visited the ICA as a teenager in the mid 1970s where he
came to see Marcel Broodthaers last exhibition De'cor, which included
Broodthaers’ legendary piece La Bataille de Waterloo (The Battle of Waterloo), 1975.
The exhibition, with its overtly critical content had a tremendous effect on Wyn
Evans and will be referenced within some of the new works made for the ICA.
Wyn Evans graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1984. He began his career as a
video and filmmaker and worked as an assistant to the filmmaker Derek Jarman. During
the 1980s Wyn Evans made short experimental films that have been screened in the UK
and abroad (his first exhibition at the ICA entitled ‘A Certain Sensibility’ was a
month long series of Super 8 film screenings at the then newly opened Cinematheque,
1979). He has also collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark, Leigh Bowery,
Throbbing Gristle, The Smiths and The Fall among others.
Wyn Evans’ solo and group exhibitions include Tate Britain, London (2000), Kunsthaus
Glarus, Switzerland (2001), Documenta 11, Kassel (2002), Berkeley Art Museum,
Berkeley (2003), White Cube, London (2003), Camden Arts Centre, London (2004),
Kunstverein Frankfurt and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (2004), Kunsthaus, Graz
(2005), The Conservatory, Barbican, London (2005). Most recently The Curves of the
Needle, a touring installation developed by the BAWAG Foundation, Vienna (2005), of
which Wyn Evan’s contribution went on to show at White Cube (2006) and in which
something happens all over again for the very first time, Muse'e d’Art Moderne
de la Ville de Paris, Paris, (2006).
take my eyes and through them see you has been curated by Jens Hoffmann, Director of
Exhibitions, and Rob Bowman, Curator of Exhibitions.
A limited edition artists’ publication will be produced on the occasion of the
exhibition.
Institute of Contemporary Arts
The Mall - London