John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER

kurimanzutto presents John Giorno: LIFE IS A KILLER, the first solo show in Mexico City dedicated to the pioneering American artist, poet, and activist John Giorno (1936–2019). Bringing together works on canvas, paper, wall paintings, audio recordings, film, as well as live performance, the exhibition examines Giorno’s prolific creative practice through language. It takes its title from one of Giorno’s most iconic recurring poetic statements, LIFE IS A KILLER, a phrase that reappears across paintings, recordings, performance, and publications, reflecting his conviction that a poem did not end on the page but instead takes on new life and new meaning with each iteration.

Giorno’s Poem Paintings, a series of wall and canvas paintings that the artist began in the late 1980s, are central to the exhibition. The works transform language into bold visual compositions rendered in stark black and white or vivid rainbow colors. They draw on the graphic language of Pop Art and the fertile exchange between poetry and the visual arts in New York, shaped by Giorno’s close relationships with figures such as William S. Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, and Andy Warhol. A lifelong commitment to Tibetan Buddhism also shaped his understanding of language as something that is continually transformed through repetition, scale, color, and context.

Across these monumental paintings and works on canvas, phrases such as LIFE IS A KILLER, SPACE FORGETS YOU, and EVERYONE GETS LIGHTER reveal how shifts in scale, color, and architecture shape how we experience recurring language. Responding directly to the building, these works extend Giorno's poems beyond the canvas, allowing language to inhabit the gallery space.

The exhibition also includes three silkscreen prints from the late 1960s, printed in red, orange, and black, that incorporate politically and sexually charged language drawn from newspaper headlines, magazine articles, and personal advertisements. Here, language functions as a visual element as much as a literary one. By isolating, reorganizing, and repeating words from everyday sources, Giorno transforms journalistic, commercial, and sexually explicit texts into poetic compositions, giving ordinary language new rhythm, meaning, and visual force.

Performance remained central to Giorno throughout his life. At the center of the gallery, a suspended microphone hangs above a raised platform that serves as a stage for live performances. Surrounding it is an installation of four turntables developed with Rirkrit Tiravanija. The turntables play vinyl records released by Giorno Poetry Systems (GPS), the nonprofit organization Giorno founded in 1965. Among the recordings are selections spanning the history of GPS, including The Dial-A-Poem Poets: Totally Corrupt (1973), Big Ego (1978), and Life Is a Killer (1982). Visitors are invited to select and play the LPs themselves, allowing up to four recordings to play simultaneously. As voices overlap throughout the gallery, poems become an ever-changing soundscape shaped by each visitor's choices.

The gallery’s project room presents Tiravanija’s untitled 2008 (john giorno reads) (2008). Filmed over several days at Giorno’s home at 222 Bowery in New York, the ten-hour film follows the artist performing poems, memoirs, and music spanning five decades of his career. It reflects the longstanding friendship and creative dialogue between the two artists while preserving the vitality of Giorno’s performances. It also offers visitors an intimate glimpse into where Giorno lived, worked, and performed. 

In the gallery bookstore, visitors are invited to experience Dial-A-Poem, the telephone project Giorno launched in 1969, through which callers can hear recordings by poets, artists, and musicians including John Cage, Patti Smith, Laurie Anderson, and Philip Glass. The bookstore will also present a selection from the Giorno Poetry Systems archive, including photographs, publications, documents, recordings, and ephemera spanning Giorno’s life and practice. Drawing on material related to Dial-A-Poem, Buddhism, political activism, and Giorno’s many artistic collaborations, the presentation reveals how poetry, performance, and community became inseparable throughout his career