Jonathan Monk

Slight alterations 1-5, 2000

Jonathan Monk has been examining the response to American Minimal and Concept Art since the 1990’s. He is most interested in the element of ‘image finding’ and the process of ‘image emergence’. To this end he processes the works of the forerunners of these art movements, in this case Sol LeWitt in particular. The related works on paper were produced in the immediate context of the 16mm film SOLLEWITTONEHUNDREDCUBESCANTSLOWSLOWEASYNOWFRONTTOBACKBACKTOFRPONTONITSSIDEFOREVER. For the film, Monk put a series of black-and-white photographs of an isometric cube together to form a loop. He chose the illustrations he used from Sol LeWitt’s book ‘100 Cubes’, published in 1990. The break that is caused by modifying the American’s working method is visually slight, but striking. Slight alterations 1-5 refers to the strategy of ‘slightly altering’ an existing work of art. In this water colour, Monk varies the method developed by LeWitt of producing certain mixed shades by using various overlaid layers of colour and by hatching. The English artist broadened Sol LeWitt’s spectrum by hand colouring photographic reproductions of work produced by this technique and thus creating new ‘cubes’ that are not in the book.