Jonathan Monk at Dvir Gallery

Artist: Jonathan Monk

Exhibition title: A Conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and John Baldessari

Venue: Dvir Gallery, Brussels, Belgium

Date: June 3 – July 17, 2021

Photography: all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Dvir Gallery

The one-man exhibition of Jonathan Monk at Dvir Gallery Brussels consists of an eclectic compilation of recent and older works. Most of them offer his typical playful look on important works of conceptual and minimal art. Using intelligent strategies the artist replays, remasters, decontextualised and questions iconic art pieces. He plays with references to works by Kippenberger, Alighiero e Boetti, Warhol or Jeff Koons.

The ‘Exhibit Model Details with Additional Information’ are installation views of former exhibitions. Three-dimensional real artwork editions and everyday objects belonging to popular culture are added to the photographic support, making a new collage/composition opening up for new interpretations. Several time periods and sensations are presented simultaneously and overlap each other. According to the artist: ‘This particular series of works does (kind of) feed from itself. Images of them installed may even become wallpaper within the Exhibit Model series and they potentially become part of this series again. Vanishing into the documentation of documentation. I am hoping it becomes an endless circle.’

When asked about his particular relation with John Baldessari, Monk confessed he considers him as a kind of ‘godfather’ figure that had a great influence on his art making. In his opinion he is an artist who managed to ‘create a perfect collaboration between serious comedy and funny conceptualism – a kind of American Monty Python….’.

Jonathan Monk’s whole exhibition can be understood as a similar serious, yet funny narration, invented by a subversive storyteller who likes to invite the viewer to look and think twice.

This is the case for example of the two small pieces referring directly to the exhibition’s title: cutout printed copies of drawings made by the artist’s daughter that got lost between the pages of Walther König’s edition ‘A Conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and John Baldessari’ (2010). Children’s creations absorbed in a high standard art publication.

This is one of the reasons why Jonathan Monk likes to refer often to Alighiero e Boetti as ‘an artist who made conceptual art more human’. Like him Jonathan Monk is looking for the poetic power hidden in everyday objects.

-Erich Weiss

Jonathan Monk, A Conversation between Hans Ulrich Obrist and John Baldessari, 2021, exhibition view, Dvir Gallery, Brussels

Jonathan Monk, Exhibit Model Detail with Additional Information IV, 2020, inkjet print on aludibond, 163 x 123 x 7,5 cm

Jonathan Monk, A Build Up Of Residue, 2016, oil on canvas, wooden shelves with cold remedies to be added with each presentation 102 x 82 x 15 cm

Jonathan Monk, Poster of Sol Lewitt wall painting F. Untitled pasted onto wall painting, 2015, spray paint, cardboard, poster, 76.5 x 62 cm

Jonathan Monk, Violent Shadow VI, 2016, laser print on canvas, steel arm and 12” taylor’ scissors, framed print 160 x 130 cm

Jonathan Monk, All the possible ways of switching 8 torches on one at a time (silver up-lighting), 2013 framed and mounted c-print, plexiglas, eight silver MAG-Lite torches, 200 x 140 x 20 cm

Jonathan Monk, Dear Painter Paint Me Again and Again, 2011, acrylic on canvas, 302 x 201 cm

Jonathan Monk, A Copy Of Deflated Sculpture V, 2009/2020, stainless steel, 43.2 x 90.2 x 47 cm

Jonathan Monk, Sketch for Name Used to Fill Space, 2017, handtufted wool, 147 x 180 cm

Jonathan Monk, My mother’s dog gets nervous when I go home, 2017, black and white inkjet print mounted on aluminium, 12 units, 43 x 35.5 x 1.5 cm (each)