TARO NASU is pleased to announce an exhibition “PARIS BAR” by Douglas Gordon and Jonathan Monk. This show features new neon works in collaboration of these two artists.
Douglas Gordon
Born in the UK in 1966.
Lives and works in Glasgow and Berlin.
Gordon won the British Turner Prize in 1996, the Premio 2000 at the Venice Biennale in 1997, and the Hugo Boss Prize in 1998. Selected recent exhibitions include “After the After: Douglas Gordon and Tobias Rehberger” (Museu d’Art Contemporani d’ Eivissa, Iviza, Spain) in 2015, “The Only Way Out Is the Only Way In: Douglas Gordon” (Australian Center for Contemporary Art, Melbourne) in 2014, “I Am Also…” (Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv) 2013, “Douglas Gordon: Left Is Right and Right Is Wrong…” (Institute of Modern Art, Brisbane) in 2012.
Jonathan Monk
Born in 1969, Leicester, U.K.
Lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Graduated from Glasgow School of Art, Scotland in 1991, Leicester Polytechnique, U.K. in 1988. Has exhibited in various locations, including “All the possible combinations of twelve lights lighting (one at a time)”（Museo d’Arte Contemporanea di Rom, Rome) and “Anything by the Smiths”(Centre d’art Neucha^tel, Neucha^tel, Switzerland) in 2015, “Jonathan Monk” (Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin) in 2014, “COLOURS SHAPES WORDS (pink, blue, square, circle)” (Centro de Arte Contempora´neo de Malaga, Malaga, Spain) in 2013, “Time Between Spaces”(Musee d’Art moderne de la Ville, Paris, Paris) in 2008, and more.
“PARIS BAR” is an existing artist restaurant in Berlin from the 80s － known for a lot of Kippenberger’s works in and outside of the place. In 2015, Gordon and Monk had a lunch together in this restaurant. All the neon works in this exhibition shows the name of dishes and drinks they had at that time, for example “Badoit” or “Escargots de Bourgogne”, etc.
Each neon works turns on in order of the dishes, and remaining on only for the duration of the meals, from when they were served until the time they left the table. Therefore, in order to see all the works lighting on in the show, the visitors have to spend the same time as the artists’ meal at PARIS BAR. This enables the viewers to experience for themselves the lunch the artists had in Berlin. A strange connection realizes here in the gallery, beyond time and space.
Works considering about the “time” and “space” can be found in their previous works as well.
In the series of “The Same Time in a Different Place”, Monk combines vintage exhibition direct mails with his own (or his family’s) pictures of the same time & ages, trying to connect different time and space into one. Gordon is also known for his representative work “24 Hours Psycho”, that consists entirely of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” slowed down to approximately two frames a second, rather than the usual 24, that the duration of the work lasts for exactly 24 hours.
For this time, Gordon and Monk choose a “meal”, an act that stimulates all of five senses, as the theme of their collaboration. This exhibition is an interesting opportunity to explore how the light of the neon gives a stimulus to the viewer’s sense.
