Almine Rech, London
October 12 – November 13, 2021

This exhibition features two bodies of work entitled Rainbow and Perfect Flowers that the artist produced late in his career. A suite of eighteen paintings entitled Perfect Flowers, produced in 2017, reflect on the cycles of life and transcendence evidenced in Giorno’s late writings. Elaborating upon a 2004 poem, Welcoming the Flowers, and an eponymous series of prints, Giorno physically transforms lines of poetry such as “daffodils / baptized in butter,” “poppies . . . packed with narcotic treats,” and “the cherry blossoms are razor blades, / the snow dahlias are sharp as cat piss” into poem paintings on heavily buttered coloured surfaces.

Giorno’s Rainbow paintings first debuted in 2015 in New York at Elizabeth Dee Gallery, New York and then at Palais de Tokyo, Paris. Many of the texts employed in these works were originally sourced from poetry that the artist has written, or lines that never made themselves into a final poem. In addition, Giorno’s work Dial-A- Poem (1968-2019) will also be on display.

Concurrent with the London exhibition, Dial-A-Poem launches in the UK in collaboration with the John Giorno Foundation. Phone line access to the audio work first produced in 1968 is available free of charge to local callers. In 1968, Giorno created Dial-A-Poem using a telephone service to communicate poetry in a modern idiom. Previously it was shown at the Architectural League of New York in 1968, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 1969, and the Museum of Modern Art in 1970. Giorno subsequently produced a series of LP and CD compilations called The Dial-A-Poem Poets in the 1970s and 1980s, encouraging people to start Dial-A-Poem in their hometowns, and to use cuts from the albums along with their local poets.

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