Kevin Jerome Everson. Century

About

Since the late 90s, Everson has created an extensive body of work that conflates archival, documentary and scripted footage, blurring the distinctions between what is real, and what is simulated. His films, which often depict the everyday lives of working-class African Americans, display a concise focus on singular moments of life’s cycles, from celebrations to scenes of labor. Subjected to various formalist techniques, including extreme duration and editing, as well as the constraints of film itself, Everson works to obstruct the narratives he presents, moving his films from figuration or representation to more abstract entities.

Three films, Regal (2015), Century (2012), and Chevelle (2011), are taken from an ongoing series, depicting automobiles found in junkyards, the specific make, and model of each car chosen as they were manufactured in part in Everson’s hometown of Mansfield, Ohio. These defunct cars are filmed as they are crushed, twisted, and otherwise rendered unrecognizable - simultaneously suggesting new, sculptural forms, while completing the cycle of their existence.

Rough and Unequal, a pair of 16mm films from 2017, represents a departure as Everson turns his view outwards, beyond the everyday. Reflecting on the space where he lives and works, Everson filmed the waxing and waning of the moon from the observatory at the University of Virginia. Mirrored on opposite walls of the gallery, and enlarged far past the frame, the moon itself mutates to a meditative grayscale, cycling in and out of view.