Cerith Wyn Evans

In the 1980s, London-based Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans, born in 1958, worked as an assistant to filmmaker Derek Jarman, soon gaining a reputation for his own experimental shorts and his collaborations with the dancer Michael Clark. Since the 1990s, Wyn Evans has also been creating installations, often inspired by cinema history or literature, that incorporate elements like philosophical texts, mirrors, neon lights, fireworks, plants and Morse code to form a constellation of meanings that unravel into myriad poetic associations. Evans' desire to animate knowledge and reconceive the materials of the past make him analogous to Marcel Broodthaers, his erstwhile mentor Derek Jarman or even William Blake. This publication includes essays that delve into the artist's use of language and his experiments with time and perception. On the subject of Evans' purposeful inscrutability, critic Jens Asthoff has written, "Evans wants to go beyond that which we describe as understanding, to reach the untranslatable elements hidden in all experience. 'I hate the idea of being accessible, ' he says." This volume includes nearly 200 images of the artist's installations, films, wall texts and sound works.