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Artist Talk
Kevin Jerome Everson 

Video

2021
Length: 1:04:51 min.
Language: English

Kevin Jerome Everson’s body of cinematic work dates back to the late 1990s and includes over 160 short films and nine feature-length films. Working exclusively in 16mm format, the artist’s films range in length from a few minutes to 8 hours (Park Lanes2015) and have meanwhile been fully digitized.

Everson grew up in Mansfield, Ohio; a town deeply rooted in the working world of industrial culture. As a result, many of Everson’s films depict African-American people in their work culture and performing their jobs. Yet his artistic practice cannot be reduced to the documentary; rather, Everson has a unique relationship to abstraction, cinematographic imagery, editing, as well as the materiality of film. In some of his films, the distinction between reality and fiction blurs as the artist questions or dissolves the boundaries of archival footage and scripted scenes. By looking closely and knowing Everson’s approach to sculpture, trained viewers can see how the artist subverts expected reality and makes his authorship visible.


The work and practice of Kevin Jerome Everson (*1965 Mansfield, Ohio; lives in Charlottesville) 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.

Everson is represented by Picture Palace Pictures, New York and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York.