Cerith Wyn Evans

Antwerpen, 18th August 2009 Pressrelease ARCHITECTURAL EXHIBITION / CERITH WYN EVANS / “ . “ Dear Madam/Dear Sir, The first exhibition of the new season is also the fifth solo presentation by an artist as part of deSingel’s architectural programme. It is devoted to the Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans. Just as for the large-scale, site- specific exhibitions by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Aglaia Konrad, Joelle Tuerlinckx and Heimo Zobernig, at the request of deSingel Wyn Evans has taken his inspiration from the architecture of the site, both present and absent. Wyn Evans’ work is striking above all for its refined and coded relations with space, light and language. This is hinted at in the cryptic title of his exhibition: “. .”, or ‘so to speak’. In his custom-made work, Wyn Evans uses unexpected means – luminous columns, philosophical writings, projection, reflections and fireworks – to create a polymorphous, intertextual and poetic space in which darkness emerges from light. Marcel Broodthaers and Stéphane Mallarmé are important references for this exhibition. DeSingel is presenting Cerith Wyn Evans’ first solo exhibition in Belgium. We shall be publishing an exclusive artist’s book in association with the publisher Walter König. We would like to invite you to the opening at 8 pm on Thursday 15th October 2009. In characteristic style, Wyn Evans will bring the evening to a close with his characteristic text fireworks at 10 pm. You will find more information about the artist and his project enclosed. We hope you will be able to devote some space to this exhibition in your columns. If you would like any additional information or photos, we shall be pleased to help you. Moritz Küng, curator, [email protected], T +32 (0)3 244 19 20 ARCHITECTURAL EXHIBITION CERITH WYN EVANS “. .” Thu 15 Oct 2009 > 10 Jan 2010 Opening Thu 15 October . 8 pm . Blue Hall - 8 pm: introductory talk by Moritz Küng, curator - followed by a concert of Edgar Varèse’ ‘Density 21.5’ for solo flute, performed by Susan Stenger (Ireland) - 10 pm: fireworks by Cerith Wyn Evans in the enclosed garden Opening hours Wednesday to Sunday: 2 > 6 pm with performances: 7 > 11 pm closed Mon, Tue and holidays, and 25 to 29 Dec., 1 to 5 Jan. free exhibition guide admission free Guided tours for groups max. 20 people, on request, €60 enquiries: +32 (0)3 248 28 28 Publication/artist’s book Cerith Wyn Evans, “. .” 36 pages, 24,7 x 32.5 cm 500 copies, numbered 1 to 500 published by deSingel in association with Verlag der Buchhandlung Walter König, Cologne. €40, on sale during the exhibition and from www.desingel.be Producer deSingel international arts campus, Antwerp with thanks to: White Cube, London / Daniel Buchholz Gallery, Cologne / Neu Gallery, Berlin / Anny De Decker, Antwerp / Vanhaerents Art Collection, Brussels For press photos contact Rudi Wilderjans T: +32 (0)3 244 19 37 [email protected] CERITH WYN EVANS / “. .” Thu 15 Oct 2009 > Sun 10 Jan 2010 The first exhibition of the new season is also the fifth solo presentation by an artist as part of deSingel’s architectural programme. It is devoted to the Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans (1958, Llanelli, Wales, UK). Just as for the large-scale, site-specific exhibitions by Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Aglaia Konrad, Joelle Tuerlinckx and Heimo Zobernig, at the request of deSingel Wyn Evans has taken his inspiration from the architecture of the site, both present and absent. Background Cerith Wyn Evans lives in London and his career moves between a variety of disciplines. In the early eighties he was active in the British underground movement: first as an assistant to the film director Derek Jarman, later the ‘punk choreographer’ Michael Clark. At the same time he was working with the indie bands The Smiths and The Fall. In the early nineties, his works of art – sculptures, films and photos and above all light installations – catapulted him into the contemporary art scene. Cinema, literature, philosophy, music, sciences and art history became the major starting points for his often coded works. Fireworks In his exhibition at deSingel, Wyn Evans is now emphatically adding his thoughts on architecture to his oeuvre of ‘aesthetic clashes’ that arise somewhere between surrealism, pre-pop art and situationist utopias. One of the works in which this is made apparent is the new firework piece ‘In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni’. The work will be set up in a circle in one of deSingel’s enclosed gardens and lit at 10 pm on the evening of the exhibition opening. The title is a reference to a palindrome in mediaeval Latin which, loosely translated, means ‘We go round and round in the night and we are consumed by fire’. Theatrical, complex, dazzlingly beautiful and also alarming. This work typifies the whole of Cerith Wyn Evans’ oeuvre: a form of pure poetry that floats through the room like smoke and burns like fire into the tissues of the memory. Luminous columns The exhibition starts in the entrance hall with three luminous columns almost six metres tall. They are composed of several long, standard fluorescent tube-lights and represent a basic element in architectural vocabulary. Several notions of building physics are undermined, because it seems as if the ceiling is supported by light alone. In the lobby of the concert hall, Wyn Evans is installing another lit column, this time around an existing supporting column. While the ensemble near the entrance looks more like a theatrical setting, the solitary column actually becomes part of the architecture. Language becomes image The remaining works and interventions by Cerith Wyn Evans can be described as ‘language become image’. Luminous neon words literally cover and describe a parallel space within an existing context. These displays look associative and poetic – quotations from scientific, philosophical and literary sources – which not only suggest an alternative spatiality, but also shift the visitor to a different mental space. The work newly conceived for this exhibition is a good example: ‘Permit yourself to drift from what you are reading at this very moment into another situation ... Imagine a situation that, in all likelihood, you’ve never been in.’ These words are shown in mirror-image and can only be read correctly when reflected in the glass. The quote comes from a film review by the French situationist Guy Debord. The content and its setting illustrate perfectly what the French philosopher Michel Foucault describes as ‘hétérotopie’: an unreal place where I see myself, but where in actual fact I am not present. The seventeen-metre-long text in the cloakroom refers to a more concrete place, the bedroom of Luis Barragán, one of Brazil’s most important modern architects: ‘The plexiglass cover of an eighties Bang & Olufsen record- player. Resting on top, the replica of an Aztec smiling face made from jade. Below, a jazz record that has remained still for years.’ This intimate yet exceptionally businesslike observation evokes the complex atmosphere of a lost age and at the same time outlines a portrait of the architect himself, who – like the artist – was an impassioned music collector, and had a record-player in almost every room of his house. The diptych above the bridge in the corridor between the concert hall and the theatre, entitled ‘Space here becomes time / Time here becomes space’ evokes a universal space which, depending on the approach (walking upward on the way to a performance or walking down towards the exit) represents either the third or the fourth dimension. In each case, Cerith Wyn Evans confronts the spectator with this sort of intertextual spatial experience, on which his own comment is: ‘Text is something you swim in’. ‘Once a noun, now a verb...’ at the end of the corridor brings the poetic circuit to a striking close. As a result of the shifts in perception and meaning, the architecture, which was once passive and static, is given an active role by these subtle and precise additions. The smallest work in neon, ”. .” or ‘so to speak’, which is also the title of Wyn Evans’ first solo exhibition in Belgium, hangs in the corridor. In the form of a paraphrase transformed into an image, it marks the transition to the next major typology in Cerith Wyn Evans’ oeuvre, the book. Mallarmé and Broodthaers It should by now be clear that Cerith Wyn Evans’ work is founded on exceptional erudition. He is capable of producing an elegant, positive and curiously unspoken artistic dialectic using extremely minimal means. This applies equally to his recent work ‘Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard’ (Throwing a dice will never bring an end to chance) from 2009. It is a series of twenty-two collages in which he refers explicitly to the poem of the same title by Stéphane Mallarmé, the forefather of concrete poetry, and also the Flemish artist Marcel Broodthaers, who presented his version of this poem in Antwerp exactly thirty years ago, in October 1969. With this 1897 poem, which Gallimard only published after the poet’s death in 1914, Mallarmé unleashed a revolution in literature by arranging the words randomly over the page and in several different typefaces, so that the empty space around them took on its own meaning. He thereby transformed the book into an evocative and idealistic space, which is why he is considered to be the originator of hypertext. Marcel Broodthaers went a step further and ‘translated’ the text of ‘Un coup de dés’ without using letters. In 1969, on the occasion of his third exhibition at the legendary ‘Wide White Space’ gallery in Antwerp run by Anny De Decker and Bernd Lohaus, he published a meticulous copy of Mallarmé’s work but with all the lines of text overprinted with black bars.

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