Edition of 500

Together with John Giorno's limited edition mug, poster and t-shirt, this sweatshirt is launched on the occasion of the artist’s first posthumous solo show in the UK, opening at Almine Rech London on October 12, 2021.

John Giorno (1936-2019) is recognised as one of the most innovative poets and artists of the twentieth century. His kaleidoscopic work fused and furthered poetry, visual art and activism, pushing text off the printed page and into the social realm. Laura Hoptman, Executive Director of the Drawing Center, New York, writes in the publication for the Giorno retrospective at Palais de Tokyo, Paris, “What if concrete poetry and Pop Art merged, like perfect lovers? They would produce John Giorno, muse of the greatest single-word movie (Sleep, 1963) and author of found object word poetry...Giorno’s friendships with Warhol, then Burroughs, and subsequently, his close liaisons with Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns, indicate his presence in the orbit of visual art rather than literature in New York.”

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 into poem paintings on heavily buttered coloured surfaces.