Untitled (Rolled up)

2003 - Sculpture (Sculpture)

Diameter: 56.5cm

Jonathan Monk

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Untitled (rolled up) , is an abstract portrait of Owen Monk, the artist’s father and features an aluminum ring of 56.6 cm in diameter measuring 1.77 cm in circumference, the size of his father. Jonathan Monk bridges a conceptual art and his family privacy, and ironically ensures that there is “no difference between Sol Lewitt and my mother, he does not know more than she do not know. ” What is the status of the O-backed chair rail to the white cube? Monk gives us some clues. The O is an initial, the letter contains the first letter of Owen. The O is also a sign, the letter contains the restaurant sign Owen. The O of Untitled (rolled up) is thought of as an encrypted letter. The work, while it appears as a joke (?), plays upon everything. Monk questions the meaning of a work through non-conventional logic.

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Jonathan Monk re-fashions and re-examines seminal works of Conceptual and Minimal art through witty, ingenious, and irreverent means. Through wall paintings, monochromes, ephemeral sculpture, and photography, Monk reflects on the tendency of contemporary art to canabilize references, while paying homage to figures such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman and Lawrence Weiner. Monk’s art practice does not follow any specific style; it doesn’t contain any common characteristic to identify his work at first glance. The amount and variety of his works poses questions about what supports them. Demystifying the creative process, Monk often employs appropriation, humor, irony, and anecdote in his work. To enter an exhibition of works by Jonathan Monk is like taking part in a treasure hunt, made up of digressions and space-time manipulations.

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Colors:

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• abstraction.n.04
• portrait.n.02
• fatherhood.n.01
• materiality.n.02
• humor.n.04
• sign.n.01
• appropriation art
• art in art
• contemporary conceptualism
• contemporary pop
• british
• born 1969
• contemporary artist
• conceptual artist