John Bock

UN-EX-SURROGAT

Gallery 5, 29 May – 20 September 2015

Like the jesters of old, the German artist John Bock uses slapstick or farce in his storytelling to be able to tackle loaded and tragic topics such as fears or repressed desires. His almost shamanistic manipulation and animation of objects can be seen as a liberating exorcism in which laughter acts as a release, while at the same time provoking reflection.

The exhibition UN-EX-SURROGAT presents several complex installations including films, objects and mechanical sculptures, as well as architectural models of not-yet-realized building structures. Bock’s sculptures are often made of cheap, everyday products such as cable, aluminium foil, cardboard, cotton buds and shaving cream. The objects are transformed, mutated, rebuilt and given a new function, all the while commenting on our consumer society. When they are used in films and performative ‘lectures’, entirely new connections and meanings are formed.

The main element of the exhibition – the large installation and its accompanying film Three Sisters (2015) that were specially produced for Kulturhuset Stadsteatern – takes us on an emotional journey in which three sisters come to terms with and avenge the untimely death of the young daughter of one of the sisters. At the core of the installation are the film props consisting of interior elements and items of furniture reminiscent of three-dimensional drawings. In Bock’s own words, some of the objects function as a ‘diagram’ of sorts aimed at conveying and interpreting the ideas behind the film to the viewer, and in combination with the film they form what can be described as a choreography of sorts.

The works Re-lecture: Lonesome Analysis Complex-∞ (2014) and Fixkosten (2012), two further installation/film combinations in the exhibition, are described by Bock as a ‘confrontation between two different kinds of objects in a vertical and horizontal dance’.

Bock stages and animates a variety of events, objects and sculptures creating a completely idiosyncratic landscape filled with black humour, theatricality and absurdity. Bock’s universe has its own unique language and grammar, which add another layer to his subversive and highly original world.

Currently based in Berlin, John Bock (1965) has exhibited extensively on the international art scene. 

The exhibition was curated by guest curator Power Ekroth and produced for Kulturhuset Stadsteatern by Paola Zamora. Assisted (heroically) by Victor Lizana.

Four questions for JOHN BOCK

When did you decide to become an artist? Growing up, did you have any kind of epiphany or pivotal life-changing moment that made a possible direction visible?

The fatal accident of my uncle who got entangled in a fish trap while fishing. The fish trap pulled my uncle down into the dark depths of the canal.

Art is your chosen field for the sculptures, films, performances and installations you create. When or why does something become “Art” for you?

When evil disease meets lightness. Meaning when the evil being manifests itself in the dark corner and the razor blade scurries over the dental enamel.  

What kind of feeling and (re)action do you hope for when people come and see UN-EX-SURROGAT?

A feeling of inner flight into the rotten presence of being.

What connects the different parts of UN-EX-SURROGAT? What makes this specific exhibition exciting and new for you?

The different art-thing- summutations are pollinated with self-shadows of fear and hatred. The Klein-od-tot-sod stands facing the monochrome, counting from 1 to TOD-SEIN, but alone.

Approaching John Bock for the first time about possibly making an exhibition at Kulturhuset in Stockholm, I had to confess my love-hate relationship with the building itself. The love I feel for it comes from being such a wonderful living-room for Stockholmers, and for being what I consider the crown jewel of Social Democracy in Sweden. Everyone is allowed here! Nobody is thrown out of this place, which also provides such a huge variety of high and low culture to everyone! As for the hate... well, the exhibition spaces are difficult, and it is of no secret that I have a problem with large institutions and their stale ways. I cannot say that I have frequented the place as much as I would have liked, and that is mainly because there has not been that many interesting shows going on here over the past decade or so in my opinion. Also, I don't really agree with the populist and neo-liberal turn the regin of the place has taken over the past years.

This was also the reason I had set my heart out of providing both Stockholm and Kulturhuset with a solo-show by such an amazing artist as John Bock. John Bock is an artist I've been following since the late 90s. I was present during the opening-days at Documenta 2002 and jumped of joy after having endured many hours of grainy documentary films from remote corners of the world in the main exhibition, and entered the energy and the madness of John Bock's installation/performance/video-world. How I loved it! And the performative installations in Venice 2005!!? Well, that, together with the Jonas Mekas pavilion, restored my faith in art!

Stockholm is a city with a tremendous amount of exhibition spaces and galleries showing contemporary art considering it is only a city with approx. 1,5 million habitants. Over the past decade, a lot of energy, time and space has been given to artists exhibiting either ”sellable” decorative art or art with a more academic touch, you know the kind which is dry to the bone and has a lot of political and intellectual references and hopes to change the world but in itself it only produces new shit to the world that no-one really remembers after ten minutes, except perhaps for the collectors. In my opinion. Bock represents another type of art, another type of energy and thinking. It is political but not in a direct way, and it defies a lot of the structural art-world BS that sometimes feels like a big swamp laid out only to kill art for art's sake. This, I felt, is something that can revitalize Stockholm somehow, or at least give an idea to some of the young artists that nothing is impossible. 

During our first meeting I showed John images from Gallery 5, especially the light shafts (three of them) and immediately he started to draw sketches for the space with the type of fervor that a curator only dreams that an artist reacts with. This was late October 2014, and we went to see the space in late November the same year for the first time. John had by then already made several drawings of site-specific installations that we could try to produce. I, the curator, loved them all, but had my doubts regarding how we could find ways to incroporate these ideas into the institutional apparatus of a Swedish space with many security issues. We spent a month trying to find ways to make the artistic ideas meet the demands for a secure installation (fire escapes etc), and somehow we managed. Then, somehow, the institution decided not to go ahead afterall. This was just before Christmas, so we all had to re-charge and reset all our hopes for a brilliant “House B” as we called the suggestion.

The model for the never-realised House B, as well as a model for a “House A” can now be seen in the exhibition presented at Kulturhuset. One of the models also shows what John at one point wanted to do with Kulturhuset after rejecting his idea: burn the house to the ground and build a new pavilion.

John responded very flexible and quickly came up with a new idea that we decided to go for instead, and this is the realized idea that is now presented in the gallery over the largest space.

The main attraction in the present exhibition at Kulturhuset that opened on May 29th 2015, is the film and large-scale installation of the props and stage-set for the film Drei Schwestern (Three Sisters) that Kulturhuset proudly produced together with John himself and Regen Projects in Los Angeles and is presented for the very first time in Stockholm. The film is 45 minutes long and concerns three sisters who is dealing with fears, loss, anger and feelings of revenge.

I believe that many works of John Bock has its origins in his own fears and feelings. I also know that he is the father of two children, and one of the most common feelings that one can have as a parent, I've heard, is that their spawn dies before them. In the film, one of the three sisters is broken-up and at the brink of going bananas after her daughter has been murdered. One of her sisters, Lisa, is a strong lady with a punk attitude. At a meeting with a man who wants to help her invest her money, she discovers a sort of altar with small figurines and some weird device for rituals. One of the figurines used to be “Anna's”, her nieces, a toy that disappeared at the same time of the murder. Lisa decides that it is time for revenge, so she put drugs in his drink and ties him to a radiator for interrogations. She involves her two sisters in her plans who expresses all sorts of ambiguity and views on the situation at hand. 

The film is heavy and a tool for expressing fears in a very efficient way. The stage set looks amazing as the furnitures looks like drawings in mid air. The effect comes from actually being drawings of John's, and has then been built up in metal and has turned into sculptures. The sculptures are then come alive through the use of the actors in the film. One of the actors who plays the dead daughter that somehow resurrects in the dream scenes, is played by John Bock's own daughter.

The little girl plays very well, as she is “awakened” by her mother through what we generally name “the milk-machine”, a white sculpture which connects mother and child through the wind, the liquids and through music.

What we display in the gallery is a dismantled stage set, in a horizontal version in opposite to the vertical version which is presented in the film. The metal frames used in the film to support all the set is put on trestle legs, and on the floor we can find all the details for the props, lied out in what John formulates as “excavated graves”. Thus the exhibition space becomes a graveyard for a controlled version of the dismantled fears.

The piece named Puppenjunge (Doll Boy), 2015, is a piece that somehow has a connection with Three Sisters as it addresses killing of children, and is somehow inspired by the horrid serial killer of Fritz Haarmann, or the “Butcher/Vampire from Hannover” who held a city in fear when he killed more than 20 young boys between 1918 and 1924. His preferred choice of killing was by biting into his victim's throats before mutilating and dismembering the bodies. If you look careful, the mechanical sculpture that is connected to the old rusty bed, you'll see a razor blade next to the small milk tooth that moves when pulling the lever. Cringe... The works makes the spectator face their own fears in a very direct way.

The last installation in the further back of the exhibition is a re-interpretation and re-installation of two of his installations Re-lecture: Lonesome Analysis Complex-∞,(2014) and Fixkosten (2012). Bock describes them as a ‘confrontation between two different kinds of objects in a vertical and horizontal dance’. The actor Lisa Müller Trede, an actor that also plays “Lisa” in the Three Sisters film, activates the Re-Lecture in one of the two videos displayed with the installation.

/Power Ekroth

PRESS

Bäst just nu enligt Nöjesguiden.

”Bocks konstnärskap är ett universum i egen rätt”
”… följer en långt efter att man lämnat utställningen.” /Konsten.net

"Det handlar om att tänja på gränser..." /Kulturnytt, SR

Listen to reveiw in Swedish from Swedish National Radio, Kulturnytt HERE. 

The exhibition travelled to Los Angeles where it was installed at Regen Projects. Here some texts on the exhibition there: 

Critic's Choice: John Bock at Regen Projects: Mind-bending art for a movie town

Last chance: John Bock's far-out installation at Regen Projects is a feast for the senses