Jan De Cock

The PEACE exhibition sees itself as a “discursive” show as it is driven by the question: How does peace actually work? It also puts forward a hypothesis, which, instead of an answer functions as the starting point for debate: Peace is a process and is defined by interaction and communication between all the actors in a given given environment. The invited artists and the works on show are understood as forming part of this discourse and optimally the role they play will prevent any ossification of communicative exchange.

This is certainly the case with Jan De Cock’s sculptural project entitled “Everything For You, Frankfurt”. It commenced several weeks prior to the opening and consists of sculptures that the artist builds in differe`nt places before moving them, or event removing them entirely. The objects consist of concrete shapes of different colors and sizes, either stacked or placed next to one another, in part connected by wooden or metal elements. They were initially assembled in front of Städel Museum, on the Uni campus and close by the cathedral. Each time they are moved the elements get varied and positioned in a new configuration. The “non-shape” brings to mind construction-site junk more than it does a traditional sculpture; they seem bulky, unsettling, coincidental and out of place. Presumably, they would actually be as good as unnoticeable if it were not for the closed architectural surroundings, which contrasts so starkly with the sculptures.

The project is part of the “Everything For You (EFY)” series that De Cock has been working on for some years now. To this end, he produces geometrical, abstract modules made of cheap construction materials such as plywood, plaster, terracotta, metal and concrete. The objects function as models of memorials, and are transported into a city – venues as different as Herford, Hong Kong, Mexico City, Carrara, Kiev and soon New York – where they are then arranged. Often materials found on location are then incorporated, or, as in Frankfurt, colors – one can discern the characteristic red of the façade of the Portikus or the cathedral. The project entails an additional step, too: Before the objects are taken apart and transported away, De Cock takes photographs of them. These are all similar in formal terms: The sculptures are always placed in the close foreground and slightly over-exposed. As a result, they seem to have been imposed on the venue, and the visual distance itself is reduced. Anything can be in the background – company signs, half-timbered houses, shop windows, historical facades, and on occasion people who have wandered into the shot. Like a snapshot, their appearance in the image seems random, possible because they do not really perceive the sculpture as such. Thus, the objects blend with the respective context without being ingratiating and more by being idiosyncratic, a bit inconsiderate.

A gift is how Jan De Cock describes his sculptures. A gift to the city, the population, and the architecture. The project is key to this exhibition, which rests on the assumption of circulation and communication, as the gift is one of the longest-standing forms of exchange. De Cock’s sculptures do not simply represent a gift, as the latter unfolds through them, they cause the gift to occur – which at first sight seems contradictory, as these objects cannot be considered “beautiful” and certainly have nothing to do with teasing the interest of the recipient. Or may they do?

Memorial Paper

The project entails another, final step: The photographs all get included in a publication printed on newspaper that always looks identical and is made available free of charge in the exhibiting art institute. In this publication, right at the front, we can read De Cock’s “Manifesto For Sculpture Communism”. It’s a manifesto that starts thus: “Dear customer, please forgive me for saying that you are no longer king,” and contains a clear critique of today’s market economy: “The corporate industry has been using you as an object, as an ideology for the masses.”

By contrast, De Cock views the “EFY” as a “necessary corrective to the market economy” and also explains what he means by gift: an object that does not seek directly to be viably sold on a market and rejects justifying itself to the public. Moreover, as an artwork that in any city, anywhere, opens the space up to a new world. Sculpture Communism is therefore above all to be grasped as an “aesthetic investment” with which the artist creates something unlike the surroundings objects. This is, De Cock continues, the sculptural form of a “social differentiation”, where economic scarcity becomes the basis of multiplication. In the final instance, De Cock says, the project is a gift to capitalism and a gift that liberates art from capitalism; it is the artist’s donation to artistic liberty.

As already indicated in the title, De Cock’s project covers nothing less than the relation between the market, art, power and freedom, or simply “Everything”. Each EFY publication features two essays addressing different theoretical issues. In the Frankfurt edition, Angela Dimitrakaki and Bruno Bosteels discuss theoretical, historical and formal contextualizations explicitly addressed in De Cock’s manifesto. What does it mean to use the term “Communism” today? Why the reference to modern sculpture by El Lissitzky, Constantin Brancusi, Donald Judd, Ilja Kabakov, Franz West? How to understand the avant-garde in terms of today’s artistic output and what influence do German Idealism and Romanticism have on De Cock’s project?

The path out of the institution and into public space is evident in De Cock’s earlier works. In 2005, he had a show at the SCHIRN. For “Monument 7” he made simple modules comparable to crates and boxes, assembling them on site to form a box with a labyrinthine interior. At the time, the box formed the entrance corridor to the gallery. It was a de- and reconstruction of the ‘museum’, exploring the threshold space to identify the potential contemporary space has above all through the stimuli of politico-aesthetic communication between inside and outside, between art and non-art, between action and reaction. Here we can discern a specific type of critique of institutions that insists on expanding aesthetic autonomy as an operating logic.

In 2014, De Cock founded The Brussels Art Institute – a place where in the Bauhaus tradition art, film, music, theater and meeting points co-exist. While the institute’s financial survival is never certain, its spaces and holdings are now used by hundreds of students. Today, there is a quite tangible public pressure on art to respond to compelling political issues. Art thus hunts for opportunities to present itself as social praxis in order to secure its role in society. To a certain degree, De Cock also makes use of this role, but he refuses to be pinned to it as he seeks always to preserve and expand the autonomy of art. His works thus evidence a certain complicity with the object they criticize, something that goes hand in hand with a fundamental doubt as to whether resistance is possible. As a result, “Everything” has a pathos-driven and skeptical side, as it does a human side. All of this also has to do with peace. Jan De Cock creates a form of circulation that embraces contexts, media, production and reception.

The flow is driven by generosity and irregularity, extracting life from the abuse of capitalist exchange and thus securing it. Because peace first becomes possible if we view authority and power critically, Jan De Cock’s project is absolutely indispensable.

Viktoria Draganova

Viktoria Draganova is a writer and curator living between Frankfurt and Sofia, where she is the director of the project space Swimming Pool.