kuda.org announces and recommends: Exhibition Kevin Jerome Everson, the abstract ideal, 24 May – 24 June 2019, MSUV, Novi Sad

Kevin Jerome Everson, the abstract ideal

 

Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina (Novi Sad, Serbia)

24 May – 24 June 2019

Opening: 24 May 2019, Friday, 19h

Exhibition tour with artist: 4 June 2019, 19h, MSUV, Novi Sad

Artist talk: 5 June 2019, 20h, Academic Film Center (AFC) at Students City Cultural Center, New Belgrade

Curator: Greg de Cuir Jr

Curator of the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina: Mirjana Dušić

 

After a celebrated solo presentation of his work for the cinema at Tate Modern in London in 2017, an expansive career overview at Harvard Film Archive in 2018, and a major retrospective of his films at Centre Pompidou in Paris in March this year as part of the festival Cinéma du réel, the influential US artist Kevin Jerome Everson arrives at the peak of his wildly successful career to the Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad for a unique solo exhibition of his work. This gallery exhibition presents short works on 16mm, installed as digital projections, as well as his eight-hour magnum opus Park Lanes (2015). Exhibited films include Westinghouse One (2019), Welterweight (2018), Polly Two (2018), Richland B&W (2018), Ninety-Three (2008), and exhibited prints by the artist include By Round (2017, ink on paper, series of eight), Art and Sugar (2017, ink on paper), March 1 1978 (2017, ink on paper).

Kevin Jerome Everson is one of the most significant and the most prolific film artists working today, with more than 150 films and videos to his credit that regularly investigate the social and cultural conditions of Black Americans in the 21st century. His work has been exhibited internationally at film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin, London, Ann Arbor, and Oberhausen. He has also been the subject of mid-career retrospectives at Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, 2017; Viennale, Vienna, 2014; Visions du Reel, Nyon, 2012; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, 2011. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012, and 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.

Everson will arrive in Serbia at the beginning of June and will lead a guided tour of his exhibition on 4 June 2019 at 19h at Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina in Novi Sad, in which he will highlight specific elements of his practice with particular emphasis on the works on display. This exhibition tour will be free and open to the public. Everson will also give a master class at the Academy of Art in Novi Sad for students, focused on developing their practice and their careers. Everson will also speak about teaching in the Department of Art at the University of Virginia, where he is Professor of Art, and in particular about the participatory and immersive methods he uses for instructing students. On 5 June 2019 at 20h Everson will be present in Belgrade to deliver an artist talk at Academic Film Center (AFC) at Students City Cultural Center in New Belgrade. This artist talk will be free and open to the public, and Everson will discuss his artistic inspirations and his technique while also presenting excerpts of his works. While in Serbia, Everson will be available for meetings and interviews with members of the press.

Everson was born (in 1965) and raised in the state of Ohio, and he also completed his art education there (MFA, Ohio University) with an emphasis in photography. After brief flirtations with painting and performance in the 1990s he soon settled into the twin poles of his practice: sculpture and the moving image. His central thematic concerns are the everyday, black cultures and experiences (primarily in the United States), and the unseen and underappreciated craft of labor. Park Lanes, an eight-hour video that records in semi-realtime one working day in a Virginia factory that produces bowling equipment, is the centerpiece of this exhibition. Many of Everson’s key and recurring concerns are on display in this video: manual labor as craft; work sites; time and duration; industrial objects; sculpture; process; et al. To this mid-point in his career it is Everson’s magnum opus, and as admirable a monument to the complex qualities of labor as has been created in contemporary moving image work. https://vimeo.com/user968299

This exhibition is organised by Greg de Cuir Jr in collaboration with Mirjana Dušić, curator at Museum of Contemporary Art Vojvodina, and Center for New Media kuda.org, and is supported by the United States Embassy in Belgrade. Special thanks to Trilobite-Arts DAC, Picture Palace Pictures, and Andrew Kreps Gallery.

**Park Lanes photo: copyright KJE