MORAN MORAN PRESENT JOHN GIORNO AND DASH SNOW

Dash Snow, New York Power, 2006, Collage, 12 x 12 inches, (30.5 x 30.5 cm). Courtesy of the Dash Snow Archive, NY and Morán Morán.

Morán Morán is participating in the latest iteration of Art Basel’s OVR: Pioneers, with a presentation of works by John Giorno and Dash Snow. The Cut-up Method is a two-person presentation, featuring found poetry works by these two New York artists, from different generations, whose careers overlapped for a brief time. Both made use of a particular style of poetic language to convey their message, merging visual art and writing. Giorno, a poet who broke away from the standards of the discipline, pushed the limits of poetry. By stitching together headlines cut from newspapers like the Daily News and New York Post to arrive at a new syntax, and subsequently a completely new meaning, Giorno transformed the field of poetry, which then translated to contemporary art. Snow, an artist active during a distinct chapter in American history, and speaking for a generation of New York artists emerging out of a post-9/11 reality, created collaged works that also made use of typographical devices. Arranging various clippings, often taken from yellowing pages with declarative headlines sourced from the same New York newspapers used by Giorno, Snow’s collages paired found language and images, satirizing the rhetoric of authority and the absurdity of tabloid media.

The selection of works for this presentation, sometimes politically charged and sexually explicit but always poetically communicative and radical, feel as much like streetwise reflections of culture as they do declarative, and at times, iconic. The Cut-up Method is the gallery’s first project with the John Giorno Foundation, and the first time presenting Dash Snow’s work since announcing representation of his estate in December 2020. In addition to the two-dimensional works in our presentation, we will have a recording of The Intravenous Mind Presents Poems by John Giorno playing on loop, in our viewing room, throughout the duration of the fair. Recorded on March 7, 1967, at New York University, New York, NY, this audio presents eight poems read by Peter Schjeldahl, Robert Rauschenberg, and Yvonne Rainer.