In his actions, lectures, installations, drawings, sculptures and films, John Bock continues to bore and prick until that symbolic primal slime becomes visible which billows beneath the ordered pathways of our culture. With playful ease, he repeatedly reveals the anarchical, macabre, and often grotesque chaos which we consistently suppress in order to maintain our linguistic conventions, art-historical verities, and social orders. This perspective has given rise to an art of contemporary existential Dadaism which is truly unique.
Read MoreThe term which Bock employs most often in relation to his works is that of 'Kunstwohlfahrt' (art welfare). The idea of artistic social services seems to stand in stark opposition to this work which violates all certitudes and conventions. But Bock is serious in this matter: Quite aware that there exists no such thing as an ideal viewer, he endeavors with his highly invasive works to attack each viewer individually, to shake him up privately, and thereby to induce him to reconsider the terms and ideas upon which he has uncritically established the foundations of his life.
John Bock (*1965, Gribbohm, Germany) lives in Berlin. Selected solo exhibitions include Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, Berlin (2019), Fondazione Prada, Milano (2018), Contemporary Austin (2017), La Panacée, Montpellier (2017), Berlinische Galerie, Berlin (2017), Bundeskunsthalle Bonn (2013), Kunstverein Hamburg (2013), Städel Museum, Frankfurt (2012), Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin (2010). Selected group exhibitions include Sammlung Falckenberg/Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (2019), Montréal Museum of Fine Art (2017), Kunsthalle Rostock (2017), Marta Herford, Germany (2017), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2016), Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, Germany (2016), Guggenheim Museum, New York (2015), Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo (2011). He participated in Documenta XI, Kassel (2002) as well as the 55th Venice Biennial (2013), the 51st Venice Biennial (2005) and the 48th Venice Biennial (1999).
Text courtesy Sprüth Magers.
