Polly One (2018)
Polly One (English)
Kevin Jerome Everson, Polly One,2018
16mm film transferred to HD video, color, silent, 6:12 min.
Courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, Charlottesville, Picture Palace Pictures, New York
In a small side room that is freely visible from the main gallery, visitors can look at Polly One. As in Condor(2019), the sky and the sun are the focus here. Although both works depict an eclipse of the sun, the aesthetic that defines this small projection Polly One is different. The sun is reduced to a thin crescent by the moon, but is nonetheless resplendent in bright matte colors, and the rapidly changing cloud formations continuously alter the picture. Over-exposure and light reflection occasionally give the film a red-orange color. The film was made in the small town of Saluda in North Carolina. On August 21, 2017, a total eclipse of the sun was observed in fourteen states from the northern west coast to the southern east coast. It became known as the “great American eclipse.” Everson titled his film for his grandmother, Bertha Everson, who died the day before the eclipse.
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.