The Espace Louis Vuitton Tokyo is pleased to announce the presentation of L>espace)(…, an exclusive exhibition of Welsh artist Cerith Wyn Evans’s works. This presentation, part of the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s “Hors-les-murs” programme showcasing holdings of the Collection at the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka, carries out the Fondation’s intent to realise international projects and make them accessible to a broader public.

Cerith Wyn Evans studied for a BFA at Saint Martin’s School of Art (1977-1980) and a MA in Film and Television at the Royal College of Art (1981-1984) in London, United Kingdom. After serving as an assistant to director Derek Jarman for two years, he produced his own experimental films in collaboration with dancers, videos with rock bands and, in 1988, shot a short film, Degrees of Blindness. Though he chose in the early 1990s to work with different media that converged in either sculpture or installation, these cinematographic experiences left a strong and lasting impression. His works explore the manifestation of forms in space, be they photographic images, texts (most often in neon), light, sound or video. While his works are spectacular in dimension, they are executed with the distance born of his encyclopaedic knowledge of conceptual art. Evans builds a labyrinth of meanings: the quotations or original texts that materialise in space present themselves as often-indecipherable enigmas. The spirited, impenetrable aspects of post-symbolist and avant-garde literature clearly serve as major sources of inspiration.

His work with text and neon effectively illustrates his manner of deconstructing the intertextuality in which his work takes part. Some of his pieces play with Latin palindromes, for example, coiling up on themselves, whose neon letters, suspended like a chandelier, are reflected and multiplied in the glass serving as their support. Evans also explores questions of translation. Lights – connected to computers across whose screens the texts scroll – blink in Morse code to convey poems by William Blake, quotations from feminist theorist Judith Butler, theologian Michel de Certeau or even the Marquis de Sade. As is characteristic of the artist, Evans chooses to make manifest the paradox represented by using light to convey an obscure statement. In his eyes, poetry is rooted in what he calls “the exoticism of experimentation,” which, through layers of ambiguity, lets him explore the grey areas between fact and fiction, reality and its reflection, established certainties and contradictory feelings.

Cerith Wyn Evans, while initially recognised for showcasing the use of light, has developed a unique sculptural oeuvre, whether he is transposing movements, texts, sounds or exploring the limits of visibility. The set of works in the Collection, assembled in 2007 prior to the Fondation Louis Vuitton’s opening, is remarkable in this regard.

About the Fondation Louis Vuitton
The Fondation Louis Vuitton serves the public interest and is exclusively dedicated to contemporary art and artists, as well as 20^th-century works to which their inspirations can be traced. The Collection and the exhibitions it organises seek to engage a broad public. The magnificent building created by the Canadian-American architect Frank Gehry, and already recognized as an emblematic example of the 21^st-century architecture, constitutes the Fondation’s seminal artistic statement. Since its opening in October 2014, the Fondation has welcomed more than nine million visitors from France and around the world. The Fondation Louis Vuitton commits to engage in international initiatives, both at the Fondation and in partnership with public and private institutions, including other foundations and museums such as the Pushkin Museum in Moscow and the Hermitage Museum in Saint Petersburg (Icons of Modern Art: The Shchukin Collection in 2016 and The Morozov Collection in 2021), the MoMA in New York (Being Modern: MoMA in Paris), and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London (The Courtauld Collection. A Vision for Impressionism) among others. The artistic direction also developed a specific “Hors-les-murs” programme taking place within the Espaces Louis Vuitton in Tokyo, Munich, Venice, Beijing, Seoul and Osaka, which are exclusively devoted to exhibitions of works from the Collection. These exhibitions are open to the public free of charge and promoted through specific cultural communication.