John Bock

The internationally-acclaimed, Berlin-based artist John Bock is renowned for his surreal installations combining performance, sculpture and film. Drawing on an idiosyncratic range of interests, Bock creates an absurd amalgamation of references from the disciplines of economics, fashion, film, politics, philosophy and music, among others. 

Of all the things John Bock uses in his art, reason is not one of them. Bock’s oddball sculptures and performances assemble household objects and combine them as dysfunctional props, reviving techniques from the Theater of the Absurd to jolt its viewer out of the mundanity of the everyday. Part scientist, part philosopher, and part child at heart, Bock mixes high art with scatological imagery to create shocking content. As in the case of Meechfieber, a film in which farmers deal with the sudden arrival of an alien spaceship, surreal imagery becomes a lens through which Bock satires sex, science, and art.

Bock’s work has appeared as part of documenta 11 and the 1998 Venice Biennial, and Bock has also done live performances at the MoMA and the New Museum. In 2006, Bock was selected as a finalist for the Hugo Boss Prize.