Biography of Cerith Wyn Evans
Focusing on ideas of perception, the beautifully crafted and elegant work of Cerith Wyn Evans is conceptual in nature and steeped in dichotomy. Born in Wales in 1958 he now lives and works in London. Having studied at Saint Martin’s School of Art and the Royal College, Evans assisted Derek Jarman on numerous film projects.
Although Cerith Wyn Evans is still deeply rooted in filmmaking, he switched to sculpture and installation in the early 1990s. Interested in how ideas can be communicated through form, he often uses texts from film or literature as a basis for his work. He uses a diverse range of media including installation, sculpture, text, photography, and film. He often repeats his work in different media, reordering the work and bestowing it with new qualities and details. Disrupting existing communicative systems, Wyn Evans’ plays with spatial and temporal focus points.
Cerith Wyn Evans featured in the Welsh Pavilion for the 2003 Venice Biennale where he created Cleave 03, an installation which consisted of a World War II searchlight beaming light into the night sky flashing in morse-code a version of Ellis Wynne’s 1703 Welsh text Gweledigaethau y Bardd Cwsc. He will also feature in the 2017 Venice Biennale. In 2007 he contributed to a work of art for the Lufthansa Aviation Center in Frankfurt and in 2010 he produced five Light Columns to illuminate the K&L Gates Center in Pittsburgh.
Cerith Wyn Evans has had solo exhibitions at the Serpentine Galleries in 2014, the Bergen Kunsthall in 2011, the Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 2006 and the Camden Arts Centre in 2004. He was also involved in the Istanbul Biennial of 2005 and the Moscow Biennial in 2011.
