John Bock
“No Time No Screws”
Eleni Koroneou Gallery is pleased to present for the fourth time the new work of John Bock in his second solo exhibition. John Bock born in Gribbohm, Germany, lives and works in Berlin.
John Bock uses the form of performance as artistic medium, combining theater, video, installation and sculpture. Most of his early actions or performances were termed “lectures” and originated in the idea of an academic lesson on economic concerns. Starting out from that basis he has developed over time increasingly complex, large-scale installations in which he employs simple everyday objects and materials, like wood, fabric, wire, cotton wadding, toothpaste, shaving cream, cleaning products, and food, which he treats and combines in unusual ways in order to create simple structures of life as well as art’s evolution into abstract forms and paranoid models.
In his lectures Bock combines speech, dramatic elements with these everyday objects, which are transformed into sculptures. His performances are various and most of the time he uses amateur actors. After each lecture, the objects that he has used are left on stage creating a theatre-collage. The language he uses is not very clear, it is a mutation language that flows on the sculptures. The sculptures as objects are more relicts, vehicles, instruments, which try to combine the artist with the audience and the outside world. This auction comes from a personal utopia of the artist who wants to share it with the audience, hoping that this utopia will influence it. Significant role in the work of Bock plays this interactive connection with the public
The current exhibition with the title “No Time No Screws” presents the new installation work of John Bock, which consists of transformed parts of a bus. These refer to a lecture-performance that Bock did in a city bus, invited by XYZ last October, traveling through the streets downtown Athens. The video, documenting the performance, is also central part of the show.
John Bock has participated in numerous international exhibitions, including the Athens Biennale (2007), Venice Biennale (1999 and 2005), Documenta 11 in Kassel (2002), and Manifesta 5 in San Sebastian (2004). He has exhibited worldwide in Museums and Art Institutions at the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000); the Museum Bojmans van Beuningen, Rotterdam (2003); and the ICA in London (2005); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, New York (2006); Shirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2007); Graz Kunsthaus, Graz (2008).