Returning to Massimo De Carlo Pièce Unique for his second exhibition with the gallery (Falling silver clouds, 2022), Berlin-based British artist Jonathan Monk presents An italian in Paris, a subtly orchestrated exploration of originality, visibility and display – even perhaps of the gallery’s own purpose.

Operating one layer at the time, this new body of work begins with inkjet prints of Paris’s most iconic museum artworks: from Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa to Manet’s Olympia, Van Gogh’s self-portrait and Courbet’s L’origine du monde… the masters are all here.

Yet layered over each one, Monk places smaller, brightly coloured acrylic paintings after Salvo (1947 – 2015), giving them center stage, physically disrupting not only the frame, but also – and perhaps most frustratingly - our ability to see the “masterpieces” behind them.

As if it weren’t enough, Salvo’s paintings themselves have been altered: Monk has painted over their backdrops, leaving Salvo’s trees floating in abstract colourscapes. “Money doesn’t grow on trees” so Monk turns this truth on its head by turning his trees into money: the more tress, the more expensive the artwork.

What are we looking at? Are these works real if they are made with fakes? Is this even a real exhibition if the works displayed are not the originals? What makes an original artwork?

Monk reveals all the ways in which looking and seeing are indeed structured, learned processes guided by habit, expectations and today’s unlimited access to images.

Not only does Monk invite us to look at margins anew, but also to question our assumptions about the subject and constructed value of an artwork.

Ultimately, by creating this visual patchwork, Monk creates a new visual language, a surreal cluster of shapes and colours. Or perhaps An italian in Paris is simply a way to bring Salvo to Paris, as if he were standing in an imaginary crowd in the Louvre, contemplating the work in front of us.