Interventions on the Building. John Giorno, exhibition

The writing's on the wall.

John Giorno was a major figure in the New York underground of the 1960s and in the Beat Generation, where he nurtured his "cut up" style poetry and composed his first sound poems. Aiming to make poetry accessible to all, in 1965 he founded Giorno Poetry Systems, a label which then released some forty albums. He was also behind Dial-a-poem in 1968, a poetic telephone service offering audio poems.

Recognized as one of the most influential poets of his generation, John Giorno has continued to produce his publications. In the new spaces of the Palais de Tokyo, he has expressed himself on the walls with a new chapter in his Poem Paintings, made from short extracts from his writings.

These elliptical sentences are projected in large letters on the surface of a canvas or a wall of the museum, a play of colors and shapes reaffirming their strength of expression.