Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents Kevin Jerome Everson

Kevin Jerome Everson_ photo by Sandy Williams III

Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA presents

Kevin Jerome Everson

Thursday, May 2, 2019, 7:00pm

At MOCA Grand Avenue, Ahmanson Theater, 250 S. Grand Ave., Los Angeles CA 90012

Kevin Jerome Everson in person!

World, West Coast, and Los Angeles Premieres!

Kevin Jerome Everson is one of the most prolific, important experimental filmmakers currently working. The kind of artist who thinks through the particular problems of cinema by making it, his indefatigable output perfectly fits Manny Farber’s description of “termite” art as having “no sign that the artist has any other object in mind other than eating away the immediate boundaries of his art, and turning these boundaries into conditions of the next achievement.” Everson’s films, by turns light and deeply affective, are never not alive. Because of his near-constant innovation, each new film surprises. Everson’s themes, though clearly identifiable, are never forced; they emerge organically through the course of his work. Among its many achievements, his oeuvre is one of the most significant records of contemporary African American life. Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA is proud to present a program of recent work by Everson, including many premieres, with the artist in attendance.

Curated by Madison Brookshire and Kate Brown. Individual film notes are by the artist.

There will be a second screening with different works by Everson on Sunday, May 5, at Los Angeles Filmforum at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood.

Tickets: $15 general; $10 for seniors; $8 for students with ID; free for Filmforum and MOCA members. Available in advance from Brown Paper Tickets at  https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4193718 or at the door.

For more information: https://www.moca.org/program/filmforum-at-moca-presents-kevin-jerome-everson,  www.lafilmforum.org or 323-377-7238, 213/621-1745 or education@moca.org 

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965, Mansfield, Ohio) was born and raised in Mansfield, Ohio. He has a MFA from Ohio University and a BFA from the University of Akron and is Professor of Art at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Everson was awarded the 2012 Alpert Award for Film/Video; his films has been the subject of mid-career retrospectives at Cinema du Reel/Centre Pompidou (March 2019); Glasgow Short Film Festival (March 2018); Harvard Film Archive (Feb. 2018); Tate Modern, London, UK (Fall 2017); Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, Korea (Feb. 2017); Viennale (2014); Visions du Reel, Nyon, Switzerland (2012), The Whitney Museum of American Art, NY (2011) and Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2009. His work has been featured at the 2008, 2012, 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial and the 2018 Carnegie International, Pittsburgh. Along with critic Greg DeCuir Jr., Everson co-curated the 2018 Flaherty Seminar.

Everson’s paintings, sculptures, and photographs--and films, including nine features (Spicebush, 2005; Cinnamon, 2006; The Golden Age of Fish, 2008; Erie, 2010; Quality Control, 2011; The Island of St. Matthews, 2013; Park Lanes, 2015; 8903 Empire, 2016; Tonsler Park, 2017) and over 140 short form works--have been exhibited internationally at film festivals including Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin, BFI/London, AFI, Oberhausen; cinemas, galleries, museums and public and private art institutions, including ICA, Philadelphia; Whitechapel, London; Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH; Museum of Modern Art, New York; & REDCAT, Los Angeles.

From April-September 2011, a solo exhibition of 17 short form works, More Than That: Films of Kevin Jerome Everson, was featured at the Whitney Museum of American Art. The feature film Quality Control (2011) was included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial and the short Emergency Needs (2007) in the 2008 Whitney Biennial.

In 2017, Video Data Bank, Chicago released a DVD compilation focusing on Everson’s films focusing on labor; entitled I Really Hear That: Quality Control and Other Works, with an essay by Terri Francis and the 3 DVD Boxed Set, Broad Daylight and Other Times in 2011 containing essays by Michael Gillespie, Katrin Mundt, Emmanuel Burdeau and Monica McTighe.

Everson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, Gardner (Harvard University), NEA, NEH, Ohio Arts Council and the Virginia Museum, an American Academy Rome Prize, grants from Creative Capital and the Mid-Atlantic, residencies at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Yaddo and MacDowell Colony, and numerous university fellowships.

All film stills copyright Kevin Jerome Everson; courtesy the artist; Trilobite- Arts DAC;Picture Palace Pictures 

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Los Angeles Filmforum at MOCA furthers MOCA’s mission to question and adapt to the changing definitions of art and to care for the urgency of contemporary expression with bimonthly screenings of film and video organized and co-presented by Los Angeles Filmforum—the city’s longest-running organization dedicated to weekly screenings of experimental film, video, documentary, and animation.

Education Programs at MOCA, including Contemporary Art Start and Sunday Studio, and the MOCA Teen Program, are generously supported by The Hearst Foundations, Banc of California, MOCA Projects Council, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors through the Los Angeles County Arts Commission, City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation, Edison International, Joseph Drown Foundation, The Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Foundation, Satterberg Foundation, Dwight Stuart Youth Fund, Michael Asher Foundation, The Kenneth T. and Eileen L. Norris Foundation, The Rhonda S. Zinner Foundation, The Winnick Family Foundation, and​ Pazia Bermudez-Silverman.

For more on Los Angeles Filmforum, visit lafilmforum.org, or email lafilmforum@yahoo.com.

For more information on The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, visit moca.org.