The exhibition Just John ... And So On reveals the diverse layers of Fekner's 60-year, rich but overlooked, artistic legacy. In the year 1950 born artist from New York set his urban poetry to music, then transformed the words into stark public phrases, which, in journalistic typography, flooded in a form of graffiti onto the buildings of a decaying metropolis that was beginning to be swallowed up by gentrification. He was part of the vibrant New York art scene in the late 1970s and 1980s and had an art studio at P.S.1 with Don Leicht, with whom they used the distinctive motifs of the computer game Space Invaders from as early as 1982.

Whether individually or collaboratively, Fekner never limited his work to a single art form but rather engaged in various disciplines, freely crossing between poetry, music, painting, street actions, and digital videos. For example, Fekner's graffiti urban actions titled Warning Signs from the 1970s, not only chronicled the dangerous decay of New York but also seeded the emerging culture of hip-hop through the beginnings of street art.

In a world obsessed with technical visuals, Fekner continues to be involved with contemporary topics like mass media control, digital addiction, corporate greed, and chemical environmental devastation, while raising public awareness of the indigenous peoples who were displaced and erased from the greater New York area.

Despite all his artistic presence, Fekner has remained more or less anonymous by choice. That's just the way John is - Just John ... And So On*.

*The title of the exhibition derives from the common colloquialism of ending what is said with "... and so on", to suggest what else might be said on a particular topic, or to read into the unspoken.

On this exhibition we are collaborating with Brad Downey, documentary filmmaker and archivist of Fekner's artistic legacy.

More about the artist HERE