Jheri Evans

Jheri Evans (°1988) makes conceptual design, photo, drawing, and media art. By emphasizing aesthetics, Evans absorbs the tradition of remembrance art into daily practice. This personal follow-up and revival of a past tradition is important as an act of meditation. Evans’ conceptual artworks are given improper functions: significations are inverted, and form and content merge. Shapes are dissociated from their original meaning, by which the system in which they normally function is exposed. Initially unambiguous concepts are shattered and disseminate endlessly. By using popular themes such as sexuality, family structure and religion, Evans tries to create works in which the actual event still has to take place or just has ended: moments evocative of atmosphere and suspense that are not part of a narrative thread. By putting the viewer on the wrong track, Evans touches various overlapping themes and strategies. Several reoccurring subject matter can be recognized such as the relation to popular culture and media; working with repetition, provocation and the investigation of the process of expectations. The inherent visual seductiveness, along with the conciseness of the exhibitions, further complicates the reception of the manifold layers of meaning behind Evans’ works. By experimenting with aleatoric processes, he formalizes the coincidental and emphasizes the conscious process of composition that is behind the seemingly random works. The thought processes, which is supposedly private, highly subjective and unfiltered in their references to dream worlds, are frequently revealed as assemblages. By contesting the division between the realm of memory and the realm of experience, he seduces the viewer into a world of ongoing equilibrium and the interval that articulates the stream of daily events. His works often refers to pop and mass culture. Using written and drawn symbols, a world where light-heartedness rules and where rules are undermined is created.