Jan De Cock

Since the second decade of the 21st century his works evolves around the concept of Romanticism.

On several occasions, he stresses the independence from market controlled mechanisms which are in an outspoken opposition to a romantic and utopian stand.

e.g. the integration of an already existing school in the artist’s studio: The Brussels Art Institute.

From his exhibition ‘Eine Romantische Ausstellung onward the focus of his works shifts towards disruptive interventions in order to destabilise art market mechanisms.

Jan De Cock (born 2 May 1976 in Etterbeek) is a contemporary Belgian visual artist.

From the start of his career, his art has revolved around production and the ways in which an artist relates to the broad culturally-injected concept of Modernism.

In 2003 Jan De Cock entered the competition Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge (Prize for Young Belgian Painters).

He is, after Luc Tuymans, only the second Belgian artist to have had a solo exposition at Tate Modern and the first living Belgian artist to have an exhibition at MoMA, which opened on 23 January 2008.

Much of his work draws on visual and formal comparisons between early-20th century abstract art movements and contemporary design and mass production.

During the first decade of his career the artist worked on the intersection of sculpture and architecture and he succeeded in extending the underlying functionalist consequences of the Russian Modernist artist El Lissitzky‘s Proun Room, thus completing a missing link within the modernist program yet to be completed in late twentieth century modernist art.

The project took place between September 2011 and June 2012 and can be divided into two separate but interrelated parts.

Part 1: A series of six Cahiers was published as a periodical picture story to mark the project.

White-out Studio systematically exhibited the Cahiers as five different presentations that were spread over a period of five months (September 10, 2011- January 31, 2012).

Part 2 : The Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden subsequently presented the exhibition Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (March 10, 2012 - June 24, 2012) and the catalogue 'Jan De Cock: Handbuch Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis.

Eine Romantische Austellung'.

In this exhibition Jan De Cock unfolds a complex, interlocking system of fragments, changing the white rooms of the Kunsthalle and the glass pavilion of the Stadtmuseum into a landscape of splintered units that seemingly has no point of departure, nor one of arrival.

The works shown in the exhibition were made using industrially produced materials.

A series of sculptures entitled Romantische Skulpturen consists of grand steel profile frames measuring almost 3m x 3m, upon which precisely crafted layers of coated wood and other materials have been attached.

The first edition Everything For You, Mexico City opened in the spring of 2013 in Galería Hilario Galguera, in Mexico City.

Jan De Cock grants the city a number of different sculptural Gifts, with which he rejects today's supply-and-demand economy by giving the inhabitants of the city a gift pur sang, voluntarily and in places where no one has asked for them.

Before the Gifts are exhibited, they are first activated in the city by means of a photographic portrait.

These photos are then printed in a Memorial Paper, accompanied by two essays and photographs of other cities, and spread over the city.

Twenty cities are featured in this project, including Mexico City, Otegem, Strombeek, Havana, Kiev, Carrara, Belfast, Hong Kong, Herford, Liverpool, Casablanca, Antwerp, Godarville, New York, Tokyo, Paris and Brussels.

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis (or JKO) is the encompassing generic term for the exhibition project.

Series of exhibitions, taking place in 2015 and 2016 at the gallery of Office Baroque in Brussels.

The latter exhibition featured 18 new “Abstract Capitalist” sculptures as well as 9 “Memorial” drawings.

In December 2016 Abstract Capitalism II opened at The Brussels Art_ Institute, a 'memorial exhibition' in the form of an old school salon, revealing how artists' houses and studios have become the object of public fascination and - at the same time - misunderstanding about art, creator and the aesthetic.

It entails a series of 124 studies of homages to the idea of the arcade and the studio.

This series of exhibitions tackles the concept of the free market.

After the departure from Brussels and the relocation of Jan De Cock's studio to Turin, Italy and then Bruges, Belgium and the closure of The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute was founded in 2019.

Just like its predecessor The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute is invariably labeled a 'romantic place' (quote) by its founder Jan Frederik De Cock.

The Bruges Art Institute is home to The Flemish Masters, Grandiose Shipyards and Jan De Cock Advisory.

It is a complex of fine arts salons, a studio, a school where the various functions of living, working, studying are united in an anti-modernist way with a Wunderkammer, a showroom and a school.

He is represented by Francesca Minini in Milan.

After the departure from Brussels and the relocation of Jan De Cock's studio to Turin, Italy and then Bruges, Belgium and the closure of The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute was founded in 2019.

Just like its predecessor The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute is invariably labeled a 'romantic place' (quote) by its founder Jan Frederik De Cock.

The Bruges Art Institute is home to The Flemish Masters, Grandiose Shipyards and Jan De Cock Advisory.

It is a complex of fine arts salons, a studio, a school where the various functions of living, working, studying are united in an anti-modernist way with a Wunderkammer, a showroom and a school.

Jan De Cock is founder of The Brussels Art_ Institute (BAI), a multidisciplinary artist workspace and cooperation between the artist and school of Sint-Lukas, Brussels.

The institute is located in Anderlecht along the Zenne and Brussels-South station.