Jan De Cock: Denkmal 11

NEW YORK, December 19, 2007—The Museum of Modern Art presents Denkmal 11, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, 2008, Jan De Cock’s (Belgian, born 1976) first museum exhibition in the United States. De Cock, whose work has been the subject of critically acclaimed exhibitions throughout Europe during the last five years, has to date created thousands of images of sites and monuments, compiling them into large bound volumes which he calls denkmals, from the German word for monuments. The title Denkmal 11 refers to the Museum’s location at 11 West 53 Street. For this exhibition, the artist photographed works in MoMA’s collection, the Museum’s architecture, and spaces within the building such as the conservation labs, frame shop, library, and film theater. These color and black-and-white images are juxtaposed with images the artist has culled from the history of photography, architecture, and film, resulting in a kaleidoscopic portrait of MoMA through an interdisciplinary lens of references. In his signature encyclopedic style, hundreds of the artist’s photographs and photomontages will be hung floor to ceiling and will be complemented by both free standing and wall-mounted plywood sculptures informed by the aesthetic of early twentieth-century Constructivism and 1960s Minimalism. On view in The Robert and Joyce Menschel Gallery, on the third floor, from January 23 through April 14, 2008, the exhibition is organized by Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, The Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition launches De Cock’s year-long American Odyssey project. Following Denkmal 11, Museum of Modern Art, 11 West 53 Street, New York, 2008, at MoMA, the artist intends to take the images from the installation and display them at landmarks across the United States—including Jackson Pollock’s studio in East Hampton, New York; Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater in Mill Run, Pennsylvania; the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas; the Everglades, Florida; and the Grand Canyon, Arizona. De Cock will photographically document each installation throughout his travels, generating a potentially endless atlas of images within images that will be the subject of his fourth volume.

Ms. Marcoci states, “In addition to the German definition, the word denkmal in Flemish incorporates two meanings: denk, which signifies ‘think,’ and mal, which translates as ‘mold.’ For De Cock, a denkmal is a mold for thought. De Cock’s freely associative approach to image-making and non-linear display seems to ask, ‘What is the most important thing that remains: the images or a way of looking?’ His work underscores the idea that there is no closure or definitiveness in the interpretation of the history of modern art.”

Influenced by experimental European cinema, chiefly Jean-Luc Godard’s collage film Histoire(s) du cinéma (1988–98), and the protocinematic work of photographer Eadweard J. Muybridge, De Cock’s installation offers a multifaceted view into the lineages of modernism. Shooting at the Museum in the summer of 2007, De Cock used two cameras—an analog Sinar and a digital Hasselblad—serially and from different angles, in a filmic manner. He focused on works in the collection by such artists as Constantin Brancusi, Marcel Broodthaers, Edward Hopper, Donald Judd, Kazimir Malevich, Muybridge, Lyubov Popova, Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Aleksandr Rodchenko, and Andy Warhol. The resulting works comprise single images, diptychs, and triptychs that incorporate De Cock’s use of repetitive framing devices, extreme close-ups, and fragmentation.

De Cock made his museum debut at S.M.A.K., Ghent, in 2002, followed by a series of critically acclaimed exhibitions at De Appel, Amsterdam (2003); Palais des Beaux-Arts, Brussels (2004); Manifesta 5, San Sebastián (2004); Tate Modern, London (2005); Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt (2005); and Haus Konstruktiv, Zürich (2006).

ABOUT THE CURATOR Roxana Marcoci, Curator, Department of Photography, has organized a number of exhibitions at MoMA including Projects 85: Dan Perjovschi (2007); Comic Abstraction: Image-Breaking, Image-Making (2007); New Photography 2006: Jonathan Monk, Barbara Probst, Jules Spinatsch (2006); the retrospective Thomas Demand (2005); Projects 82: Mark Dion Rescue Archaeology (2004); Projects 80: Lee Mingwei—The Tourist (2003); Projects 73: Olafur Eliasson—Seeing Yourself Sensing (2001); and Counter-Monuments and Memory, part of Open Ends (2000). In addition, Ms. Marcoci cocurated (with Klaus Biesenbach, MoMA's Chief Curator of Media) the exhibition Take Two. Worlds and Views: Contemporary Art from the Collection (2005). She is currently preparing, with Mr. Biensenbach, a survey of Olafur Eliasson’s work, scheduled to open at MoMA and P.S.1 in April 2008, which will be an expansion of the exhibition that was circulated by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and organized there by Madeleine Grynsztejn. Ms. Marcoci holds a Ph.D. in Twentieth-century Art History and Criticism from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. In addition to the publications accompanying her exhibitions, Ms. Marcoci has written widely on modern and contemporary art.

SPONSORSHIP The exhibition is supported by the Society of Friends of Belgium in America.

Jan De Cock
Denkmal 11
Kurator: Roxana Marcoci