Remorseless show of morse

ART REVIEW: Cerith Wyn Evans

Superseded by satellite and global positioning systems, Morse code is no longer used to save the lives of seafarers. Its redundancy is possibly the reason it attracts Cerith Wyn Evans. For some time the Welsh, London-based artist has been translating the texts of dead writers into this ephemeral medium.

Crystal chandeliers hang from the ceiling of White Cube in Wyn Evans's latest flashy installation. Each linked to a computer, the chandeliers light up at various intervals to give us the Morse translation of the text that appears on flat screens lining the walls.

But trying to read the text on the screens is as nigh on impossible as it is for me to decipher the code. One screen apparently quotes the social theorist Theodor Adorno, while another quotes Brion Gysin, the quasi Surrealist and beat poet who popularised the Cut-up, where pages of disparate text are rearranged haphazardly.

Gysin also developed something called the Dream Machine, inspired by the idea that flickering lights can alter brain waves and induce a trance-like state.

Now you begin to understand where Wyn Evans's might be coming from with his jumble of borrowed words. But there is nothing seductive or mind-altering in his work, which has always struck me as being terribly lightweight and a bit dull.

Feverishly borrowing from writers' most quotable bits, he comes up with something skewed and half-baked: obfuscation for its own sake behind the beguiling flicker of bright lights.

Until Dec 6, White Cube, 48 Hoxton Square N1, Tue to Sat 10am to 6pm, free. Tel: 020 7930 5373.