Ugo Rondinone - Palais 22 - 2015

An iconic figure in Andy Warhol's early films, and influenced by the Pop artists who introduced him to "found poetry," John Giorno captured the vernacular of advertising, television, newspapers, and the street. Since the mid-1960s, he has sought to imbue poetry with new relevance and resonance, conceiving of the poem as a virus meant to spread as widely as possible. Whether recorded on a record or an answering machine, screen-printed or painted on canvas, recited on stage or deconstructed on the page of a book, John Giorno's poems are images whose reproduction through technology is limitless. Conceiving this exhibition as a work of art in its own right, the Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone reinvents the retrospective format in the manner of a portraitist. “The exhibition as a whole reflects John Giorno’s working process and allows us to understand the dual influence of American culture and Tibetan Buddhism on his life and art.” (Ugo Rondinone) This issue of Palais magazine follows the exhibition’s structure, organized into eight chapters, each representing a facet of John Giorno’s prolific work and life. It brings together a collection of previously unpublished contributions and testimonials from artists, documents from John Giorno’s personal archives, and a selection of his writings.