The transmission of ideas through form is a theme that often occupies the work of Cerith Wyn Evans. His projects employ a wide range of media, including installation, sculpture, photography, film and text. In Girum Imus Nocte et Consumimur Igni belongs to one of his ongoing series of neon text sculptures, which transform some of his favorite quotes, passages or film subtitles into luminescent images that stay in the retina of viewer’s long after they have left the galleries. The white neon spells out a Latin palindrome in the form of a ring that roughly translates as ‘We Go Round and Round in the Night and are Consumed by Fire’. The text also alludes to the title of a 1978 movie by Marxist filmmaker and writer Guy Debord. In the context of Debord’s film, which made a strong critique of capitalism and the mass media, this phrase reveals a pessimistic view of the current state of the world.

Image: © Cerith Wyn Evans.
Photo © Stephen White Courtesy White Cube