Jonathan Monk, Monk, 2002, Polished stainless steel, Edition 3, 439,5 x 132 x 38cm, (173 x 52 x 15 in.)

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JONATHAN MONK

Quite often I see the works of other artists and think… I like that… how can I use it and make it mine?
How can I shift the context and create something new, something Jonathan Monk.
I’m quite sure a lot of artists secretively feel the same…
Some years ago I was looking through a catalogue of sculptures by George Condo and was pleasantly surprised by the contents – I actually like his paintings and he seems to be a really interestingly obsessed artist. But the sculptures I encountered on the printed page were wildly different to my expectations – I saw large polished stainless steel three dimensional cutout letters spelling out the names of Jazz greats – MILES DAVIES, BIRD (Charlie Parker) and MONK as in Thelonious – I think the rest you can work out for yourself…

‘Echoes (Oracle Version)’, by Lorenzo Senni, 2017, Tate Modern, London. Courtesy of Tate Photography

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 PAROLE CON LORENZO SENNI

All my X’s live with hexes.
This is why I hang
Myself with jealousy upon a fencepost half mast.
Fashion: war between
The guilty and the guilty and the guilty and the guilty
And the teen.
Not throwing stones at you anymore.
Your name’s in lights and I don’t wonder
Anymore… anymore

taken from Glassjaw’s song “Tip Your Bartender” (2002)

Motus naturalis, 2017-2018, olio su lino, 240 x 325 cm, courtesy l’artista e Guido Costa Projects, Torino

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH MANUELE CERUTTI

“Giovanni Giudici, La vita in versi”

Metti in versi la vita, trascrivi
fedelmente, senza tacere
particolare alcuno, l’evidenza dei vivi.

Ma non dimenticare che vedere non è
sapere, né potere, bensì ridicolo
un altro voler essere che te.

Nel sotto e nel soprammondo s’allacciano
complicità di visceri, saettano occhiate
d’accordi. E gli astanti s’affacciano

al limbo delle intermedie balaustre:
applaudono, compiangono entrambi i sensi
del sublime – l’infame, l’illustre.

Inoltre metti in versi che morire
è possibile a tutti più che nascere
e in ogni caso l’essere è più del dire.

Collezione Lo Specchio, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano 1965, p. 170-171

Giulia Cenci, studio view, halfweg 2018
photo credit Katherina Heil

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GIULIA CENCI

There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again. A pulverized apple and a pulverized orange are finally the same thing, aren’t they? You can’t tell the difference between a good dress and a bad dress if they’re both turn to shreds, can you? At a certain point, things disintegrate into muck, or dust, or scraps, and what you have is something new, some particle or agglomeration of matter that cannot be identified. It is a clump, a mote, a fragment of the world that as no place: a cipher of it-ness.

Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things.

Driant Zeneli
And Then I Found some Meteorites in My Room
video installation, 22’00” min, live streaming of ISS and sound performance by DJ Sulejmani
Photo credit Andis Rado, Courtesy The Artist and Bazament Art Space Tirane – 2018

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH DRIANT ZENELI 

“Why are you interested in the space?” Flora asked me.
“I am curious of those who observe it. I would like to know what there is in the space between your father Bujar, 158 height at Metallurgjik, and the maximum height of the International Space Station (ISS), located 400.00 km far from the terrestrial surface…”
“What is the ISS?”
“The International Space Station functions as a laboratory where experiments are made in condition of microgravity in the law terrestrial orbit. Dedicated to scientific research and managed as a joint project between five different space stations.”
And then Flora’s father, Bujar, asked me with a low voice:
“So what it the sense of all this?”
“The attempt is to create a space in which the work can share with the public a physical as well as a mental dimension. The interview about your perception of space that you gave to Fatmira Nikolli at Metallurgjik, will resonate with the transmission of the streamed images from the International Space Station (ISS), 400.00 km away from the earth surface. Everything will then be catalyzed by the sounds mixed by your daughter Flora (DJ Sulejmani) during the opening of the exhibition. In this way, the public will not only participate, but it will be an integral part of the artwork, as we are all part of the solar system”.

January – Mealurgjik Elbsan – 2018
And Then I Found Some Meteorites in my Room
from the diary of Driant Zeneli

Jonas Mekas, The Internet Saga curated by Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, installation view, Venice, 2015
photo credit: Giulio Favotto

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH JONAS MEKAS

The first word that comes to our mind when we think about Jonas Mekas is “inexhaustible”.
Inexhaustible as his work. Like the narrations of it that can be made.
Like the invention of Film Culture, the New American Cinema, the Anthology Film Archives, the film diaries.
Like shooting, editing and publishing online a movie a day every day in 2007. Like jonasmekas.com.
Like painting flowers on large white papers the night before an opening. Like telling us “It’s challenging enough to say yes” and to reaffirm it again and again.
Inexhaustible, even more than eternal.

Francesco Urbano Ragazzi, curatorial duo

Performance, Mid-afternoon Slump, Coast Contemporary, Kunsthalle Stavanger Cabin, Hurtigruten, 2017 NO
photo credit Maya Økland

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH HANNE LIPPARD

The more I speak the more I disperse of it. The more I disperse of it the more it becomes another story, a story not belonging to me. This way, it goes away, another way, any way. The more I speak the less I hear. The more I speak the less I am here. Nothing but a voice. Nothing but a pleasant feeling until you start feeling your knees again, remembering that they are also part of your body, a pair of functional limbs doing their best to act as a support for your voice, like a tripod supporting a speaker.

JOSH TONSFELDT | RAINDROPS, TAXI | DIGITAL PHOTOGRAPH, 2017
Courtesy the artist, Simon Preston Gallery and Raucci Santamaria

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JOSH TONSFELDT

Hi The Blank,
I apologize for being so late after your deadline, and hope this still comes in time for the newsletter. I’m attaching a picture we can share – rain reflecting on the face of an iPad that’s resting in my son’s lap as he sleeps in a taxi.
As I try to think of what else to tell you, my attention drifts between considering the image, then back to this email window, occasionally checking for new messages and culling old ones. I’m left thinking of the other side of this message, where these words might briefly appear on other screens and windows, within a similar cycle of glances and momentary awareness.

OSCAR SANTILLÁN | HAIR OF SAINT CATERINA VOLPICELLI FOUND IN AN ENVELOPE, 2016
photo credit Vibeke Mascini

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH OSCAR SANTILLÁN

Crimes of passion are always a mistake and the reason is quite simple: they restore no power to the murderer.
While setting up the room in which she plans to kill her husband, a woman confesses to her accomplice, “my only regret is that he’ll never know that I killed him.” The film is Diabolique.
Sometimes, however, a victim does acknowledge his own death. This was the case with Bernardo Jaramillo, a communist militant who ran for President of Colombia. One morning in 1990, at the airport with his wife, Bernardo was shot several times by paramilitary hitmen. As the assassins escaped, he serenely sought for his partner’s gaze:
– Hold me, those motherfuckers have killed me.

Oscar Santillán

VINCENZO SIMONE – SENZA TITOLO | OIL ON LINEN | 25×35 CM | 2017
photo credit Vera Roveda

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH VINCENZO SIMONE

Your words on Dutch sobriety sounded strange; oh delicious bunches,
peaches and
apples, vegetable and fish – although they are called naturalistic, aren’t they
metaphysics?
Well, of course they are – here it is the idea of bunch, the idea of apple, etc. Everything lights up by itself in
a the perfect style of Rembrandt…
I don’t deny the moment of self-illumination in these still lifes; but, in
contrast
with Rembrandt, these fruit and vegetable seem to have a right relationship with the
world:
there’s something of the icon painting in it, this is the work of the light.

Pavel Florenskij
Royal Doors