Jonathan Monk

Jonathan Monk (b. 1969) is a British artist living in Berlin, with a global artistic practice. His appropriations of prior artists’ works -- in this case, the Italian artist, Salvo -- occurs tongue-in-cheek but with utmost earnestness. In an homage to the post-Futurist, indeed, post-Giotto rainbow-colored landscape, Monk shows the impossibility of original language -- in an original way. 

Collaborating with Jonathan Monk is always unusual, as it is the efficacy of his thinking, and his easy inhabitation of the work artists he admires, that might fool one into believing he is casual. On the contrary, each move is that of a chess master, and Monk’s artistic decisions result in an eternal system of checkmate with history. Cornelia first met Monk in the context of projects she edited for a publishing house she co-founded in Paris. The first venture was a tautological billboard that related the circumstances of its own making and then was folded and compressed into a book object designed by a well--known London firm, OK-RM. Given that Cornelia’s prior marriage had been to Joseph Kosuth, the inventor of such billboard-as-art projects, there was no small irony in being entrusted with the realization of such an editorial project. However, in the shifts of meaning that Monk’s project entailed, his humanity and humility shone through, and in fact, veneration of fine thought and things. Cornelia went on to commission a functional coffee-table from the artist, for the same publishing house, a hand-tufted carpet for Equator Productions, based on a FlashArt cover featuring Gino de Dominicis, and designs for Due Leoni honey jars and the current olive oil edition. She also worked with Monk in a roundtable at the Pompidou, and in the context of two museum exhibitions she has organized.

Photo credit: Philipp Langenheim for Collecteurs