b. 1965, Gribbohm, West Germany

Born in 1965 in Gribbohm, in northern West Germany near the Danish border, John Bock studied sculpture at the Hochshule für Bildende Künste (HfBK), Hamburg, West Germany. Reconciling elements of Dada, Happenings, Fluxus, and European Actionism, his artistic practice can be understood through the tripartite lens of lectures, installation environments, and audience participation.

Bock is known for his lectures that parody academic activity, which he enacts in impermanent environments crafted from household objects, detritus, furniture, wood, and other generally inexpensive and often found items. These quotidian materials recall the work of artists such as Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy, who wove kitsch sources into California’s post–Pop art aesthetic in the 1980s. During exhibitions and events, Bock occupies these spaces as places of semi-dwelling and stages for audience engagement. Consisting of pseudo-formal language in a mixture of English, French, and German, Bock’s lectures often verge on gibberish and are variously shouted, proclaimed, and spoken in a fast-paced manner. Although an admirer of Joseph Beuys, who performed similarly didactic works from the 1960s to the 1980s, Bock does not intend to teach his viewers but rather to engage them in an experiential and reciprocal relationship. However, his incomprehensible language and actions frustrate any clearly prescribed exchange, serving as a wider metaphor for the precarious communication between contemporary artist and audience. The lectures are accompanied by the wearing of costumes, sewn or knitted together; gestures; and spontaneously drawn diagrams and illustrations of the performance, further creating a deliberately absurdist, or to use the artist’s term, “a-logical” atmosphere. Items used during a lecture are often destroyed or discarded, while the improvised, collaged stage remains on view, sometimes alongside video documentation, and provides a permanent work to exhibit in its aftermath.

Bock’s first solo performances were held in 1992 at HfBK, and he garnered early notice at the 1998 Berlin Biennial. The 1999 Venice Biennale featured Approximation­Rezipientenbedürfniscoma­Ur­Ultra­Use­Material­Mini­Maxi, a shantytown constructed by the artist in which he set up camp and invited viewers to become a temporary part of the work by inserting their limbs inside. The participants were then made into impermanent sculptures as Bock covered them in materials such as tin foil and shaving foam. By participating in this theatrical act of camouflage, both artist and audience-interloper were simultaneously sculptors and sculpture. In John Bock: Filme (2007) at the Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, Germany, elements of Bock’s live lectures were transposed to the screen, foregrounding his use of video as a separate medium. The exhibition consisted of recent moving-image work that retained his absurdist and multilayered approach while using actors, props, and scenery to create longer cinematic and narrative-driven videos.

Bock has had solo exhibitions or major performances at a range of institutions, including the Deutsche Guggenheim, Berlin (1998); Museum of Modern Art, New York (2000); Fondazione Nicola Trussardi, Milan (2004); Schirn Kunsthalle (2007); and Schinkel Pavillion, Berlin (2011). His work has been shown in such group exhibitions as Children of Berlin: Cultural Developments 1989–1999, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center (now MoMA PS1), New York (1999–2000); Dionysiac: Art in Flux, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2005); and Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century, New Museum, New York (2007–08). He has participated in numerous biennials, including the Venice Biennale (1999, 2005); Documenta, Kassel, Germany (2002); Performa, New York (2007); and Sydney Biennial (2010). In 2007, a monograph John Bock: Maltreated Frigate, titled after an eponymous hour-long performance that premiered in the Berlin State Opera’s storage facilities in September and October 2006, was published. Bock lives and works in Berlin.