Jonathan Monk

British-born artist Jonathan Monk often appropriates ideas, works, and strategies from Conceptualist and Minimalist artists of the '60s and '70s. With photographs, sculpture, film, installation, and performance, his works recontextualize and rework these quotations, often infusing them with Monk's personal history and working-class family upbringing. These aspects add a humanizing and down-to-earth sensibility to the original works' utopian ideals and notions of artistic genius. Monk's extensions and reinterpretations of seminal works by John Baldessari, Ed Ruscha, and Sol LeWitt, among others, challenge authenticity, authorship, and value in art with quirky humor and wit.

Monk’s work has been exhibited extensively throughout the world, including in solo shows at CAC Malagá, W139 in Amsterdam, Artpace in San Antonio, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Tramway in Glasgow, Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow, Centre d'Art Contemporain in Neuchatel, Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf, Institute of Contemporary Art in London, and Kunstverein Hannover. Group exhibitions are numerous and include the Taipei Biennial, Berlin Biennale, Venice Biennale, Whitney Biennial, Prague Biennale, and Panama Biennial. In 2012, Monk was honored with the Prix du Quartier des Bains in Geneva.