Cerith Wyn Evans EN “....The Illuminating Gas”

Cerith Wyn Evans EN “....the Illuminating Gas” Pirelli HangarBicocca Public Program Cerith Wyn Evans 11 January 2020 | Tour of the exhibition with Cerith Wyn Evans in conversation with Roberta Tenconi “....the Illuminating Gas” Performative screening with new films by Cerith Wyn Evans and Stephen Farrer 31 October 2019 – 26 July 2020 9 February 2020 | Concert by Keiji Haino, curated by Pedro Rocha Curated by Roberta Tenconi and Vicente Todolí For details and all the events related to the exhibition, visit our website. Cultural Mediation To know more about the exhibition ask to our cultural mediators in the space. #ArtToThePeople Pirelli HangarBicocca Via Chiese, 2 20126 Milan IT Opening Hours Thursday to Sunday 10.30 AM – 8.30 PM Monday to Wednesday closed Contacts T. +39 02 66111573 [email protected] pirellihangarbicocca.org FREE ADMISSION Pirelli HangarBicocca 2 Pirelli HangarBicocca 3 Cerith Wyn Evans Cerith Wyn Evans (Llanelli, Wales, UK, 1958; lives and works in London and Norwich) began his career in London’s experimental art scene in the late 1970s and early 1980s. A student at Central Saint Martins in London of artist John Stezaker and of theoretician and filmmaker Peter Gidal, he then graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1984. During this period he came into contact with post-punk culture and avant-garde filmmakers linked to independent cinema, and presented his own short- and medium-length films outside institutional set- tings. These works, realized by mixing and editing films, Super 8 and videos, are distinguished by their anti-narrative struc- ture adopted from the experimental “structural film,” a movement that developed in the United States during the 1960s. The performative and engaging nature of his projections—often activating the viewers’ senses—, the unusual character of the experience and the attempt at deconstructing conventional visual mechanisms, recall what came to be known as “ex- panded cinema” in the 1970s. With respect to this approach, employed in his early films, and to the potential of the medium in generating new ways of experiencing and perceiving film, Cerith Wyn Evans has commented: «I suppose one could say that I have been referred to as an experimental filmmaker. I wanted to work with non-narrative cinema, cinema that was essentially about not telling stories but looking at pictures. The condition of cinema and perhaps the relationship of cinema to text was very attractive to me.» Cerith Wyn Evans, Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1995. Photo: David Bussel 4 Pirelli HangarBicocca Cerith Wyn Evans 5 Starting from the 1990s, Cerith Wyn Evans turned his research other times. A work has to have a resonance so that it can away from film and concentrated on sculptures and site-spe- move on different levels. I’m drawn to evoking polyphony, cific installations through which he continued his exploration superimposition, layers, levels, the occluded and the visibil- of language and perception. Integrating elements like sound ity of the mask.» and light, these works are characterized by the use of editing as a compositional technique, the imaginative potential of the The artist’s practice may be thought of as a constant process word, the centrality of the temporal dimension in the experi- of translation and transposition of different languages, codes ence of a work. and temporal dimensions, which range from sound pulses to projection of images understood as a cinematic phenomenon, In 1996 he had his first solo exhibition at White Cube in London, and textual materials that, decontextualized, become simply where he presented Inverse, Reverse, Perverse (1996), a luminous signs. This process occurs for example when words sculpture that featured a large concave mirror positioned are transcribed into neon lights or in the form of fireworks, as on one of the gallery’s walls. Depending on the point of view, well as in sculptures that emit flashing light signals in Morse the sculpture presented distorted reflections of the viewers code. It is also the case of works like Neon Forms (after Noh) and no one would see the same image when approaching it. (2015-2019) in which choreographic notations of the move- Positioned above the entrance to the space, the neon work ments of Noh theatre actors (a theatrical representation form TIX3 (1994)—the standard “EXIT” sign in public places written born in Japan in the 14th century) are transposed into neon backwards—induced the viewer to consider the notion of dis- forms. An essential element in his practice, Evans’ research on location and the limits of the perceptual experience. Also part language also emerges from the titles of his works, which, by of the exhibition was a series of photographs of the artist as offering a further level for readings, open the way to an array a child taken by Evans’ father, which were displayed upside- of interpretations. down on the gallery walls. Synesthetic in their nature, the works merge the visual, Using a variety of materials, such as mirrors, neon lights, sound and movement dimensions, often drawing on a rep- plants, fireworks, projectors and mirror balls, Evans gener- ertoire of references and quotations taken from an array of ates—in a tangible or more ephemeral form—a reflection on cultural sources of the 20th and 21st centuries, including lit- the potential of art to evoke and create collisions among dif- erature, music, philosophy, photography, poetry, art history, ferent meanings, often pushing the boundaries between the astronomy, and science. Thus placing the viewer before a material and the immaterial, between the visible and what dynamic system in which complex layers of meaning, as- escapes our sight: «There are things immersed within the sociations and interpretations are to be deciphered. Evans’ texture of the work that allude to other spaces and possibly works generate multiple perspectives, short-circuits and 6 Pirelli HangarBicocca Cerith Wyn Evans 7 juxtapositions of meaning, while opening a variety of view- points on the concept of reality. Recurrent references in his practice include major figures of 20th-century art, such as Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968), to whom Evans relates by questioning, among other issues, the visual mechanisms of an artwork. Another key reference is Marcel Broodthaers (1924–1976), whose exhibition “Décor: A Conquest” Evans visited as a teenager. Held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London in 1974, the exhibition influ- enced him above all for its reflection upon history and so- ciety, which was manifested through works investigating the idea of imperialism and colonialism. Other significant sources of inspiration are several authors, among which Stéphane Mallarmé (1842–1898), Guy Debord (1931–1994) and Pier Firework Text (Pasolini), 1998 (film still). Super 16mm film, color, mute, 15 mins Paolo Pasolini (1922–1975). In his graphical and textual works as well as in filmic pieces or installations, Evans refers to these Center for Contemporary Art CCA Kitakyushu in Japan in 1998, figures such as in Firework Text (Pasolini) (1998), a film shot at Evans presented a new version conceived to induce viewers the Idroscalo in Ostia that ends with an image of a sentence to enter a dreamlike state in an immersive setting furnished taken from Pasolini’s film Oedipus Rex (1967), which burns in with tatami and plants, together with films by Guy Debord the form of a firework. projected on the walls. Other collaborations include projects with musicians and composers such as Russell Haswell and Cerith Wyn Evans often collaborates with visual artists, musi- Florian Hecker. With the latter, Evans created No night No day cians and scientists, further emphasizing the manifold nature (2009), an abstract composition of sound and projected im- of his work, a corpus that falls into no set category. During ages that was presented at Teatro Goldoni in Venice during the 1980s, he worked closely with the writer and artist Brion the 53rd Biennale. Gysin (1916–1986) on a version of the latter’s Dreamachine. This rotating cylindrical lamp produces intermittent light From the 2000s onwards, Evans turned his attention to creat- through forms cut in its surface and was conceived as a vis- ing large-scale sculptures and installations in which he com- ible object even when the viewer’s eyes are closed, generat- bined light, movement and sound, in a dialogue with the scale ing a vision that differs from reality. During a residency at the and proportions of the physical space. This research took Cerith Wyn Evans 9 Kitakyushu in Japan from 1998 to 2007. He is regarded as an important figure for many young artists for his constant attempt to overcome a univocal conception of space and of the idea of subjectivity. In his exploration of the mechanisms of the representation of reality, the concepts of time and dura- tion have become for Evans key elements that allow a viewer to enter a contemplative dimension, composed of different rhythms, epiphanies and levels of visibility. Dreamachine (I), 1998. Mixed media, variable dimensions. Installation view, Center for Contemporary Art CCA Kitakyushu, Japan, 1998 form in works and interventions that exert an influence on the viewer’s experience, as the artist himself recalls: «There’s a kind of ripple effect that goes out, that is sort of sonorous on various scales. The work is very acutely involved with notions of the “hic et nunc” (the here and now) in relation to scale. Scale has ways of appearing that haven’t just to do with mass, volume and weight, and the rather kind of tortuous rules that the physical world would place on us.» Cerith Wyn Evans taught at the Architectural Association in London between 1989 and 1995 and was Professor of the Research Program at the Center for Contemporary Art CCA 11 The Exhibition “....the Illuminating Gas” is the largest of Cerith Wyn Evans’ exhibitions and has been realized as a synesthetic composition in which the elements that characterize the works—such as light, sound, movement and time—generate sensorial collisions and perceptual short-circuits.

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