Classical shapes in a new outfit
Jan de Cock, Randschade Fig.7, Denkmal no. 15
De Cock’s wooden constructions function as Denkmäler, monuments or memorials for his ideas. Sheets and blocks of wood and veneer in muted colours determine how you can walk through the exhibition space and what you look at.
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Jan De Cock, Randschade Fig. 7 Denkmal no.15 -
Photo Gert Jan van Rooij
The title Randschade is Dutch for ‘collateral damage’, the accidental victims and involuntary damage of war. With this concept in mind, the Belgian artist Jan De Cock explores the boundaries of ideas in the history of Western art, in particular those of the romantic movement of the 18th and 19th centuries, and the 20th-century modernism of artists such as Piet Mondriaan, Theo van Doesburg, Kasimir Malevich and El Lissitzky: ‘I work with the same principles as Piet Mondrian, only he used the canvas as his medium, and I paint with wood in space.’1
De Cock’s wooden constructions function as Denkmäler, monuments or memorials for his ideas. Sheets and blocks of wood and veneer in muted colours determine how you can walk through the exhibition space and what you look at. Some of them run right across the gallery, in right angles to the walls, while others look just like film or theatre sets. Visitors always have to cross an obstacle, arousing their interest in seeing what lies beyond. It is a bit like the impulse of wanting to look behind the screen during a film to see the next scene, or the scene not shown. The point that De Cock wants to make here is that museums usually mark out a predictable route for their visitors, but that this route can easily be made much more exciting with a few simple spatial interventions.
The emphasis laid by De Cock on the continuation of the Western history of art and his use of cinematographic means are not the only timelines he sets out in his work. He also plays with looking and being seen. Not just because visitors eye each other in real time, but also because they can see the visitors of earlier exhibitions in photographs. As a result, these pictures, in turn, start to work as monuments for the temporary wooden structures. The pictures are not simply a record of an earlier exhibition, but autonomous works of art that stem from previous wooden installations by De Cock.
1. M. den Breejen, ‘In de traditie van Mondriaan en Malevitsj’. Het Parool, 6 September 2002
Jan de Cock, Randschade Fig.7 Denkmal no. 15
Jan De Cock, b. 1976, Brussels, Belgium
Randschade Fig. 7, Denkmal no. 15, 2002
Duratrans in lightbox
5 parts, each 60 cm x 75 cm, edition 2/2
purchased in 2002, Museum De Paviljoens
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