JONATHAN MONK
2008-2009
119,5 x 147,5 x 10 cm
Unique, JM0258
Inv. Nr. 54
Born in 1969 in Leicester, England
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany
Jonathan Monk, who graduated from Glasgow School of Art in 1991, is well known for his work that deals with re-presentation and reception by paying homage to the artists of the sixties and seventies. He appropriates their procedural and conceptual approaches with a certain sense of humour. Rew-Shay Hood Project VII is one of the fourteen airbrush paintings alluding to the famous photographic series and book by Ed Ruscha, Twenty-six Gasoline Stations (1963). The hoods of classic American cars such as the 1969 Ford Mustang or 1968 Pontiac GTO are used as canvas for Ruscha’s images of sixties gasoline stations photographed along Route 66. Initially, Ruscha aimed at documenting the expansion of the car industry, in a manner informed by early Californian pop art and the seriality of minimalism. This book is considered as the first modern artist’s book and according to Monk “made it possible to distribute an idea in a simple way.” The misspelled name of the iconic American artist in the title of Monk’s work promises a vision of Ruscha’s work in a new perspective. Presented on car hoods, the photographs are blown up and stand as memorabilia objects of a romanticized view of sixties America.