Jonathan Monaghan

Jonathan Monaghan (born September 14, 1986 in Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York) is a contemporary visual artist who creates Post-Internet video art.^[1][2]

Jonathan Monaghan
Born	(1986-09-14) September 14, 1986 (age 38) Rockaway Beach, Queens, New York, U.S.
Education	New York Institute of Technology University of Maryland
Style	Video art
Movement	Post-Internet
Website	Jonathanmonaghan.com

Biography

Monaghan received his B.F.A. in computer graphics from the New York Institute of Technology in 2008.^[3] Monaghan then went on to receive a M.F.A. from the University of Maryland.

Work

Monaghan's animations have been exhibited at the Sundance Film Festival^[4] and the Palais de Tokyo.^[5] Monaghan's work sits in numerous public and private collections such as The DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities and The Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.

As he stated, "My first artistic interests were [...] video game designers and science fiction movies".^[3] His work Sacrifice of the Mushroom Kings is an eight-minute video of cryptic reproductions of video games characters from Street Fighter, G.I. Joe and Super Mario Bros.^[6] He created the French penguin (2009), an "absurd and sad representation of power as a slave of itself"; Rainbow Narcosis (2012), a "journey through absurd worlds, loaded with historical and artistic references"; and Robot Ninja (2013), where "the environments become abstract and the spirit more masculine, almost macho".^[7]

According to Token Supremacy: The Art of Finance, the Finance of Art, and the Great Crypto Crash of 2022, by Zachary Small, Monaghan created what is arguably the first NFT in 2013, when he processed the editions of his digital artwork 'Mothership' through the first iteration of a bitcoin blockchain registration framework called Keidom, later ascribe.^[8] In 2017, he released a series of digital futuristic Fabergé eggs.^[9]

Monaghan is represented by bitforms gallery in New York.^[10]

Exhibitions

Solo

• 2014: Alien Fanfare (alien invasion), Studio 1469, Washington D.C.^[11]
• "After Fabergé" The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore
• 2016: Gotham (photographic dream cities), Galerie 22,48m², Paris^[12]
• 2017: Disco Beast (symbol of unicorns), bitforms gallery, New York^[13]
• "Escape Pod" bitforms gallery, New York
• "Robot Ninja" Market Gallery, Glasgow
• 2021: Den of Wolves (aesthetics of power), bitforms gallery, New York^[14]
• 2022: Move the Way you Want (technology over ecology), The Phillips Collection, Washington D.C.^[15][16]

Select screenings

• LOOP Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain
• Boston Underground Film Festival, Boston MA
• Hirshhorn Museum - "Experimental Media Series" Washington D.C.
• International Film Festival Rotterdam, Rotterdam Netherlands

See also

• Matthew Barney