faro WORKPLACE

John Giorno (1936–2019, New York, NY, US) is remembered for his remarkable spirit and craft, which expanded, transcended, and challenged the borders of different art forms. No other artist has woven poetry, visual art, sound performance, and dance as succinctly as Giorno did, while radically questioning their boundaries and interdependencies

Alfredo Jaar (1956, born in Sant iago, Chile, lives and works in New York) is a world-renowned artist who has exhibited in major museums and international exhibitions worldwide, who also is known as an architect and film director. His works are in museum collections all over the world, such as the Museum of Modern Art and Guggenheim (both in New York), Centre Pompidou (Paris), and his work has been introduced in over 60 publications. In Japan, he was the recipient of the 11th Hiroshima Art Prize in 2018. A solo exhibition of his work is scheduled to open at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in July 2023. Jaar’s work is known internationally for reflecting modern society and evoking the problems that lie within it. The artist conducts long and meticulous place-based research on human rights violations and social injustice, making deep observations of the information collected in order to get beyond the superficial, shining a light on the truth within and elevating it into a work of art. Materializing his sharp observations through text, neon, and photographs, his work is experienced through all of the senses and has been called the “Art of Illumination.”

Jonathan Monk was born in Leicester in 1969. Monk received a BFA from Leicester Polytechnic in 1988 and an MFA from Glasgow School of Art in 1991. In his work, Monk adopts the esthetics and practices of 1960s Conceptualism, but infuses the tradition with humor, levity, and autobiographical elements. In 1992 Monk sold paintings of low-budget travel advertisements for the price of the vacation package itself. In 1994 he mocked the artist’s gesture and persona by writing his name in urine on a beach in. And in 1995 and 1997 he took on the role of a driver awaiting various arriving passengers—Marcel Duchamp, Elizabeth Taylor, Jeff Koons, Kate Moss, Mom—in the Copenhagen airport terminal. While he was living in Los Angeles, Monk created None of the Buildings on Sunset Strip (1997–99) in reaction to Ed Ruscha’s famed photographic artist book. Monk produced two highly personal slide projections; In Search of Gregory Peck (1997) shows found photographs of the artist’s father as a tourist in Europe in the 1950s and The Gap Between My Mother and My Sister (1998) chronicles the trip between the homes of his mother and sister. Monk’s ongoing series Meetings (begun in 1999) proposes future dates and locations as hypothetical invitations to congregate, playing off of the text-based work of Lawrence Weiner and On Kawara. In 2002 Monk passed time as 50 nearly-identical photographs of the artist were developed in 50 different one-hour labs. For the ongoing project Day & Night (begun in 2002), Monk sends postcards to institutions rather than friends or family. For Keep Still (2002–04) the artist places white block letters atop the head of each figure in found group photographs spelling words or phrases like “today,” “a cube,” and “buzz. The slide show Big Ben (2003) projects postcards showing the London monument at the same time of day as the gallery. Monk mocked the display stipulations that often accompany contemporary art as well as the curatorial process in works like This painting should ideally be kept in storage (2004), This painting should ideally be hung near a Sol Lewitt (2004), and This painting should ideally be hung slightly too close to a Douglas Huebler (2005). Monk has created several works in neon; perhaps the best known are several from 2005 which display the hours that the hosting gallery is open to the public, a work that is turned on during opening hours and switched off at closing time. Also in 2005 Monk translated several of the neon innovations of his artistic predecessors into opaque painted aluminum in Corner Piece (for Bruce Nauman) and Corner Piece (for Dan Flavin). In 2009 Monk exhibited five stainless-steel sculptures that offer deflated versions of Jeff Koon’s signature balloon bunny.

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Jef Geys (1934-2018) was a conceptual artist who was born in Leopoldsburg, Belgium.
Geys is well known for his proposal to blow up the Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten (KMSKA) in Antwerp in 1971, as the finale of his own solo exhibition which was held there, as well as his representation of Belgian Pavilion for the 53rd Venice Biennale 2009.

Geys’s work has been exhibited worldwide at venues including: “53rd International Art Exhibition of the Venice Biennale“, Belgian Pavilion, Venice, Italy (2009); “Archive Fever“, ICP, New York, USA (2008); “Deep Comedy“, Marfa, Texas (2007); Orchard Gallery, New York, NY, USA (2007); IAC, Villeurbanne, France (2007); Pori Art Museum, Pori, Finland; Kunsthalle Lophem, Loppem (2005); Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands (2004); Documenta 11, Kassel, Germany (2002); Kunstverein, Munich, Germany (2001); Frac, Champagne-Ardenne, France (1995); Witte de With, Rotterdam, The Netherlands (1993); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels, Belgium (1992); São Paulo Biennial, Brazil (1991).

DO WE DREAM UNDER THE SAME SKY

Though written out, without the question marking the end of the sentence, it’s only an opening to an idea.

In the past years, the with Global pandemic and the exertion of White Supremacy tendencies in the US as well as Nationalists Populist in many parts of the global world, I like for the exhibition to refocus our mindset and perspectives.

With many of these thoughts in mind, I like the potential of the next Okayama Art Summit to be focused on peripheral practices by artists whom may share in common their itinerant backgrounds. In itinerant, I mean that most of the artists in this selection are coming from cultural and social back grounds that is diverse. Though they may have their practices and their locations in the center of western artistic hegemony, we could understand that their positioning in that ( western ) hegemony, is based on their identification with positions other than western. That their lives and histories are constructed, in difference, to the west.

The dream here, is to dream in a sky of difference, in a sky of multiplicity, of narratives of representation that is peripheral to the western canon. That the dream is for us ( the participants and the viewer ) to experience representations, which are outside of our normative position. That the dream can open us to stories and lives and ways of thinking, looking, hearing, being, existing beyond the hopes, the aspirations, and dreams that we ourselves are touched by in our daily structures.

Okayama Art Summit 2022
Artistic Director
Rirkrit Tiravanija

Okayama Art Summit 2022