Artwork details - EVN Sammlung

In Girum Imus Nocte Et Consumimur Igni
Cerith Wyn Evans

neon
h 17 cm, ø 176 cm
1997

Acquisition 1998
Inv. No. 0043

The artist has worked with film since the eighties, beginning with short films and leading on to film screenings enhanced with scented sprays, implying a concept of extended sculpture. Today, Cerith Wyn Evans is known above all for his installations, but throughout his work a consistently filmic approach can be found. The themes of “site/sight” with its motives of the magic screen and projection also plays an important role. The work in the evn collection is a Latin sentence in neon letters running around a hoop. The text is not only the title of Guy Debord’s last film from 1978, it is also one of the main slogans of the Situationist International. The mystical sentence is also a palindrome, a sequence of words which makes sense backwards and forwards thus making it possible to emphasise the meaning. Debord’s film, which only shows darkness for the first 15 minutes, is thematised anew by the gas of the neon installation, and also aesthetically romanticised. The infinity of the circular form intensifies the linguistically formal gesture of the palindrome, as well as the wording itself.

Hans Ulrich Obrist, 2005 (translation: Tim Sharp)