Cerith Wyn Evans

I had to come up with a title, and I thought: ‘Oh, God. Where do you begin?’ The set of references becomes like an endless chain. In this very Klossowskian way there is this notion of the dematerialisation of the proper noun.–Cerith Wyn Evans

The Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans (*1958) eludes easy categorization: in the mid-eighties, he worked as an assistant to the film director Derek Jarman, making both experimental films and music videos for pop bands such as The Smiths and The Fall; he also was a tutor for six years at the Architectural Association. During the 1990s, he consolidated an international reputation as an artist unafraid to embrace highly complex conceptual issues of communication and perception, with dense textual references invariably spliced with a poetically tongue- in-cheek dandyism, whether the writings of William Blake flashed in Morse code off a disco ball; a homage to Pasolini written in fireworks or the cultivation of hybrid orchids in a Parisian gallery, nourished by the artist’s own urine.

Cerith Wyn Evans accompanied the artist’s solo show at the Frankfurter Kunstverein and provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s body of work.

Contributors Juliane Rebentisch, Andreas Spiegl, Jan Verwoert, interview by Manfred Hermes