Jonathan Monk. T.H.U.M.B.

Wednesday, 22 September, 7 - 9pm, Jonathan Monk will present T.H.U.M.B., the second part of F.I.N.G.E.R.S., a follow on from his last exhibition with LOOM gallery, inaugurated exactly one year ago. As in the first show, T.H.U.M.B. starts with Maurizio Cattelan’s sculpture L.O.V.E., offering a different interpretation and creating a new work in the same white Carrara marble. In fact, the sculpture L.O.V.E. by Cattelan does not have three fingers and a thumb, they have been removed or we assume they have. Cattelan positioned his sculpture in Piazza Affari as a critique of the 2008 economic crisis and the loss of savings of thousands of people. The master- piece has always generated an ambiguity of interpretations. In what direction is the sculpture supposed to be facing? Is it facing the Borsa and cursing a sick economic system that had turned out to be a big bubble? Or is the Borsa itself insulting the savers, scattering their money? If Cattelan had continued the realisation of all the fingers, his hand would have been a fascist salute positioned in front of a building of fascist architecture. Is there perhaps a parallelism between the Mussolini dictatorship and the current one of unbridled liberalism and profit at any cost? Monk started from these questions to give his own interpretation. The three fingers set up in the LOOM Gallery space last year were possible remains of L.O.V.E. and they had to do with archeology: they were contemporary ruins. Their author imagined that if in the distant future someone would find them, they might comically believe they be- longed to Cattelan’s sculpture and perhaps even try to reattach them. After all, in our digital age everything is stored in files and hard disks, but the durability of such media over time is not known. The digital Middle Ages could be around the corner: no one knows if our media will still be able to preserve the memories constantly recorded on them. In this 2021, one year later, after the discovery of the Covid 19 vaccine, Loom Gallery exhibits this single giant sized “T.H.U.M.B.” and exposes it on its side. Neither up or down... things could go either way. T.H.U.M.B. is Jonathan Monk’s second exhibition at Loom Gallery in Milan. In addiction to the exhibition of the new work in the gallery, the entire group of four fingers produced by Jonathan Monk are displayed around Cattelan’s sculpture in Piazza degli Affari. For the sole day of 22 September, on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition, plaster models in a 1:1 dimension of the F.I.N.G.E.R.S. are presented to the citizens. The intention is to suggest the idea of how such paradoxical “archaeological relics” might dialogue with Cattelan’s sculpture and the space for which it was conceived. Through the labile and impermanent installation of F.I.N.G.E.R.S., which lasts for the time of one day, the aim is also to draw attention to L.O.V.E., one of the masterpieces of the City’s public heritage, donated by Cattelan in 2010. Piazza Degli Affari is an exceptional ensemble of 20th century architecture and its dechirichian atmospheres are the legacy of architects like Paolo Mezzanotte and Emilio Lancia. With the square, freed from car parking, even if only for a short time, Cattelan’s work (and now Jonathan Monk’s) dialogues perfectly. The installation was possible thanks to the support of the Art in Public Spaces Office of the City of Milan.

Jonathan Monk (Leicester 1969) lives and works in Berlin. In recent years he has held solo shows at Centre for Contemporary Art, Berlin, Germany (2018) Vox, Montreal, Canada (2017); The Gallery at De Montfort University, Leicester, UK (2017); Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland (2016); MACRO Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Roma, Rome, Italy (2015). His work has been included in many group exhibitions hosted at Centre Pompidou, Paris, France (2019), the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany (2018), the American Academy in Rome, Italy (2017), the Museum of Contemporary Art, Cleveland, USA, the Whitney Biennial (2006), the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009), Berlin Biennale (2001), Taipei Biennial (2000) and many others.