John Bock is a sculptor, drawer, action artist, filmmaker, and last but not least, an author. He combines these multiple forms of expression in his installations and exhibitions, creating Gesamtkunstwerks.

John Bock generally begins his artistic process by working directly with materials, bodies and objects, with people or film sets. The settings are places he chooses or creates, which are manageable in size and form self-contained sociotopes.

Time and again one is reminded of silo architecture, barns for agricultural machinery, milking rooms or muddy pens. Processes of growth, fermentation or decay are cited.

Bockʼs universe is defined by material and corporeality and, like life on a farm, is shaped by the natural omnipresence of birth, violence and death.

This publication accompanies the exhibition John Bock: In the Moloch of the Presence of Being at Berlinische Galerie, Museum of Modern Art, Berlin, 24 February – 21 August 2017.

English and German text.