JONATHAN MONK AT PARKING

The British artist presents Hand In Glove Compartment (After George Maciunas) a new site-specific installation for Parking.

British artist Jonathan Monk replays, recasts and re-examines seminal works of Conceptual and Minimal art by variously witty, ingenious and irreverent means. Speaking in 2009, he said, «Appropriation is something I have used or worked with in my art since starting art school in 1987. At this time (and still now) I realised that being original was almost impossible, so I tried using what was already available as source material for my own work.» Through wall paintings, monochromes, ephemeral sculpture and photography he reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to devour references, simultaneously paying homage to figures such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner, while demystifying the creative process.

If there is an iconic series of public interventions in contemporary practice, it is undoubtedly the billboards made by Felix González-Torres in the early 1990s. It is not surprising, then, that when Jonathan Monk began his research for his piece in Parking, he inevitably turned to the works of González-Torres. Among the various billboards, one stood out above the rest: ‘Untitled’ (For Jeff), 1992. This work consists of a black and white photograph of the palm of a hand, which occupies almost the entire billboard. Monk quickly linked this piece to ‘Hand In Glove’ (1975), an edition by Lithuanian artist George Maciunas, a founding member of Fluxus. The Maciunas edition includes a letter paper with a hand printed in black and white and an envelope with a printed glove.

For his work in Parking, Monk has placed Maciunas’ glove on the main wall and installed a translucent vinyl with the image of the hand on the front glass. With the irony that characterises his work, Monk proposes a reinterpretation of Maciunas’ work, oversizing it and bringing it into the field of public art, establishing a dialogue between the works of Maciunas and Félix González-Torres. He also makes a humorous nod to the space itself, titling his work Hand In Glove Compartment, in reference to the obsolete use of glove compartments in cars.

Jonathan Monk lives and works in Berlin. He graduated in Fine Art from Leicester Polytechnic and continued his studies at the Glasgow School of Art. Throughout his extensive career, he has exhibited in museums and institutions around the world, including the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin, the Institute of Contemporary Art in London and the Museum Kunst Palast in Düsseldorf. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial (2006), the Biennale di Venezia (2003, 2009), the Berlin Biennale (2001) and the Taipei Biennial (2000). His works are part of the most important collections in the world, including the Tate Collection in London, the MOCA in Los Angeles, the Lambert Collection in Avignon and the Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York.