n°25 — Exhibition views: Jonathan Monk.

Revue Faire issue 25 & Jonathan Monk, «Exhibit Model Four», 2019 Kindl, Berlin. Photographie Jens Ziehe (A1 format poster printed in CMYK on blue back paper)

Author: Remi Parcollet

Photographs of works of art in an exhibition or studio setting, enlarged to the size of the wall, have become an essential and increasingly systematic element of contemporary museography. The institutional curator accompanied by his or her set designer, and the independent curator, both use them as much to recontextualize works as for their aesthetic qualities as documentary images that have become immersive and reflexive.

          The obviously richer relationship that artists have with these unique images reveals in various ways what is currently at stake in the act of exhibiting.

          To create a kind of retrospective of his work, in 2016 Johnathan Monk debuted a series of exhibitions entitled Exhibit Model*, which consisted of covering the walls of the exhibition space with archive photographs that documented his work in different contexts over the last 20 years. Marie J. Jean considers these staged exhibition views as a form of augmented reality: “This manner of considering the exhibition, in other words, of exhibiting the work along with the context of its appearance, reminds us that the work of art “is a place”, “establishes a place”, is “a has taken place**”.

          However for Johnathan Monk, who often uses the work of other artists, isn’t it simply a way in which to appropriate his own work?”

* — Kunsthaus Baselland and Galerie Nicolai Wallner in Copenhagen in 2016, VOX, centre de l’image contemporaine, Montreal in 2017, KINDL, Center for Contemporary Art, Berlin in 2019.
** — Marie J. Jean. Autour de Jonathan Monk. Les vues d’expositions comme réalité augmentée. Ciel variable, issue 109, Spring 2018, p. 56–65

About Revue Faire

Adopting an analytical and critical posture with regard to the forms and activities of Graphic Design, Sacha Léopold and François Havegeer established in 2017 a printed publication that deals with these practices. The publication works with eight authors (Lise Brosseau, Manon Bruet, Thierry Chancogne, Céline Chazalviel, Jérôme Dupeyrat, Catherine Guiral, Étienne Hervy and Sarah Vadé). For season 2 two foreign authors will work on two big issues.