Cerith Wyn Evans

Born in 1958 in Llanelli, Wales, Cerith Wyn Evans lives and works in London and Norfolk, England. A graduate of Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College of Art in London, he began his career as a short and experimental film maker, before turning to visual and conceptual art in the 1990s.

Cerith Wyn Evans uses a diverse range of media in his conceptual works, including installations, sculptures, photography and films. Like many artists of his generation, Cerith Wyn Evans employs a total freedom with the different fields of creation, inspired by Surrealism, pre-Pop Art, and the Beat Generation, among others. Since the early 1990s, Evans has embarked on an approach based on language, its content, interpretations and ambiguities. He allows himself the right to reappropriate textual materials in order to encrypt them and transform them into objects (sculptures, images, etc.) and imposes upon them an affirmed subjectivity. He also manipulates sounds to give them a material form and explores the links between science and poetry by using luminous supports such as chandeliers, neon lights or firework.

Numerous international museums have devoted monographic exhibitions to Evans’ work, including the Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich in 2017; the Museion Bolzano in 2015; the Serpentine Sackler Gallery in London in 2014; the MUSAC in Leon in 2008; the Institute of Contemporary Art in London in 2004; the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 2004. In France, his work was shown in 2006 in the solo exhibition In Which Something Happens All Over Again for the First Time at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, and previously at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 2004. Evans also participated in Documenta 11 in 2002 and was the first artist to represent Wales at the Venice Biennale in 2003.

Lately the Tate Britain in London featured Forms in Space …by Light (in Time) a large installation by Cerith Wyn Evans specially commissioned for the Duveen Galleries. The same year the artist also participated in the exhibition Viva Arte Viva at this year’s Venice Biennale and in Skulptur Projekte 2017 in Münster. Lastly, Evans is also among the artists selected to participate in Lyon Biennale in September 2017, while the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City has granted him a solo show to open in February 2018.

A conversation with Jean-Pierre Criqui