Lot 124: CERITH WYN EVANS

Once a Noun, Now a Verb
This work is unique and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity.

approximately: 250 x 150 x 150 cm (98 3/8 x 59 x 59 in)

chandelier (Luce Italia), flat-screen monitor, Morse code unit, computer

2005

Berlin, Galerie Neu, Cerith Wyn Evans: Once a Noun, Now a Verb, May–July 2005
Mönchengladbach, Museum Abteiberg, Strange I’ve seen that face Before, 7 May–17 Sept 2006

Strange I’ve seen that face Before, Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach, 2006, p. 23
Octavio Zaya, ed., …visibleinvisible, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Castilla y León,2008, p. 67

Neu Gallery, Berlin
Acquired from the above by the present owner

“A work has to have a resonance so that it can move on different levels.”
(Cerith Wyn Evans, ‘Frieze talks to Cerith Wyn Evans’, Frieze, issue 71,
November–December 2002)
The bulbs of the chandelier work Once a Noun, Now a Verb from 2005
blink out words and sentences in Morse code, and the resulting cryptic
messages are transcribed onto a nearby monitor. This particular work is
the largest and most recent of Wyn Evans’s ‘Chandelier’ series and it has
appeared in exhibitions around the world. William Stover, curator at the
MFA Boston where these works have been exhibited and where there is
one in the collection, has described the work as “absolutely beautiful at
first; then if you delve into his sources, you realize it is also intellectually
brilliant” (in M. Carlock, ‘Words Imagined: Cerith Wyn Evans’, Sculpture,
vol. 24 no. 5, June 2005).