Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank and other problems
June 15–July 25, 2020
On Monday, June 15, 2020, at 6pm, after a long pause due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Quartz Studio is pleased to present Three Ball Total Equilibrium Tank and other problems, an edition by Jonathan Monk (Leicester, UK, 1969), specifically conceived for the Turin non-profit space. The project for this exhibition, following Poster (Manifesto), made in collaboration with Maurizio Nannucci in 2014, had been pending since the exhibition Cool Your Jets (2016), fruit of a dialogue between Liam Gillick and Jonathan Monk on the topics of soccer and the economy. Now, within the stretched-out time of the health emergency, this idea is finally taking shape, supporting Quartz through the production of ten exhibition editions (+1 AP). Three installations have been created on this occasion, each consisting of seven hexagonal cement tiles replicating the colors of the original Quartz floor cement tiles and three balls made in Germany in 2016, drawing on the technical consulting of Giulia Mainetti from Altofragile Studio, Milan.
“The original project for the exhibition Cool Your Jets”—the critic Marco Scotti writes—”came out of a conversation between Jonathan Monk and Liam Gillick, in which the questions posed by Gillick about contemporary sociology were answered by Monk with references from the world of soccer. In Monk’s continuous interactions between conceptual art and autobiography, this sport regularly recurs, starting from his beloved Leicester City Football Club. The artist’s memories and works include the collages, The Little Things Make All the Difference, photos of actions during soccer matches slightly modified to change the position of the ball, Keep Stills, where Letraset letters are superimposed over heads within old photographs—occasionally soccer players—to make up phrases from On Kawara, or Alighiero Boetti’s World Maps rethought through soccer uniforms instead of national flags, and minimal sculptures by Sol LeWitt transformed into functional soccer goals.”
Starting from September 2020, Quartz Studio’s exhibition program will feature Henri Chopin (Paris, France, 1922 – Norfolk, UK, 2008) curated by Eva Brioschi; Gernot Wieland (Vienna, Austria, 1968) curated by Zasha Colah; Lihi Tujerman (Tel Aviv, Israel, 1985) curated by Noam Segal; Giovanni Kronenberg (Milan, Italy, 1974); Martina Steckholzer (Vipiteno, Italy, 1974) curated by Lisa Parola and Alice Channel (Oxford, UK, 1977). Quartz Studio is reinventing itself, announcing the creation of a new formula for engaging and collaborating with different figures (curators, art historians, educators, etc.), who have expressed and demonstrated shared intentions in respect to a specific project. Maintaining its nature as a small, independent studio, acting by site-specific projects that can be seen by everybody through its street-facing display window, the space expresses its identity and branches into a series of relationships activated through the exhibition program.
Quartz would like to thank all the artists hosted so far, Allora & Calzadilla, Salvatore Arancio, Maurizio Camerani, Sara Enrico, Giuseppe Gabellone, Ryan Gander, Liam Gillick, Isa Melsheimer, Jonathan Monk, Maurizio Nannucci, Jorge Macchi, Adrien Missika, Riccardo Previdi, Andrea Respino, Astrid Svangren, Ola Vasiljeva, Yarisal & Kublitz, and Athena Vida aka Gitte Shafer, the Fondazione Sardi per l’Arte and Lisa Parola for supporting its work in 2018, and all those who have given and continue to give their contribution in various ways to increase the visibility of the space and the communication of its contents, including Elisa Barbero, Veronica Barisan, Eva Brioschi, Franz Bernardelli, Zasha Colah, Gianluigi Ricuperati, Maria Teresa Roberto, Marco Scotti, Noam Segal and Nina Wöhlk.
Jonathan Monk (Leicester, UK, 1969) lives and works in Berlin. Monk received a BFA from Glasgow School of Art in 1991. Solo exhibitions of his work have been organized by Centre for Contemporary Arts in Glasgow (1992 and 1994), Centre d’Art Contemporain in Neuchatel (1997), Museum Kunst Palast in Dusseldorf (2003), Institute of Contemporary Art in London (2005), Kunstverein Hannover (2006), Palais de Tokyo + Musée d’Art Moderne in Paris (2008), and Artpace in San Antonio (2009). His work has also been included in group exhibitions such as Taipei Biennial (2000), Berlin Biennale (2001), Venice Biennale (2003), Whitney Biennial (2006), Prague Biennale (2007), and Panama Biennial (2008). Jonathan Monk is represented by Casey Kaplan, New York (USA); Lisson Gallery, London (UK); Nicolai Wallner, Copenhagen (Denmark); Meyer Riegger, Karlsruhe/Berlin (Germany); Dvir Gallery, Tel Aviv (Israel); Massimo Minini, Brescia (Italy).
