Automatic Ink Drawing, Kyoto (2011)

Steeped in film, literature, and theory, Cerith Wyn Evans produces highly conceptual installations, sculptures, photographs, and films through which he aims to evoke “polyphony, superimposition, layers, levels, the occluded, and the visibility of the mask.” What drives his practice is his fascination with perception—how we understand texts, language, our surroundings, and each other. Wyn Evans combines and re-presents recognizable objects, texts, and images to catalyse a multiplicity of new, open-ended meanings. In his firework pieces, for example, texts from songs and poetry are created by placing fireworks on a wooden structure which is then set on fire while his chandelier sculptures turn texts into flashing Morse Code light signals. For Wyn Evans, these works interrogate the notion of the aesthetic and illustrate the malleability and instability of meaning as it shifts in context, perception, or physical states.

Llanelli, UK