Douglas Gordon & Jonathan Monk
Morra Greco Foundation, Naples, Italy
Douglas Gordon & Jonathan Monk, Leon d’Oro, performance, Naples (2009)
Curated by Mirta d’Argenzio, ‘Leon d’Oro’ is a new project by Douglas Gordon and Jonathan Monk. While the two British artists have worked together many times before, this exhibition – made specially for the Morra Greco Foundation – is the first time that they have collaborated in Naples. As usual, the work they have produced comprises a nonchalant mixture of video, performance, texts, neon works, though this time with a particular focus on food. Welcoming visitors are the traces of a performance from the opening night, Friends Electric Bar (2009), which has transformed the exhibition space into a bar. Empty wine bottles and glasses are piled around a piano.
Sublimations of Desire (2008/9)
Sublimations of Desire (2008/9) consists of four different looping films, created by the two artists in 2008 and presented, for the first time, at the Morra Greco as an ad hoc installation. Each film shows a different beverage, each in a state of perfect stillness though carrying the suggestion of a hypothetical mutation. This vague allusiveness is one of the most interesting aspects of Gordon and Monk’s participatory, open-ended installation.
Leon d’Oro (2009), the gastronomic performance held on the opening evening in an eponymous restaurant nearby, has become the main subject of an installation in the basement of the Foundation. Following the performance, the names of the various dishes (ranging from Negroni to Insalata verde and from a Pasta e fasule to Grappa), eaten by the two artists at different times, have been translated into intermittent neon transcriptions inside the gallery space. Similar to Friends Electric Bar, the traces of performance memorialize the artists’s stay in Naples, referring to a precise evening and location. The potential weakness of installations of this kind is that visual testimony of a performative event also requires direct physical involvement in order to be properly appreciated by the visitors. While the exhibition is initially engaging, it leaves the feeling that this approach is not so much specific to the location as a quickly and easily reproducable format that can be adapted to fit whichever city Monk and Gordon find themselves in.
Marianna Agliottone
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