Brown Thrasher (2020)
Brown Thrasher (English)
Kevin Jerome Everson,Brown Thrasher, 2020
16mm film transferred to HD video, color, sound, 2:46 min.
Courtesy the artist, trilobite-arts DAC, Charlottesville, Picture Palace Pictures, New York. Binoculars: Courtesy Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York
The presentation of Brown Thrasher was especially adapted for the exhibition at HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. The color film, which was made in the open air in a place similar to the environment of the exhibition gallery, is projected onto the long outer wall of the museum, and it blends seamlessly with the building and the surrounding city park.
For nearly three minutes, Everson shows images of women and men watching birds. But the object of their observation, the brown thrasher bird indigenous to the central and eastern USA, does not appear. The binoculars used by the protagonists are the two bronze works that are displayed together with Condor(2019) in the main gallery of HALLE FÜR KUNST Steiermark. Paradoxically, the protagonists of Brown Thrasher are looking through these objects, which are dummies, into nothing. The presentation of these bronze works in the gallery on the one hand creates a connection between inside and outside, and on the other hand the status of the bronzes becomes clear.
Brown Thrasher can be seen for the duration of the exhibition from (c.) 8 to 11 pm.
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.