Jonathan Monk, WE ARE HERE TO CLARIFY THE SITUATION [Rose], 2018

Throughout his career Jonathan Monk has been reimagining and replaying, seemingly clear meanings of functions, objects or activities. In this show experiment continues, this time by the use of brackets in the space. The Oxford English Dictionary online - Square brackets (also called brackets, especially in American English) are mainly used to enclose words added by someone other than the original writer or speaker, typically in order to clarify the situation: ‘He [the police officer] can’t prove they did it.’ [ ] WE ARE HERE TO CLARIFY THE SITUATION [INSERT COLOUR] is a series of ten colourful (wine red, black red, oxide red, brown red, beige red, tomato red, antique pink, light pink, coral red, and rose) wall based minimal sculptures – each piece consists of two identical elements installed as diptychs directly across the space from each other – magnetic pairs dividing the gallery. The viewer of the exhibition becomes the body [or someone other than the original writer] that clarifies the situation – what this situation is isn’t clear... a performative exhibition that relies on the interaction of the visitor. Perhaps the context in which the work finds itself becomes the situation... either the gallery, the living room, the bedroom, the museum, the city, the country etc. Or a combination of all of these.
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 pho- tography he reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to devour ref- erences, simultaneously paying homage to figures such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner, while demystifying the creative process.

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Jonathan Monk

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Jonathan Monk

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