JAN DE COCK

Jan De Cock is renowned for his sculptural installations, which the artist sees as monuments to Modernism. His monumental installations mix often plywood sculptural modules that recall twentieth-century abstraction – formally referring to the modernist and constructivist idioms – with color and black-and-white photographs, video- and film works. In these works the artist uses structural challenges, aiming to offer a new viewing experience, a dense web of images and ideas that cross-reference both his own oeuvre as the structure of (art) history, architecture, and film. The art of De Cock differs from the classical idea that art materializes an internal struggle. For him, art is more a construction of thoughts that takes in a position in the total field of contemporary culture. De Cock chooses specific locations, as a library, a gallery or a museum, modernistic buildings; defined landscapes where he makes not in situ but ex situ artworks, sometimes in combination with the historical heritage that is present.