Casey Kaplan

JONATHAN MONK: “THE UNREALISED REALISED REALISED IN NEW YORK”

OPENING: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 14TH, 6 - 8 PM

Jonathan Monk’s distinctive working practice involves exploring his fascination with conceptual artists from the 1960s and 70s to entertain his own history. Working in a range of media including16mm film, photography, text and slide projections, Monk merges his playful interest in art history with personal sentiment to create work that demystifies the creative process; challenges artistic authority; and explores the dematerialization of the art object, all the while, maintaining light heartedness and humour.

For his fourth solo exhibition in New York, Jonathan Monk will present a new work that takes inspiration from a pioneer of conceptual art, David Lamelas. During the 1960s and 70s, Lamelas's work analysed art as a means of communication by relating it to informative media such as the newspaper, radio and television. Through photographic series and film installations the artist investigated how meaning is constructed and manipulated by the sequential structure of film. In “Interview with Marguerite Duras,” 1972, Lamelas interviewed the French intellectual and icon, while filming the process on 16mm film and taking pictures with a standard camera. One could hear the sound of the shutter as each photograph was shot. The film, photographs and text from the interview were then installed together. The continuity of the film was juxtaposed against the discontinuity of the photos. Lamelas had planned to make similar work with a fashion designer, but this was never realised.

For his recent exhibition in Paris, Jonathan Monk made the first version of David Lamelas’s unrealised project with a French fashion model. The artist continues to realise this project for his New York show using a local model. The silent film involves the model standing in front of the camera as she is filmed. She does not speak; she simply fulfils her visual role. Over the course of the 10 minute film, one sees the flash of a camera appear intermittently as each photograph is shot. The film thus records the photographs being taken; and the photographs document the film. Each photograph, regardless of the “quality,” is printed the same size as Vogue magazine and installed alongside the projected film.

“The Unrealised Realised” will be completed upon Monk’s future exhibitions in London, Milan and Tokyo, Ultimately, the five versions will correspond with French, American, British, Italian and Japanese Vogue .

Monk’s one-person exhibition at the Swiss Institute - Contemporary Art, New York, opens November 13, 2003. The artist is currently exhibiting a film alongside “Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism,” at The Menil Collection, Houston Texas and has a solo show at Galleria Sonia Rosso, Turin, Italy. Since his last exhibition in New York, Monk’s solo shows include: The Art Gallery of Ontario, Canada; Arnolfini, Bristol, UK; Yvon Lambert, Paris, France; Grazer Kunstverein, Graz, Austria; Lisson Gallery, London, UK; and Gallerei Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen, Denmark. Jonathan Monk was born in Leicester, England. He currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany.