Recovery (2019)
Recovery (English)
Kevin Jerome Everson, Recovery,2019
16mm film transferred to HD video, black and white, sound, 10:19 min.
Courtesy der Künstler, trilobite-arts DAC, Charlottesville, Picture Palace Pictures, New York
“So every minute let me know what you are feeling” says a voice from the off. A young man is seated before the camera, and he is spinning round and round. Filmed in one single take, this video concentrates on this man’s moving torso. The fixed position of the camera means that nothing of his surroundings, in which the image is anchored, is visible. While the protagonist spins, he receives new instructions every minute, telling him to adopt various positions. “Right ear to right shoulder,” “Go ahead and touch your toes,” “Let’s do a finger count” are just some of these. Each new position is held for just a few seconds, after which the trainer says “recover,” and the man is able to adopt his original upright pose. Then the trainee is asked to define the level of physical exertion by using numbers, but he never exceeds the number 2 as a sign of his energy level. Watching this routine, at some point the setting of this film becomes evident. Everson filmed Recovery with the 14th Flying Training Wing of the US Air Force in Columbus, Mississippi. This work shows an exercise that is part of a young pilots training, and it can be seen to stand in for a number of works by the artist that were filmed with the military and that document work routines of Afro-Americans.
Kevin Jerome Everson
The work and practice of Kevin Jerome Everson encompasses photography, printmaking, sculpture and film. He studied at the University of Akron as well as at Ohio University and is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson has been recognized with the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Alpert Award in Film/Video, the Heinz Award in Arts and Humanities, the Rome Prize of the American Academy in Rome and the Fellowship of the American Academy in Berlin. He was awarded various grants, from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Buffalo; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus; and the Ohio Arts Council.
His artwork has been the subject of retrospectives and solo exhibitions at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Tate Modern, London; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and the Harvard Film Archive. His works were presented at international film festivals and art institutions including the Unknown Pleasures Festival, Berlin; Sundance Film Festival, Utah; International Film Festival Rotterdam; Images Film Festival Toronto; Venice International Film Festival; BFI/London Film Festival, International Short Film Festival Oberhausen; European Media Art Festival, Osnabrück; the Viennale, Vienna; BlackStar Film Festival, Philadelphia; Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; MOCA, Los Angeles; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; MoMA, New York; and the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington D.C. His films have been featured at the 2008, 2012 and 2017 Whitney Biennial and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial.
Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures, New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.