Kevin Jerome Everson

Kevin Jerome Everson (b.1965 Mansfield, Ohio) lives and works in Charlottesville, Virginia. He holds 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 the Tate Modern (Fall 2017); Modern and Contemporary Art Museum, Seoul, Korea (February 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, and 2017 Whitney Biennials and the 2013 Sharjah Biennial. Everson will co-curate the 2018 Flaherty Seminar with writer/curator Greg DeCuir Jr.

Everson’s paintings, sculptures, 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; and Tonsler Park, 2017), and over 130 short form works, have been exhibited internationally at film festivals including Chicago, Sundance, Toronto, Venice, Rotterdam, Berlin, London, BAFICI, Ann Arbor, Oberhausen; cinemas, galleries, museums and public and private art institutions, including  Whitechapel, London, Wexner Center for the Arts, Columbus, OH, Museum of Modern Art, New York, and REDCAT, Los Angeles. 

In 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. A three DVD boxed set, Broad Daylight and Other Times, was released by the Video Data Bank (U.S.) in 2011, and a compilation dedicated to films focusing on the subject of labor, I Really Hear That: Quality Control and Other Works, was released by VDB in summer 2017. The compilation contains the feature film Quality Control (2011), included in the 2012 Whitney Biennial.

Everson has received fellowships from the Guggenheim, NEA, NEH, Ohio Arts Council, and the Virginia Museum, an American Academy Rome Prize, grants from the Wexner Center for the Arts, Creative Capital and the Mid-Atlantic, residencies at Mobile Frames/Media City (Windsor/Detroit), Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center, Yaddo and MacDowell Colony, and numerous university fellowships.