A NUMBER OF POINTS RANDOMLY CONNECTED

JONATHAN MONK

With a topological fiction by John Holten

Design: Form Und Konzept

32 pages; slipcover | English

ISBN: 978-3-943196-51-1

The artist Jonathan Monk is well known for his editions and publications, and with A NUMBER OF POINTS RANDOMLY CONNECTED, BDP is delighted to have worked on bringing to life his latest printed edition. Coming from an on-going project of the same name, this edition uses as paper stock the medium of the project itself, namely A1 posters.

As Monk states ‘The idea is very simple – an A1 poster is printed that features a large coloured point with the explanatory text A Number Of Points Randomly Connected plus the year and name of the city or venue. So far the project has been made in Berlin, Brussels, Milan, Toronto, San Francisco, Glasgow and Paris. Each city is given a different coloured point but the principle remains the same – a company or individual is employed to fly-post the posters randomly on the city streets.’

Remaining leftover posters have been used directly as print signatures onto which a new text by novelist John Holten has been written. This text, which Holten calls a ‘topological fiction’, comprises a number of seemingly random elements gleaned from across space and time, from Muybridge to Méliès to Monk, Holten posits a new way of telling stories in the Internet age of a globalized world, of which flyposters are themselves one of a long line of connecting communication devices.

Designed by Form Und Konzept, the edition is comprised of one poster from the project, housed inside a customized slipcover in a print run of 150 copies.

The work of Jonathan Monk can be found in public and private collections around the world. He has exhibited extensively since the 1990s. His most recent shows include Exhibit Model One, Kunsthaus Baselland, Muttenz, Switzerland, In Relief (my collection of Sol LeWitt books — exact size, shape and occasionally colour), Im Archiv, Zürich, Switzerland in 2016. All the possible combinations of twelve lights lighting (one at a time) at Museo d'Arte Contemporanea, Rome, in 2015, and Jonathan Monk: The Project Space at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, in 2014. In 2013 his COLOURS, SHAPES, WORDS (pink, blue, square, circle, etc.) was put on at the CAC in Málaga, Spain. Other venues that have hosted his work in solo exhibitions include the Palais de Tokyo and Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Paris, (2008); and the Kunstverein, Hannover, Germany (2006) and the ICA in London, UK (2005).

John Holten is a novelist, artist and publisher. His novels The Readymades and Oslo, Norway have both been published by Broken Dimanche Press.