MONK – DVIR
Metallic Sunsets
Dvir Gallery is delighted to present the latest series of prints by Jonathan Monk, “Metallic Sunsets”, for his first solo show in our Parisian gallery, opening on February 2nd.
“Metallic Sunsets is a new series of digital UV cured print assemblages, based on None of the Buildings on Sunset Strip, a group of photographs I made in Los Angeles in 1997, inspired by Ed Ruscha’s famous book Every Building on the Sunset Strip (1966).
I recently tried to remember exactly what motivated me to walk along the Sunset Strip and photograph the streets leading away from this once iconic boulevard…
This is a kind of introspective retrospective, a behind the scenes where the camera looks at the process of making a picture.
I was living in Hollywood at the time – Ed Ruscha was still the godfather of dry point and shoot photography, along with more conceptually motivated John Baldessari et al, Los Angeles felt like it contained the human side of ideas-based art… this always felt ironic when thinking about Los Angeles… cars & freeways, movie stars & lost dreams…
But this was a kind of photography I could relate to or at least mimic in a straightforward point and shoot kind of way.
What did encourage me to take my father’s somewhat broken 40-year-old camera, two rolls of 35 mm black and white film, no light meter and head towards the sunset hoping for the best?
My research continues…” Jonathan Monk