ART/Massachusetts
“Thoughts unsaid, now forgotten...”
Through Dec. 31

Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans' new site-specific projects explore the complex relationships between image and word, poetry and science, divination and earthly communication, and spoken and written language.

Upon entering the gallery, the viewer is greeted by her or his own image in Wyn Evans’ signature convex mirror sculpture, “Perverse, Inverse, Reverse” (1996).

The space is shared by “The Slide Rule Man,” a MIT audio recording from the sixties of a man who traveled between the science-based schools inscribing students’ names on their slide rules. Three Asian scholar’s rocks, borrowed from Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts will be displayed in proximity to the audio piece.

These hybrids of nature and culture exist today between the realms of nature and art, continuing Wyn Evans’ investigation into the aesthetics common to both scientific and artistic vision.

The next installation component includes reversed-text neon work “Thoughts unsaid, now forgotten...” (2004).

The work faces a large plate glass window onto a well-traveled courtyard. The sharp, bright neon image reflects off the glass even in daylight, so that from the inside the reflected text will appear readable, like a caption for the view outdoors or subtitles in a film. “IMAGE (Rabbit's Moon) by Raymond Williams” (2004), a black Venetian-glass chandelier, spells out in Morse Code a text by Raymond Williams defining the word "image" from his text "Keywords - A Vocabulary of Culture and Society." A computer monitor translates the Morse Code back into the texts.

“The sky is thin as paper here...” (2004), a new slide-projection piece using a special dissolve unit, casts layers of black and white astronomical images with historical pictures of exuberant traditional celebrations from Japanese festivals.

Finally, “WMBR Radio Station” is the actual wood-paneled studio from MIT's student-run radio station. Wyn Evans has taken the original 1960’s wood-paneled broadcast studio from WMBR, MIT's radio station, and installed it in a corner of the gallery. The five elements of the station pay respect to past technologies and the time before the Internet when radio was an important tool for communication.

“WMBR Radio Station” brings together the major themes Wyn Evans explores in his work -- information, poetry, art, science, and communication.

Bio: Born in South Wales in 1958, Cerith Wyn Evans graduated from the Royal College of Art in 1984. He began his career as a video and filmmaker and worked as an assistant to filmmaker Derek Jarman. He also collaborated with choreographer Michael Clark and taught at the Architectural Association in London for six years.

In the early 1990s, Wyn Evans began making sculptures and installations. He employs a variety of media such as neon, orchids, fireworks, film, photography, and sculpture to explore his ideas on perception and conceptual limits. His work deals with the phenomenology of time, language, and perception.

Wyn Evans’ first solo exhibition as a visual artist was held at White Cube, London, in 1996, for which he created an installation entitled “Inverse, Reverse, Perverse,” consisting of a large concave mirror that inverted and radically distorted the viewer's reflection, producing a disturbing self-portrait.

Wyn Evans has exhibited extensively in Europe, including the Hayward Gallery, London, and in the United States, at venues like the Deitch Projects in New York. More recently, Evans has had solo shows at the Kunsthaus Glarus, Switzerland, and Georg Kargl, Vienna.

Shown/header image: “The sky is thin as paper here…” (2004)
Installation detail
Photo courtesy Galerie Daniel Buchholz, Cologne

Find it: MIT List Visual Arts Center(LVAC)
20 Ames Street Building E15, Atrium level
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139
Get info: (617) 253-4680

Find art events in other cities, in the DEC/JAN issue of "Arte Six."