Cerith Wyn Evans’ conceptual practice incorporates a wide range of media, often exploring the relation between light and text, between thought and meaning; often constructing situations conscious of a viewers’ presence.
Wyn Evans’ early works employed film and video, often creating ‘expanded cinema’ environments frequently collaborating with performers.
Since the 1990’s his work has explored the relationship between language and space, temporality and the phenomenology of perception characterised by a formal precision and clarity often developed in relation to the context of a particular exhibition site.
Chains of references to texts, scores and gestures are evoked and interwoven in a 'mise en scene'. Situations are ’staged'…occasions are composed.
For Wyn Evans, installations work as a catalyst: a reservoir of potential meanings that unravel in multiple discursive journeys. Moreover, his work has a highly refined aesthetic that is informed by his abiding interest in architecture and music, by fields as seemingly disparate as fountain design and traditional Japanese theatre, translation, astronomy, psychoanalysis and Morse Code… His works harness the potential of an encounter " to occasion reverie ". Objects and experiences are juxtaposed - and arranged ‘in concert’, inviting reflection and interrogation. Exhibitions are calculated to occupy and promote an "arena of contradictions in which desire and reality embrace”.
Recent solo exhibitions include the Museo Tamayo (2018), Tate Britain Commission (2017), White Cube Bermondsey, London and the Museion Bolzano (both 2015); Serpentine Sackler Gallery, London (2014); TBA-21 Augarten, Vienna (2013); De La Warr Pavillion, East Sussex (2012); Kunsthall Bergen (2011); Tramway, Glasgow (2009); Inverleith House, Edinburgh (2009); MUSAC, Leon (2008); Musée d’art moderne de la ville de Paris (2006) and Kunsthaus Graz (2005). He has also participated in the Venice Biennial (2017, 2010, 2003), ‘Skulptur Projekte Münster (2017), ‘Moscow Biennial’ (2011); ‘Aichi Triennale’ (2010); ‘Yokohama Triennale’ (2008); ‘Istanbul Biennial’ (2005)
Cerith Wyn Evans (b. 24th March 1958 Llanelli) lives and works in London.
