Solo show Zurich

John ‘JONONE’ Perello

02.11.2020 – 07.11.2020

FOLLOW THE CURRENT

The art works presented in the series entitled Follow the Current show the artist’s energetic, cryptic and polychrome canvases. Multiple layers and thick brushstrokes adorn his large-sized and explosive paintings. Profoundly rooted in the graffiti scene of the 1980s, he has made excellent use of his obsession with tagging. What might appear as abstract lines, cryptic shapes or intentional drips of paint to the viewer, actually represent his own tag “JONONE”, sometimes also in variations as “JONONE ROCK”. Upon closer inspection, individual letters and even his tag are recognizable. The regularity of repeating his tag over and over again is not monotonous; on the contrary, it is diverse, complex and dense. Eventually the writing develops into an abstract pattern within the beauty of infinity.

Discover Artworks

„ Your own mythology, the urban legend that you associated with your name, you wrote it, you painted it.“

Jonone, 2014.

Looking back through the history of art, many artists, like Lawrence Weiner or Cy Twombly, made writing a part of their concept. But the artist that John “JonOne” Perello is most compared to is Jackson Pollock. Maybe at first sight the abstract aesthetics and the energy of the canvases are comparable, but in their details they are very diverse. Jackson Pollock did not intend to illustrate writing, as his artistic background of abstract expressionism derives from the New York School in the 1940s. As an autodidact John “JonOne” Perello has had no fine arts education. Through the obsessively repetitive writing of his tag, his roots in graffiti are still evident.

Although raised in the heart of African-American and Hispanic communities and although he should have been pursuing a regular and normal path, he always knew there was only one way. His journey though the urban jungle led him to his artistic essence: repeating his tag: his signature as well as his name.

Tania di Brita

More about JonOne

Installation view