Jonathan Monk

b. 1969, Leicester, UK. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany

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Jonathan Monk
Jonathan Monk, In Edition (to tears), 2006

About

Monk’s works are part of a web of reiterations and cross-references that sits over Pete and Repeat. For Frank Sinatra Piece, Monk has photographed a reproduction of Bruce Nauman’s From Hand To Mouth (1967) and embellished it with a pair of turquoise earrings to create a highly abridged portrait of ‘Ol’ Blue Eyes’. A joke repeated in Bruce Nauman’s video Clown Torture (1987) lent this exhibition its title, while another of Monk’s works, In Edition (to tears), forms the basis for Ryan Gander’s photograph, exhibited nearby. Frank Sinatra Piece takes a similar approach to Sherrie Levine’s 1980 exhibition, After Walker Evans, in which she presented a series of photographs she took of reproductions of Evans’ works. Levine’s appropriation of Marcel Duchamp’s famous Fountain (1917) is exhibited in the adjoining gallery, reiterating the importance for artists of practices of remaking, appropriation and repetition.