This summer, 15 cultural institutions from the Greater Region of Lorraine - Luxembourg - Saarland will offer a unique approach to modern and contemporary art through the MONO event. From June 1st to September 2nd, 2012, 20 monographs of modern and contemporary artists will be showcased. This is a unique opportunity to (re)discover 15 exceptional venues while exploring this territory.
Since the 1960s, John Giorno has been an influential figure in contemporary American poetry. As a poet, Giorno goes beyond the published book, bringing poetry into public spaces, giving it body and voice through performance, recording, painting, and drawing. He is one of the pioneers of the poetry-performance concept in New York and has been a key figure in radically changing its perception.
In "You Got To Burn To Shine," published in 1994, he recounts his experiences within the turbulent galaxy of American counter-culture, where he was a significant player. In 1962, he met Andy Warhol – he would be the subject of the film "Sleep" shot in 1963 – followed by Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Giorno then began to integrate the appropriation methods of Pop Art into his poetic work. Subsequently, after meeting William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin in 1964, he became interested in cut-up techniques, a method of assembling found texts, and composed his first sound poems.
John Giorno explores the extensions and plastic derivations of his poetry. His work reflects a desire to transcend the book, within an Intermedia vision where different modes of expression and content are diverse yet intimately connected. He creates visual poems, titled Poem Paintings, from short fragments of his texts, visually expressed through typography and composition, forming colorful ensembles that are sometimes provocative, humorous, but also open to meditation. Giorno participated in the 2008 "Traces du sacré" exhibition at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and many solo exhibitions have been dedicated to him, notably by the Almine Rech Gallery in Paris and Brussels in 2009 and 2010, and more recently by the Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery in New York. He is currently exhibiting at the Musée du Quai Branly as part of the "Les Maîtres du désordre" exhibition. At the Faux Mouvement Contemporary Art Center, he will present a series of screen prints specially produced for the MONO project, along with sound installations.
