Jan De Cock

JAN DE LOCK (Belgium, 1976).
"Nature morte with a broken arm". 2013.
Mixed media sculpture: wood, chipboard, clay, plaster, paint, paper and jute.
Measurements:
We are before a sculpture-assemblage by the Belgian artist Jan De Cock, in which the handmade product and the industrial material collide both in a plastic and conceptual sense. The artist suggests the idea of waste and recycling by confronting it with the industrial process and adding an ironic counterpoint with the pastel tones. In 2003, Jan De Cock participated in the Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge competition. He is, after Luc Tuymans, the second Belgian artist to have had a solo exhibition at the Tate Modern in London and the first living Belgian artist to have an exhibition at MoMA, which opened in January 2008. Throughout his career, he has engaged in dialogues with earlier movements in abstract art, with a particular interest in working at the intersection of sculpture and architecture. Subsequently, his work evolved around the concept of "Romanticism". From his exhibition 'Eine Romantische Ausstellung' onwards, the focus of his works shifts towards disruptive interventions to destabilize the mechanisms of the art market. After the departure from Brussels and the relocation of Jan De Cock's studio to Turin, Italy and then to Bruges, Belgium, and the closure of the Brussels Art Institute, in 2019 he founded the Bruges Art Institute. Like its predecessor, the Brussels Art Institute, The Bruges Art Institute is always described as a "romantic place" by its founder, Jan Frederik De Cock. The Bruges Art Institute houses The Flemish Masters, Grandiose Shipyards and Jan De Cock Advisory. It is a complex of fine art salons, a studio, a school where the various functions of living, working and studying come together in an anti-modernist way with a Wunderkammer, an exhibition hall and a school.