Cerith Wyn Evans: "....the Illuminating Gas"

Description

Taking the solo show at Pirelli HangarBicocca as its starting point, the monograph casts new light on the Welsh artist's installations of light and sound. The monograph presents a significant selection of works, from the earlier sculptures to complex monumental installations and new productions, in an overview of the career of Cerith Wyn Evans, winner of the Hepworth Prize for Sculpture in 2018. Together with exhibition views at Pirelli HangarBicocca and a series of photographs selected by the artist on the theme of light, the book includes three previously unpublished essays. The art historian Briony Fer addresses the more conceptual and material aspects of the Neon Forms (after Noh) series, the philosopher and theoretician Eric Alliez provides a broad overview of the complex references in the artist's work, and Alexander Garcia Duttmann captures the peculiarity of his oeuvre through a loop of different beginnings entitled False Starts. The catalogue also includes an introduction by the curators, a series of entries with detailed descriptions of all the exhibited works and an illustrated chronology of all the artist's solo shows. After starting out as a filmmaker, Cerith Wyn Evans (Llanelli, Wales, 1958) switched in the 1990s to sculpture, performance and site-specific works characterized by the use of ephemeral materials and elements like light and sound as well as the key importance of the temporal dimension in the viewer's experience. In their formal poise and elegance, Evans's works draw on a complex web of references and citations - encompassing literature, music, philosophy, photography, poetry, the history of art, astronomy and science - addressed in wholly new forms through a structured process of montage. This operation is performed both through the use of textual materials, which are decontextualized and translated into a language of light, and through the transposition of the imaginings of historic artists like Marcel Duchamp into sculpture

Roberta Tenconi is Curator at Pirelli HangarBicocca in Milan, where she has recently worked on solo shows by major contemporary artists. Vicente Todoli, Artistic Director of Pirelli HangarBicocca since 2012, has had a long career in this capacity at the international level in institutions like the IVAM in Valencia, the Museu de Serralves in Oporto and Tate Modern in London, and as a curator of exhibitions.