Jonathan Monk Selected Press
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,1111441-11 פקס,2111111-11 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
Selected Press 2014
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,1111441-11 פקס,2111111-11 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
British artist Jonathan Monk's new exhibition "Senza Titolo" opens at Lisson Gallery in Milan, Art Daily.org, March 3, 2014 Monk often makes work about other work: an art of appropriation, adaptation, reworking and revisiting. Often referencing Conceptual, Pop and Minimalist art, Monk confronts the contemporary dilemma of how to make art in the face of art history: how to be original when seemingly all questions have been posed. However, in this act of examination, modification and re-presenting, Monk succeeds in creating something new. His originality lies in the space between the idea inherent in the new object and its actual objecthood. As Monk confirms, “…the idea of an original and a copy of an original are two very different things.” For his Lisson Gallery Milan exhibition, Monk turns his gaze to Graeco-Roman art. Inspired by the Italian setting for the show, he has had his own head painstakingly sculpted and cast in Jesmonite polished to resemble marble. Five identical, fractionally larger than life-size busts have been created and each called Senza Titolo. With stylized hair and an imperious gaze, they resemble the idealized portrait statuary of ancient Rome. Each bust is placed on a high plinth and stares down at the spectator. The figure of the artist appears exalted but this is not a simple exercise in egoism. In order for the works to be completed, Monk invited different artists from the Arte Povera generation to break his nose. Kounellis, Calzolari, Prini and Zorio all agreed to deface a bust by giving Monk’s likeness a good whack with a specially selected hammer and knocking the nose off. Zorio even added a small gob of yellow modeling clay to the broken nose. In this moment of destruction the work comes into existence: a metamorphosis that eliminates the single figure of the artist and echoes the ambiguity of the non-title of each work. Covered Motorbike 2013 is the largest bronze sculpture that Monk has ever produced. Normal associations of speed or the open road are belied and instead Monk presents a large, heavy and inert object. The bike has vanished, hidden beneath the tarpaulin. The subject of the work remains secret. An innocuous and ubiquitous sight, especially in Milan, the covered bike has been glorified and monumentalized. Cast in bronze, references to great classical art as well as the reclining nudes of, for example, Henry Moore are inescapable. The Void 2013 is a marble plaque that depicts the back of a Piaggio Ape three-wheeled truck - the kind of truck often seen zooming down only marginally wider and labyrinthine Milanese streets. Whilst at Lisson Gallery one day Monk over heard two technicians discussing the possibility of fitting the ‘void’ into the back of a van and imagined the van to be a Piaggio Ape, which is both large and small at the same time and thus has ample room for a void. Aggrandized in marble, this is Monk’s homage to this simple and honest means of transportation. Jonathan Monk was born in 1969 in Leicester, England. Selected solo exhibitions include: Centre d'édition contemporaine, Geneva (2013); Yvon Lambert, Paris (2013, 2011); Meyer Riegger, Berlin (2012, 2010); Eastside Projects, Birmingham (2011); Casey Kaplan Gallery, New York (2011, 2009); Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv (2011, 2010); Lisson Gallery, London (2010, 2009); Morra Greco, Napoli (2009); Artpace, San Antonio (2009); Galleri Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen (2011, 2009); Palais de Tokyo and Musée d'art Moderne, Paris (2008); The Tramway, Glasgow (2008). Selected group exhibitions include: Galerie Andreas Huber, Vienna (2012); Galerie Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (2012); Frutta Gallery, Rome (2012); CCA Wattis, San Francisco (2012); South London Gallery, London (2012); Boers-Li Gallery, Beijing (2012); Centre of Contemporary, Torun (2012); Artspace, New York (2012), Crate Studio and Project Space, Kent (2011) and Pratt Manhattan Gallery, New York (2011). In 2012, Monk received the Les Prix du Quartier Des Bains. He will have solo exhibitions at CAC Malaga in September 2013 and at Dallas Contemporary, Texas in 2014. More Information: http://artdaily.com/news/62728/British-artist-Jonathan-Monk-s-newexhibition--Senza-Titolo--opens-at-Lisson-Gallery-in-Milan#.UxSGw-PV_-s[/url] Copyright © artdaily.org
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,11-1111441 פקס,11-2111111 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
Selected Press 2012
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,1111441-11 פקס,2111111-11 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
Elize Mazadiego, Without (Jonathan Monk), Frieze Magazine, November-December 2012 ‘Without (Jonathan Monk)’ was a stirring conversation around and about the artist Jonathan Monk, though neither he nor his work were present. Monk’s voice, however, could undeniably be detected through the works of the ten selected artists, who conspicuously cited or appropriated Monk’s own. Curator Adam Carr integrated these contemporary contributions with works he selected from Monk’s personal collection, by artists including Robert Barry, Sol LeWitt and Allen Ruppersberg. Monk’s practice creates a continuous loop of references to Conceptual and Minimalist works from the 1960s and ’70s by these artists and their ilk, whom he humorously cites, so as to call into question originality and authorship. The exhibition reproduced Monk’s gestures and strategies, resulting in a stream of echoes and overlapping conversations between Monk, his Conceptualist predecessors and his contemporaries. As
the
works
combined
to
represent
the
artist’s
practice
through
their
own,
the
autobiographical component that typically underlies Monk’s work was consequently displaced or redirected towards new narratives. Ryan Gander’s Enough to Start Over (2006), for example, begins with Monk’s To Tears (2006), a passport photograph of Monk at age 13 with teardrop earrings pinned to his eyes. Monk subsequently sold the art work to Gander, who removed the earrings from the photograph, sending the jewellery to his mother, who wears them
in
the
passport
photo
that
constitutes
Gander’s
work.
Similarly,
in Jonathan
Monk (2012), Alek O. embroidered a solid black fabric once belonging to Monk onto a canvas, transforming Monk’s garment into a portrait of the artist. Alternately austere and poetic, O.’s work creates a new narrative that is both personal and conceptual. Other works took inspiration directly from Monk’s own. What If, If So? (2005) is a photograph documenting Olivier Babin’s revision of Monk’s performative series ‘Waiting for Famous People’ (1995), for which Monk waited at the airport holding signs with names such as Marcel Duchamp, the Pope or Elvis Presley. In 2005, at Babin’s request, Monk found himself again at the airport, this time holding a sign with the name Olivier Babin. Ron Terada’s For Sale, Jonathan Monk, The Sun Never Really Sets (2007) literally reframes Monk’s The Sun Never Really Sets. The silkscreen print is Monk’s copy of a page from a Sotheby’s catalogue selling an Ed Ruscha print, which is here represented as a work of Terada’s. The print appears faded by the many lives or layers of the image, giving it a quality of both artefact and art work. The repetition and remixing in the show was incessant, with the theme resonating across the gallery much like the distant sound of a ping-pong ball bouncing back and forth on a table. This came from Dan Rees’s Variable Piece vs. Jonathan Monk(2006), which immediately greeted you upon entrance to the gallery and lured you towards the back, where you found an audio recording of Monk playing table tennis with Simon Starling. The three-part piece also included a video projection of the game and a framed image of the ping-pong ball. Although 41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,11-1111441 פקס,11-2111111 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
the sound was seemingly monotonous, the ball’s to and fro recalled the levity behind much of the show. Pieces from Monk’s personal collection,which includes many of Conceptual art’s canonized artists,
were interspersed throughout,suggesting
a fluidity across pieces
and artistic
movements. For instance, Carr coupled Ed Ruscha’s Ed Ruscha says goodbye to college joys (1967) and Sweets, Meats, Sheets (from the tropical fish series) (1975) with Terada’s piece and Yann Sérandour’s Book Deal (2005), another work recontextualizing Ruscha and Monk. Ruscha’s dryly humorous photographs retained a certain aura in the face of Terada and Sérandour’s attempts to resell an index of Ruscha’s work. With the latter appearing to annex the semantic characteristics that so heavily defined Conceptual art, the juxtaposition of these four works served to reinforce the deeply rooted Conceptual legacy that informs Monk and his contemporaries. As much as the works included were source material for the artists in the show, however, letting the historical narrative unfold, the exhibition’s concentration on Monk eclipsed other possible readings. Ultimately, his looming presence muted their impact and individuality. Jonathan Monk “Without” at Meessen De Clercq, Brussels, September 2012
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,11-1111441 פקס,11-2111111 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
“Without” takes as its starting point artist Jonathan Monk (born in 1969 in Leicester, UK, currently living and working in Berlin, Germany), yet this exhibition will be about the artist but without the artist. The beginning of Jonathan Monk’s work – and one of its primary points of investigation – typically emerges from the point at which other artists’ ideas culminate into works of art. “Without” presents artworks by a number of international artists, which continue this process of, and approach to, the production of art. More significantly however, all of the artworks brought together for the exhibition address artworks made by Jonathan Monk, or that use his presence in various ways and in different circumstances directly. “Without” makes a portrait of a particular artist through an exhibition of artworks by other artists. The exhibition speaks as much about Jonathan Monk and his approach to work, as well as its influence on others, than it does about the artists included and their individual practices. To extend the dialogue between Monk and the artists included, works from Monk’s own collection will be interspersed within the display. The collection includes artworks by by artists Robert Barry, Alighiero Boetti, Chris Burden, Dan Graham, Sol LeWitt, Bruce Nauman, Allen Ruppersberg, among others, all of whom have had a pervading influence not only on Monk’s own practice but also on the other artists involved in the exhibition as well. While “Without” is without the participation of Jonathan Monk, it is also without any conventional reason or theme that commonly brings works of art together. It presents itself instead as an exhibition that collides the boundaries between solo and group exhibition, and reconsiders normative ways in which exhibitions are both constructed and presented.With Olivier Babin, Christian Burnoski Ryan Gander, Alek O., Dan Rees, Yann Sérandour, Ariel Schlesinger, Markus Sixay, Ron Terada& featuring works from the collection of Jonathan Monk Curated by Adam Carr
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,11-1111441 פקס,11-2111111 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Studio Interview with Concept Artist Jonathan Monk
Jonathan Monk in his studio, 2012
UGL: Jonathan Monk, would you guess the name of one of my grandmothers? JM: You want me to do it now? UGL: Yes, please. JM: Hm.. Dorothea? UGL: No, that’s wrong. You did something similar with collectors of yours as part of your artistic practice. So, was this art now? JM: I'm not sure, but it might have been. I think that particular guess probably wasn’t art, but the idea of me continuously guessing in an attempt to find out some personal information by pure chance could be seen as art. The work is only complete when I guess correctly. It doesn’t have to be art, it could be also a game, but that can be part of the art as well. For most people it wouldn’t be seen as art – that is also fine. I think it should only be important to the sender and the recipient.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Detail of Jonathan Monk: 'Dancing With Gerhard' of 1995, 4 color photographs (c) the artist courtesy Nicolai Wallner
UGL: Let’s talk about painting. David Shrigley once said that you were a pretty good painter back in art school. JM: People say a lot of things. Well, I don’t think I was a particularly good painter. It wasn't really important to me what things looked like. I had just left high school. Painting has the weight of history on its side this is sometimes very good and sometimes very bad. I still make paintings. Some of them I paint myself, for others I employ trained professionals or complete amateurs. UGL: I like your work from the mid1990s, called ‘Dancing with Gerhard’. It depicts you dancing in front of two grey monochrome Gerhard Richter paintings. It seems to me that every young artist or painter has to work against the icon Richter. There is now also the big retrospective here in Berlin. How do you think about Richter? JM: I do not think about him. I think he is an important figure. However, I don’t even think of him that much as a painter. Some things look like paintings, some things look like photographs, some things only look like paintings because there is paint involved, otherwise they could be something else. Obviously, he has been very influential since the early 1960s but I think there are a lot more possibilities in painting. It is a straight forward act of discovery and experimentation. Once something has been done, it can be done again in a different colour.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Jonathan Monk: 'One Minute Painting (Pink, red, blue, yellow)' of 2011, Acrylic and spraypaint on canvas, dm.130 cm, Unique (c) the artist courtesy of Galleri Nicolai Wallner
UGL: Recently, you did your OneMinutePaintings. What is the idea behind them? JM: I was trying to do something incredibly quickly. It came from a number of different sources, John Latham's one second paintings of spray paint on paper and the simple movement of a clock. Each dot was painted for exactly one second and the entire painting had to be finished in one minute. I hope they are quite beautiful. But it was less about painting and more about process. The production is visible but the beauty of the work is its simplicity or something like that. UGL: Did you do the OneMinutepaintings by yourself? JM: Yes, I did them myself, but I had people helping me: I sprayed the colour on the canvas and I moved around them. There were two assistants shaking the cans and then there was someone shouting what colour came next. There was no skill involved at all, but that is not important.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Jonathan Monk: 'This Painting Should Be Installed by a Lawyer' of 2011, Acrylic on canvas, 160 x 110 cm, Unique, (c) the artist courtesy Galleri Nicolai Wallner
UGL: At last year’s Art Basel, I first saw your work series ‘This painting should be installed by a banker’, or ‘…a lawyer’, or ‘…a prostitute’ and the like. They really made me laugh. Do these paintings relate to Nicolas Bourriaud’s concept of Relational Aesthetics? JM: I suppose, in a roundabout way they do. It was more about the life of a work and what happens to it when it leaves the studio or the gallery and who should be involved in this process afterwards. The work only can be completed when it is, hopefully, installed by a banker or whoever is named. If you buy for instants the ‘…prostitute’, you actually have to employ a prostitute to install the painting. This also means, if there is no prostitute available, the painting must simply lean against the wall. Most of the time, I cannot control what happens to a work, when it leaves the gallery. Here I can at least control, who hangs it on the wall. This series started in Paris, when I employed circus troupe to install a series of paintings. Some are now in a show at the Kunsthalle Vienna. Installed by an Austrian circus school. I am interested in the possibilities of how to control my work once it has left the studio.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Jonathan Monk working on his piece 'The World in Denim'
UGL: Your work often plays with the price for art. How do you feel about the current situation of the art market in general? JM: I try not to think about it too much. I think it is always up and down anyway. It is sadly controlled by outside forces. UGL: How do you feel about art fairs? JM: The problem with fairs is the same as with art magazines: In the end they all seem to be controlled. Controlled by people who have a lot of money. It takes a lot of money to get in the important fairs. This leaves certain galleries outside. Because everyone wants to do Art Basel, which is the biggest of all, the fair has a huge influence. The fairs can make or break an artist. If the gallery you work with is involved, then perfect, but if it is not, what does this mean? It’s really the fairs that control the art world much more than they used to. The big art fairs have more influence than curators, critics or museums. Although I guess some galleries are bigger than all of them put together. Power and marketing. The problem is: The galleries rely on the big art fairs and the artists rely on the galleries. So artists need to make things for fairs. I think that is a shame. I try to make things that might be on a fair, but also somewhere else. If you show a work in a fair, it is a success if it sells. And in the context of a fair, this is the job of the work. But in general that shouldn’t be the job of art. The importance of a work shouldn’t be controlled by a collector or whether a work is sold or not. It is a little bit awkward now, because of the power of the fairs. And if a work doesn’t sell a fair, you cannot do anything with it for 2 or 3 years, because someone will remember having seen it in Miami or Basel. It is kind of annoying, but if you play the game you have to accept this. Or work against it. UGL: And is this really important? JM: I don’t think so.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Jonathan Monk and part of his book collection, 2012, (c) UGL
UGL: Your work often contains a sense of humour. I think it was Woody Allen, who once said ‘The creation of comedy is an entirely serious and boring business.’ Would you agree to him? JM: Yes, that is true. I mean, I don’t think that I am very funny, being funny is difficult. When you meet a comedian you immediately want him/her to make you laugh, but it just doesn’t always work. Sometimes it is easier not to think about it too much. There is not a lot of humour in art. Which is funny in itself. UGL: Do you think it is possible to appreciate your work without a deeper knowledge of art history? JM: Yes, but I think it adds something to it, if you have a deeper understanding of art history. To be honest, this is true with all things in art and all parts of everything. You could look at a Monet and simply enjoy the colours, but if you know more about it, you will get more from it. You can look at an old car and enjoy it, but if you know more about it, you will get more pleasure from it. Etc.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Jonathan Monk in his studio, 2012 (c) UGL
UGL: What are you working on currently? JM: I am doing lots of things. I like to think of myself as a chef in a small but fine restaurant. I have lots of sauce pans on the stove and must prevent them from burning. I am moving lots of things at the same time in different places. Mainly here in Berlin, but also in Copenhagen or New York or London or Milan or Turin or Paris or. Recently, I did a number of works, in which I asked a father and a son make a piece together. Two car doors painted in a car body shop here in Berlin owned by a father and his son. I asked each of them to paint one of the doors. I didn't tell them what to do and I don’t know what they are going to do. These are the kind of projects that I like instigate: I have no idea what I will get and I do not know where it will take me.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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15/08/2016
Premier Art Scene.com: Jonathan Monk Interview
Installation view at Casey Kaplan Gallery of Jonathan Monk: 'RewShay Hood Project III', 2008 2011, Airbrush paint, Two 1974 Plymouth Barracuda Hoods, Two hoods, each: 52 x 60 x 3.5” / 132.1 x 152.4 x 8.9cm, Unique (c) by the artist courtesy Casey Kaplan Gallery
UGL: It seems you did a lot of car part works, recently? Like the last show you did at Casey Kaplan Gallery in New York. JM: That was another kind of project. It was inspired by Ed Ruscha and Richard Prince with all the 1970s US car parts. UGL: Yes, it looked very American. The art you show in London, Copenhagen or New York seems to look different. Is your art different, depending on where you show or produce it? JM: Yes, of course! I use that as an opportunity to make things possible. I like the idea that the works I have made in Copenhagen look different from the works I have made in New York, even though I often give the same instructions. The context is more than half the work. UGL: Thank you for the interview! JM: A pleasure. This interview by UGL. took place on 26th April 2012 in Jonathan Monk’s studio in Berlin, Germany.
http://premierartscene.com/magazine/jonathanmonkinterview/
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Selected Press 2011
41-41 : שבת, שישי,44-44 :'ה-' ג,1111441-11 פקס,2111111-11 'טל,2411116 תל אביב, 11144 .ד. ת,41 ראשית חכמה 14 Reshit Hochma St., PO Box 35411 Tel Aviv 6135302, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
Dead or Alive British artist Jonathan Monk presents two new Tel Aviv exhibits and isn’t afraid of getting the boot from the art world. Ruth Patir, 21.11.11 The American artist Bruce Nauman once wrote: “The artist is life and death”. Performance artist Marina Abramovic’s manifesto insists: “The artist can’t be afraid of death. He must know how he wants to die”. British artist Jonathan Monk has a different quote: “I remember Bill Shankly, Liverpool’s coach, once said on TV that ‘there are people who say football is not a matter of life and death, but they are wrong. Football is so much more important than life or death.’ I guess this is a healthy attitude.” Monk arrived in Israel for a double opening at Dvir Gallery in Tel Aviv, for the exhibitions “Life and Death” and “Pre-birth Communication”. “It sounds pretentious to talk about life and death, but it’s actually so basic”, he says, “I think we take the whole thing too seriously”. In one of the gallery’s spaces he placed a brand new light bulb on a desk table. A surveillance camera documents the bulb day and night, and a real-time screening of the light bulb’s slow burning plays nearby, awaiting the moment it will burn out. The piece alludes to another of Monk’s pieces, currently on view at the Israel museum. In that piece a 35 mm filmstrip projects Monk’s documentation of a burning candle, from the moment it is lit to the moment it burns out, eight hours later. The concept of working in series, he says, is to pull the rug under any heavy discussion of life and death. “In both cases the only guarantee we have is that, ultimately, these objects’ life will end”, Monk continues, “there is a certain magic in this process. The light bulb lived, and enjoyed its life, but the viewer better appreciates the work’s concept after its death. But the fact is that no one will be there to watch it, or stand there long enough. I like making movies that you don’t necessarily have to watch in order to understand. There are so many video pieces that ask you to actively watch them, to take part. This piece is in fact quite straightforward.” British Born Monk, 43, is based in Berlin. His work has been shown at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2008), at his multiple representing galleries, and is currently on view at the BFAS art center in Geneva. His work is influenced by 1960s conceptual art, but replaces the period’s graveness with humor and irony. The only request Monk’s art places on the viewer is to take part in the ironic gestures his pieces present. His preference for dealing with relations and references goes back to his art student days, when he realized the futility of trying for total originality. His work can be categorized as appropriation art, a movement working in the conceptual tradition, with considerable contemporary innovation. In an early painting show, for example, Monk presented paintings that described their own ideal hanging instructions, such as: “This painting should be hung across from a John Baldessari painting”. When, in 2005, his work had gained recognition, a Copenhagen exhibition mounted the appropriate famous paintings in relation to Monk’s instructions. 13-10 : שבת, שישי,18-11 :'ה-' ג,5444893-03 פקס,6043003-03 'טל,63503 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
In Dvir gallery’s second space Monk presents a second project, the first part of a series in which Monk asked neon companies he works with around the world to produce a selfadvertising sign. In his eyes, this piece presents the creative process itself, allowing the viewer insight onto the moment before the artist has begun working. “Before you even start working, you have to look through the yellow pages and check your options for secondary contractors. I assume Bruce Nauman doesn’t bend his own neon signs, and Richard Serra definitely can’t build his massive steel structures alone. The contractors are not the work’s subject; the point is that if I choose a Berlin production company they will do the work differently than an Italian company.” What is your favorite part of making art? “The part I enjoy most is coming up with the idea. After that it’s just work. I used to have an idea notebook, now I write them on pieces of paper. Sometimes I lose the notes and find them in a jacket pocket two years later, and I use that idea.” What would you be doing if your art was not as successful as it has become? “An artist has to find his or her place in the art world, and I never had a specific goal in mind. I was simply happy to be offered to exhibit when I finished school. I had to do everything myself at the beginning: once I even held an opening in the bathroom of my apartment. I understood that you have to work hard and that includes fighting for your place. I know many artists that graduated with me and are still making art even though they don’t exhibit often, and definitely don’t sell. If that were where I was today, I would turn to something else. I don’t have to be making art, and though I don’t know what I would be doing otherwise, I am not sure I would fight for it. I am still waiting for people to find out that’s it’s all one big hoax, and throw me out of the art world”.
13-10 : שבת, שישי,18-11 :'ה-' ג,5444893-03 פקס,6043003-03 'טל,63503 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
[email protected], www.dvirgallery.com
The Light bulb’s Last Light In Dvir Gallery’s “Life and Death”, Jonathan Monk presents what might be a fraudulent hoax, if one fails to look deeper. In the gallery’s other space, Monk created an exhibition that remains too firmly on the theoretical level. Galia Yahav, 16.11.2011
What starts off as a joke – and a lame, overdone joke at that – culminates in a grand metaphor on, what else, life and death itself. Berlin-based artist Jonathan Monk is documenting a light bulb’s lifetime. Just like that. A standard 40-watt bulb in a Bauhaus lamp stands atop a standard office desk. A security camera, usually used for surveillance, is pointed straight at it. Indeed, the bulb is alive and kicking at Dvir Gallery’s Nitzana space in Tel Aviv. At an unknown future moment, however, it will all end: the bulb will flicker and distinguish, perhaps with a loud crackling noise, perhaps in silence. Its energy wire will break. A weak, pathetic death will leave the room in darkness. Is that ridiculous? Totally. Because though Monk is supposedly dealing with the light bulb, he is in fact using it to discuss the ridiculousness of the whole drama. And a grand existential drama it is, the absurd at its best, or perhaps a performance of John Cage’s “4:33” (1952) in exhibition form, restaging it in space and light. Something might happen, suddenly, but in the meantime nothing does. The viewer watches a body of light being lit by another, the gallery lighting. The means becomes the end, and vice versa. The bulb’s lifetime will determine the exhibition’s length, the pre- and post- stages. The light bulb is treated almost as a natural phenomenon, with Monk as a zoologist measuring a species’ lifetime. Should you see the exhibit soon, then, while the light bulb is still on, or near its closing, when is will have become a post-mortem, dark vision? Either way. There will be no aesthetic difference, not even the satisfaction of watching a slow decay. This is most simply an attempt to capture a final moment, specifically since in this case study that moment is neither crucial nor tragic. There is no approaching disaster, nor is a clock-like time measurement device made. For even the viewer lucky enough to witness the light bulb’s death will not be granted personal satisfaction or distinction; with the crucial moment’s passing it will be emptied of content, considering its ridiculous mission. A burnt light bulb is no spectacle to be proud of, and capturing its sight is no rewarding achievement. This is precisely the kind of piece that gets contemporary artists accused of being charlatans, a piece audiences have a hard time taking seriously. The pared down wit takes away any 13-10 : שבת, שישי,18-11 :'ה-' ג,5444893-03 פקס,6043003-03 'טל,63503 תל אביב,11 נחום 11 Nahum St., Tel Aviv 63503, Tel: 03-6043003 Fax: 03-5444893,
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comforting layer of aesthetic or emotional cushioning, and denies us the familiar author/audience arrangement, making it hard to accept the discussion of a 40-watt light bulb as a symbol of pain or philosophical thought. Not easy, indeed. And even harder, when we think of art’s ability to reinvent, once more, the great act of creation, the Edison Eureka. Despite the show’s purposeful comic minimalism, if you are prepared to delve into it, it does supply a message pertaining to life and death, specifically in the earnest graveness it succeeds in communicating. In Monk’s defense we can say that the whole piece could also be read as a stylized joke. It would have worked (and died) in the same effective way, whether it was in a stylish Wagenfeld Bauhaus lamp or in any other display. The design, in other words, has no effect on the bulb’s life, or the piece’s content. Around the piece are works on paper, produced with spray paint automatically tracing four light bulbs’ negative impression. When they were removed, the black halo around them was all that remained. The result is a kind of ironic Cezanne imitation, a degraded, schematic still life. If we continue our humorous reading we can see these pieces on paper as almost a direct homage to David Smith. Smith would make “sketches” for his geometrical sculptures by spray-painting over cigarette boxes, bottles and other objects, producing abstract geometric arrangements. Smith studied these two dimensional compositions in search of the correct tension between spaces and volumes and eventually grew to see them as neo-cubist works in their own right. Monk’s “Study of a Light Bulb” mimics Smith’s serious sculptural practice, endowing the work with proper cultural weight thanks to its precise ironic gesture. In addition, the gallery’s back wall displays in neon writing the words “Life and Death”. During the day the words are grainy and faded, but with nightfall their light condenses and stands out: “Life and Death”. “Since Monk’s art rests straightforwardly and, at times, heavily, on its artistic precedents”, writes Dominic Eichler in “Frieze” (2006), “it strongly relies on the viewers’ commitment to the joke, on their participation, identification, and appreciation of its creative wit. At times, they are brilliant, though not always.”
Black Box In Dvir’s other space, on Nahum street in Tel Aviv, Monk presents one of these lesser brilliant exhibitions. Monk asked the neon manufacturers he works with around the world to produce self-advertising neon signs. The concept: writing neon in neon. As cool as the idea sounds, in practice the neon light merely names itself and nothing larger, remaining a theoretical, circular tautology. The gallery is filled with everyday signs: “Let there be Neon”, "www.neoncircus.com", phone numbers, etc.
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Monk’s romantic, sorrowful conception, however, shines through the other work, “Death of a Disco Dancer”, named after the Smiths’ 1987 hit. The piece is comprised of two sealed black light boxes, within which mechanisms of flashing colored lights change colors like lava lamps. One box holds three such light-balls, the other nine. Their glowing colors switch and flicker in a meditative, erotic silence. The piece stands as a still but moving memorial to the life and death of a disco dancer, who stands in, perhaps, for all of us, as well as for the tradition of geometric-kinetic sculpture it refers to. Combining the exhibition’s name – “Pre-birth Communication” – the mechanism’s five year lifespan, and the dystopic lyrics (“Love, Peace and Harmony. Oh, very nice, very nice, very nice, very nice”), Monk comes full circle for and creates a complete circle of life and death, a cycle of bright and shining emptiness.
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Published in: Um-Kehrungen (About-Turn), Kunstverein Braunschweig
Jonathan Monk: The distance between my mother and my sister and The Distance Between My Mother And My Sister
By Adam Carr After viewing an image of the work The Distance Between My Mother And My Sister (1998) by Jonathan Monk, the following questions were posed by my mother and sister – the questions serving as a generator for my text on the work of Monk. My mother (in Chester, UK): What is Jonathan Monk’s work about? Where is he coming from, as an artist, so to speak? As I begin to formulate my answer I have already been at this position before: my computer crashed and the original data has somehow became irretrievable. I now begin rewriting the answer to this question as well as those posed below but I am failing to precisely recollect what I wrote initially. It is inevitable that this version of the text will always differ from the first version, and yet strangely these unfortunate circumstances could almost function as an analogy for one of Jonathan Monk’s artistic imperatives: the recollection and reapplication of a particular moment in the past. However, whereas I am attempting to selvedge information established only a few days ago, Monk’s search reaches further into the past: namely, to the unique strategies of conceptual art as (un)seen in the work of key artists who rose to prominence during the 1960’s and 70’s. When one looks closer into Monk’s work, it becomes quickly apparent that his reinterpreting act of works synonymous with this period is not as straightforward as it might initially seem. One can observe how, although this does provide the main source of inspiration behind his work, it is in fact, infused with references he makes to his own personal history, biography and interests as well as everyday anecdotes. My sister (in Barbados*): What’s happening in The Distance Between My Mother And My Sister (1998)? Where and why were the photographs taken for instance? As the title of the work partially infers, the piece serves as a form of index that describes the geographical distance that separates Monk’s mother to his sister. The work traces a journey made by the artist’s the mother from her house in Leicester, UK to that of his sister’s in Buckinghamshire, UK, some 100 miles away, but via the avoidance of any major roads. Each time Monk’s mother had to stop the car and consult the AA route planner for directions, she captured her whereabouts using a camera, thus generating the sequence of photographs displayed beside an information plaque, which lists the precise course of her journey. Over the course of viewing the body of photographs we see a house, a traffic light, a public house, some trees, the occasional truck and various other everyday sightings - all in all prove nothing out of usual and rather what one expects to accompany them on any car journey, even if the reason for its undertaking might well be out of ordinary. In essence, however, what we are really confronted with are the consequences, results and evidence emerging from a set of conditions that the artist sought to initiate.
My mother (in Chester, UK): What is the reasoning behind this artwork? Where did the artist’s idea come from? Functioning as part of a significant strategy in the artist’s repertoire, this work stands in line with a form of homage paid throughout Monk’s work to his conceptual forbears. Yet, at the same time, however, his work deviates from being purely occupied with a reverence for others. Instead, Monk delicately revisits and rewrites the original concepts belonging to those he shares a particular affinity with, tying together other chosen strategies and points of investigation, and thereby paving the way for his own uniquely shaped artistic markings. The appearance of The Distance Between My Mother And My Sister (1998) – and in part of the key idea behind it – does indeed have its historical precedents. Like much systematic based photography work synonymous with the birth of conceptual art, it’s formal qualities bear the appearance of a sequential ordering – the sequence being generated by, and in some cases subsidiary to, a set of rules established by a particular artist. For example, the results of Jan Dibbets’ day spent in his studio (Shortest Day, 1970) or Douglas Huebler prosaically poetic Duration, Location and Variable Pieces (1960), have a strong resemblance to Monk’s work, but also in particular John Baldessari’s Sunday drive in 1963 (The Back Of All Trucks Passed While Driving From Los Angeles To Santa Barbara, 1963). In addition, the indexical information hinged on everyday events determining the production, outcome and presentation of the aforementioned examples of works – whether it be Baldessari’s accomplishment of documenting all the trucks he encountered along his journey (which reminded him of paintings he was doing around the same time), or, on the opposite scale, Huebler’s somewhat utopian assertion to document the existence of every human being (Variable Piece no. 70, 1971) - all share further affinity with Monk’s work. While the work The Distance Between My Mother And My Sister (1998), and indeed others, contain a span of citations for which this piece may not have been possible, it his own quite distinctive method of revision in which he makes reference to his family background – the construct of him as a person – that ultimately forges a distance from Monk to his conceptual counterparts. His goal was directed towards a scenario that privileged failed events, which although he choreographed, his mother played a key role. In his critique of the essence of conceptual art, American painter Al Held once remarked that Conceptual art is just pointing at things. Located at the core of Monk’s work that we find the universal message of conceptual art shifted to an account of a personal story, demonstrating that it is both what is pointed at and the manner in which one points at things that makes the difference.
*My sister was on holiday in Barbados during the time of asking her question. Coincidently, she once lived in Leicester, the starting point of Monk’s journey. - Adam Carr is an independent curator and writer currently based in London.
Selected Press 2010
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JONATHAN MONK François Aubart
YVON LAMBERT - PARIS Parallel to the Alighiero Boetti exhibition at Tornabuoni Gallery in Paris, Jonathan Monkproposes another one, inside Yvon Lambert Gallery’s library. The exhibition title is “e”, the letter, the Italian for “and”, which Boetti placed amongst his first and surname.
JONATHAN MONK, Carpet Piece Perhaps, 2010. Wool handtufed carpet, 285 x 385 cm. Courtesy Yvon Lambert, Paris.
The Italian artist’s intention was that of doubling his identity, therefore raising uncertainty about the uniqueness of his artistic position. Introducing himself as a multiple person (a double one), he addressed his work in terms of a reflection on duplication and sharing of the authorship. Many of his works were realized through collaborations, amongst those were the embroidered tapestries realized by Pakistani and Afghani artisans. The model could be interpreted by theperson delegated to fabricate it. Together with the fact that these embroideries were realized on a delegacy principle, the model could be interpreted by the person in charge of his realization. It is this vagueness in terms of the author’s position that Jonathan Monk questions by pointing out the “e”. He has brought to the exhibition two pieces by the Italian artist and two of his own. One within the other, Carpet Piece Perhaps, is a white, hand-sewn wool carpet with a black text on it. The text is a declaration by the Archive of Alighiero Boetti, made in order to authenticate the artist’s works, warning collectors and gallerists of the existence of false Boettis, advising them to get in touch with the Archive prior any sales. Re-materializing Boetti’s practise of having artisans make his works, Jonathan Monk underlines the fact that the artisans’s place or role is as dramatically diminished by the authentification procedure as the whole “vagueness of uniqueness” principle. Because, if Boetti skimmed past (with exultance) the attempt to erase the author’s figure for what attains to his work, the later (the author) is clearly celebrated as a unique person from the moment of his effective disappearance. And, if Jonathan Monk, as usual, considers his work as a game with another artist, he has revealed with some sarcasm that the “e” has actually been erased till when shown by Tornabuoni Art Gallery and Alighiero Boetti Archive. (translated from French by Ben White) Flash Art 272 MAY - JUNE 2010
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Selected Press 2008
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Selected Press 2006
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WHEN AN IDEA BEGINS TO CAST A SHADOW - INTERVIEW WITH JONATHAN MONK BY JAN VERWOERT What happens to ideas in time? Jan Verwoert wonders together with Jonathan Monk at the opening of his retrospective exhibition "Yesterday Today Tomorrow etc." in Kunstverein Hannover.
JV: In a number of your works you play on motifs, methods and ideas that relate to specific art works or artists from the Conceptual and Minimal Art of the late 1960s and early 1970s. How do you find these ideas? How do you get inspired? JM: I think all of these ideas come from books. The inspiration for "Unrealised Realised" (2003) for instance came from reading just a short passage of text in the catalogue to a recent retrospective of David Lamelas' work. There he talks about a work he did in Paris in 1970 called 'Interview' with Marguerite Duras. He filmed Marguerite Duras, facing the camera being interviewed, and took photographs of her while filming. The film and the photograph were then shown together with the transcribed interview. But in the text he talks about the idea that he had initially also wanted to go and film a fashion designer and a politician. He thought about doing this but never got round to doing it. So when I was invited for an exhibition at the gallery Yvon Lambert where Lamelas had originally shown the piece, I decided to ask a fashion model, film her and take photographs and present the work in a similar way. So that particular work actually was made from two lines of text. JV: Realising the unrealised or fulfilling an unfulfilled wish is a way of reliving a moment of potentiality, right? I think that going back to these historic moments for us today seems so important because it was then that the art discourse as it is today was created through the introduction of new concepts. It's the beginning of what we still live with, but a beginning that we haven't experienced directly because we are too young for that. Our experience of art today is shaped by a moment we didn't experience. That's why we have this desire to go back to a point before our time. Or do you think it sounds to romantic to formulate it like that? JM: No, it's not too romantic. I think this is what we are all, at least I can say it for myself and maybe a number of others, try to do, to think back to a time before. This moment could have to do something with art but it could also be any other historical event in the not so distant past that may have shaped how we talk or think now. But I don't think that it is so difficult for us to feel connected to things that happened just before we were born. In the same way our parents didn't necessarily go to Woodstock but they read about it. JV: So you wouldn't say that these moments give you a sense of melancholia? JM: No, because I think there are things that we may not be doing but are for sure witnessing now of which 30 years time people might say: What happened way back in Glastonbury festival was a really important moment which shaped the music etc. etc.. JV: But do you get a positive feeling of possibility out of re-visiting these moments in your own work? JM: Yes, it may be only as much as looking through a book about the time will make you think: "Look, 1965 that was made, it's incredible, it still looks like tomorrow". At the same time it is great to know, after looking at Lawrence Wiener or Robert Barry for instance, that it is possible now to just put a text on the wall or release some gas in the desert and that as long as we can talk about the work you don't really have to visualise it because there is nothing to see anyway. But you only have to know that once to know that anything is possible. JV: But the a primary reason for making a work, or the function of the work, is to capture this initial moment of inspiration and possibility? JM: Yes, this was certainly the case with the Lamelas piece. A work I did in relation to Sol LeWitt came much slower. It's called "A cube Sol LeWitt photographed by Carol Hueber using nine different light sources and all their combinations front to back to front forever" (2000). I had worked with the idea of making an animation out of flipping through a book and realised that, even if it won't necessarily make sense, you can turn any book into a flip-book and then into a film. Then I found this Sol LeWitt book "A Cube" published by Walther Koening in 1990 with photographs by Carol Hueber of a white cube. So I made an animation on 16mm film in which you see all the pages of the book one after another, repeated endlessly in a loop. In an animation things that look almost the same appear to be moving. So in this case the shadow produced by the different light sources wanders continuously on and around the cube. JV: I like the shadowplay on the cube very much because for me it captures that feeling of an event of which you only experience the afermath, its consequences, its shadow. So to invoke that event you re-play its shadowplay. Another
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aspect of the work I find interesting is that by turning the images into a film you place the work in time. I believe that this is quite significant because Conceptual Art in a sense was often presented in the form of timeless gestures. A work was understood as a one-off idea, a sudden stroke of genius, that is not related to the contiuous time of working in a specific artistic practice. So the question that Conceptual Art cannot - or doesn't want to - answer is: How do you get from one work to the next? What is the time that passes between two ideas? I think by re-situating the work in time, by showing the time that passes as an idea begins to cast a shadow and that shadow changes its shape, you ask the unasked question: What happens to ideas in time? JM: In relation to this question I currently find it interesting to look again at what happened in the period from 1975 to 1985 in the work of people like Sherrie Levine or Richard Prince. During my art-school time this generation of New York artists was what we were reading about without realising that their work was post-conceptual and a reference to what had been happening before. When you think about how one idea can go to the next idea, you can see with this generation of post-conceptual artist that most of them were able to make that step. Richard Prince, for instance, has managed to continually re-invent himself. There are these artists who are still ineresting but whose work is not what it was. Still it was them who did that work. So whatever it is they are doing now, it is still important if you see the trajectory of how it got to what it is today. JV: How do you get from one idea to another? JM: I think how I manage to do that, whether I will be able to continue to do so, I'm not sure, is that I work with a bunch of people who help me realise projects. I tend to leave a lot of the organisation and even the visual side of the work up to someone else. So I can work with someone in New York and at the same time make a slightly different piece in another city. This way everything somehow continues to go forwards. Being involved with these different people keeps the excitement up. Sometimes the outcome of a project is not exactly how I would have liked it to be but then I just accept it. JV: So the movement from one context to the next makes continuation and variation possible? JM: Sure, I think that is the only thing that allows it to go on. JV: I remember in a conversation with the Glasgow based artist Roderick Buchanan he said that he felt he belonged to the first generation of Scottish artists that benefitted from cheap air travel. People in Italy for instance could afford to as well invite someone from Glasgow as from somewhere nearby. And that this created a totally new environment for producing art. JM: Could be true. But it's also interesting to look at where someone like Robert Barry did projects in the early 1970s. He would do a show in Milan followed by a show in Turino and Cologne all within a few months. He came once from New York, then got the train and did five shows at a time. But when all that you do is project a slide or put a text on the wall, it's possible. It may be similiar to the situation, Roddy, me and other Glasgow artists were in in the beginning of the 1990s. We didn't actually make anything that needed to get from point A to point B apart from what you could easily put it in your pocket. So they would just have to pay the air-fare to take you to the site of the exhibition where you put in the DVD or pinned up the picture that you carried in your pocket. I think this may relate to why Conceptual Art was important: because it allowed you to travel and do work in different contexts. JV: But this was also part of the politics of Conceptual Art, that by choosing not to produce traditional artifacts like paintings or sculptures you decided against a certain economy in which your work would otherwise be circulated - like maybe today you would decide against making Jeff Koons sized extravaganzas... JM: Oh yes (laughs) JV: Or would you like to? JM: I would never have the patience. I don't know how he manages to control a studio of 30 people making big oil paintings or some giant puppy made of flowers. I would get bored or frustrated at the whole bureaucracy of that and just do something else. But I don't discount that it could happen. I have never said that I am not going to make a particular thing. Of course, I have taken conscious decision about what I will present but that doesn't mean that next year I won't be doing oil paintings. I think such choices are only interesting if they make things a bit more confusing. JV: So conceptual choices always depend on a particular context? JM: Sure.
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JV: And what are your criteria? JM: The criterion mainly is that if someone can do what needs to be done better than me and quicker, then they might as well do it better than me and quicker. JV: I once did a talk with Vito Acconci in which I asked him how he understood his practice as a Conceptual Art and he said: "I don't have any particular skills but I know how to use the Yellow Pages." He described this as a statement against the belief in the artist as a skilled professional. Do you feel indebted to this spirit? JM: Yes, this is also my teaching philosophy: Do not learn how to do anything. It just gets in your way. If you are really good at painting you are going to use it more often than something that you can not do. JV: Particualr artistic skills and the commitment to a specific medium were traditionally understood as the basis for the continous development of an artist's work. "I am a sculptor, I do sculptures until I die." How do you relate to this moment of continuity in your work if not through a medium and particular skills? JM: Some of the work is continuous. There are, for instance, postcards that I send to a collector in Italy ("Time Piece"). Pictured on each postcard is a different time, as seen on a clock face that documents the moment the original picture was taken. I send them at random and the collectors then put them in order in their collection. This could go on continuously. One work that eventually came to an end, although it could have been endless, was a work in which I tried to guess the name of the collector's mother ("Name Guessing Piece (mother))". Every week I sent him a letter that read: Dear so and so. Is your mother's name - then I typed the name, question mark, signed it, sent it. This work could have gone on endlessly or it could have only lasted a week. Finally, it took me three years to guess the name, totally by chance. That's how I see the continuity. JV: Does the term 'medium' then have any meaning for you? Is your medium in this case writing postcards? Or Conceptual Art? JM: Not really. Maybe art - in general. JV: How do you relate then to the people that you address in a work or the artists that you dedicate a work to? JM: "Untitled and Unfished (Afghanistan)" (2004) is a work that relates to Alighiero e Boetti's wish to, after his death, have his ashes scattered on a particular mountain in Afghanistan. It turned out that, sadly, Italian law forbids the burial of their citizens to take place on foreign soil. I read this in a book "Shaman/Showman" that Boetti's wife Annemarie Sauzeau Boetti wrote. So I sent a Super 8 camera to someone in Kabul and asked them to go to this mountain range and record the journey. When I showed this project at the British school in Rome I met Boetti's wife. She was so enthusiastic about the work that images from the journey are going to be published in a new edition of her book, the book that inspired the work. It felt great but also slightly scary when ones work becomes included back into the history it explores. JV: This reminds me of an idea Derrida introduces in his book "Specters of Marx" (1994). He speaks about an ideal conviviality with ghosts, an ethics of learning to live with ghosts - that could work as an alternative to a generational model where each generation has to kill their fathers to proceed. But summoning ghosts is something you cannot try out in theory. When you call up a ghost and it arrives you have to deal with it. You cannot say, hey look I just practiced, go away. Being caught up in the ritual you started is a bit like becoming entagled in the history you write. I guess you have to learn to live with the ghost then. JM: It's about accepting what you ask for. I make that experience every day in Berlin when I ask for something with my terrible German. I always have to accept what I'm getting. Normally, it's much better than what I wanted. I also like it when the character of a work changes when I talk about it to you, you talk to someone else and so on. So what people believe the work to be in the end may become something altogether different. The problem is that this doesn't happen too often. Today everything is so well documented that we already think we are writing history. I read in the paper today that they think they might have found a Michelangelo in a church somewhere in Chianti. Possibly it is one. Possibly not. They are not sure. And I think that's great.
Published in Piktogram No. 3, spring 2006.
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