The British artist Jonathan Monk, born in 1969, creates conceptual art. With a sharp sense of humor and subtle intelligence, Monk examines and reinterprets existing artworks by artists such as Sol LeWitt, Ed Ruscha, Bruce Nauman, and Andy Warhol. Already during his student years, he began experimenting with Appropriation Art, which has remained a central focus of his practice. This genre, which emerged in the 1960s, involves reusing existing masterpieces. A famous example is Robert Rauschenberg’s "Erased De Kooning Drawing", in which Rauschenberg erased a pencil drawing by De Kooning and signed the blank sheet himself. In this work, the act of appropriation is emphasized through the new title of the piece.
Jonathan Monk’s "Andy Warhol’s Chairman Mao Hand Made in The People’s Republic of China" is a clear example of this approach, as the title indicates. In fact, Monk commissioned a highly skilled Chinese artist in 2008 to repaint Warhol’s famous image of Mao in China.
The iconic Warhol portrait is instantly recognizable. Yet Monk transforms it into a personal statement by using oil paint rather than Warhol’s silkscreen technique, which was designed for mass production. The studio in which the painting was created, where art is produced daily, evokes the philosophy of Warhol’s Factory in New York. Just as Warhol was not always present during the production of his works, Monk’s piece originates from Warhol’s idea but is physically executed by Monk. The paintings are virtually identical in color and brushwork.
Jonathan Monk is represented in major collections, including Tate Modern, London; Guggenheim Museum, New York; MoMA, New York; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; Museum of Contemporary Art (MoCA), Los Angeles; and Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen.
His work has been featured in numerous international exhibitions, including the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006); the 50th and 53rd Venice Biennales (2003, 2009); the Berlin Biennale (2001); and the Taipei Biennale (2000). He received the Prix du Quartier des Bains in Geneva in 2012.