Fighting Weight: Kevin Jerome Everson
Curated by Maaike Gouwenberg
October 5 – October 26, 2018
Opening reception October 5, 6:00 – 9:00pm
The Engine Room
2809 N. Robertson St.
Gallery Hours:
Wednesday 10:00am-2:00pm
Friday 10:00am-2:00pm
Saturday, Oct. 13 - 12:00-5:00pm
Saturday, Oct. 20 - 12:00-5:00pm
Meet & Greet Happy Hour with the artist on Friday, Oct. 19 5-7:00pm
"I'm hanging out, coolin’, on the frames that connect the necessity and the coincidence. Formally, that is."
-Kevin Jerome Everson
Fighting Weight brings together a large selection of short films by Kevin Jerome Everson. Through dual projections the viewer is introduced to Everson’s unique world and subject matter. The films are deeply connected to contemporary culture and art and not only deal with the social and political realities of working class African-American life, they also dive into the materiality of the film medium, and narrative structures. Film itself informs Everson's choices, such as sound or silent, color or black and white, or the length of the film roll. His films hover between documentary and fiction, often lightly prompted and focused on simple gestures, real life happenings or historic events. In Fighting Weight, the viewer is absorbed into various starting points and viewpoints and is confronted with films that seemingly choose the same subject but deal with them in different ways. By placing these films alongside each other or showing them sequentially, Everson’s outspoken, but curious approach surfaces and shows that each film has its own logic and rhythm. In concert, the fragmentation of our world becomes visible.
All films courtesy the artist; Trilobite-Arts DAC; Picture Palace Pictures.
Click here to view exhibition brochure.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Artist/Filmmaker Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965) was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He has a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron. He is currently a Professor of Art at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, Virginia. Everson has made nine feature length films and over one-hundred and thirty short films including Tonsler Park (2017), The Island of Saint Matthews (2013), Erie (2010), Quality Control (2011), Ten Five in the Grass (2012), Ears, Nose, and Throat (2016), Spicebush (2005), Stone (2013), Pictures From Dorothy (2004), Century (2013), Fe26 (2014), Sound That 20014), Sugarcoated Arsenic (2013) with Claudrena Harold, Emergency Needs (2007) and the eight-hour long film Park Lanes (2015). He also has two DVD box sets of his films called Broad Daylight and Other Times and I Really Hear Something: Quality Control and Other Films with a catalog distributed by Video Data Bank.
Everson’s films and artwork have been widely shown at venues including Sundance Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, Oberhausen Film Festival, Venice International Film Festival, Toronto International Film Festival, New York Film Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, The Tate Modern in London, Whitechapel Gallery in London, National Gallery in Washington DC and Centre Pompidou in Paris. The work has also been recognized through awards and fellowships such as Guggenheim Fellowship, an Alpert Award, a Creative Capital Fellowship, an NEA Fellowship, Ohio Arts Council Fellowships, and an American Academy in Rome Prize. Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery New York.
Press about Kevin Jerome Everson:
Charlie Tatum, "Exhibition Pick: Kevin Jerome Everson," Pelican Bomb, October 24, 2018.
Shotgun Cinema, "Kevin Jerome Everson Gallery Exhibition", Shotgun Cinema, October 19, 2018.
Erika Balsom, "The Reality Based Community," e-flux journal, #83, June 13, 2017
Holland Cotter, "You Must Remember This," The New York Times, August 18, 2011
ABOUT THE CURATOR