BERLIN.- Kit Schulte Contemporary Art presents New York legend John Giorno as a poet and an artist.

As a key figur of the New York Beat Generation and Performance artist, John Giorno is best known for his work as a poet. In 1965 he founded the Giorno Poetry Systems, which focussed on using new technologies for Music and Poetry Performances. One of the legendary work was Dial-A-Poem, where people could listen to a vast selection of poems (700 from 55 poets) at any time of the day or night via telefone. Among the many voices were those of his close friends such as William Burroughs, Laurie Anderson, Keith Haring, John Ashbery, Ted Berrigan, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, Philip Glass, Robert Rauschenberg and Robert Mapplethorpe.

Being influenced by the close relationship with Andy Warhol (Giorno was the protagonist of Andy Warhol’s “Sleep”), Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, Giorno began to create his Poem Prints and Poem Paintings in 1967, setting up mental dialogues between words that are written, words that are heard, and words that turn into objects to see. ‘I want to cum in your heart’, ‘Eating the sky’, ‘I want it to rain for the rest of my life’ are segments, which are directly inspired by the founding fathers of the Beat Generation: Burroughs, Ginsberg, Gysin, of whom Giorno is the last ambassador of his era. Giorno is a Tibetan Buddhist and practices meditation avidly and almost nothing seems to stop him in his pursuit of sound, rhythm and the absolute image.

These text paintings, prints, drawings and water colors have been exhibited around the globe in important museum exhibitions (i.e. Modern Modern, Chelsea Art Museum, New York, NY, Traces du Sacre, Georges Pompidou Center, Paris; and Musée d´art moderne et contemporain, Geneva, Switzerland), and have been acquired for numerous museum collections (Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Centre Pompidou, Musée National d’Art Moderne, Paris.)