installation shot, Jan de Cock, Denkmal 11

The young Belgian artist Jan de Cock (b. 1976) has shown in many European venues over the last several years, including the Tate Modern in London and De Appel in Amsterdam. This exhibition at MoMA is his first major show in the United States. Landing on our shores after having achieved the status of a distant but persistent rumor, if not quite a cult item, his work turns out to be compellingly erudite, tasteful and clever. But after the first flush of formal audacity wears thin, it unfortunately registers as an emotional dead end, dry and airless, failing to find resonance beyond its own hermetic self involvement.

update
In regards to the upcoming "Automatic Update" exhibition at the MoMA NY, there seems to be a great deal of question about a number of issues. These are; the re-writing of history,the relevance of net-based art, the perception of popular culture, and the role of the New Media movement/ Genre in the contemporary scene. What seems to be a key dialectic about the state of New Media as force in contemporary art derives from two poles; one from the MoMA colophon about the Automatic Update show; The dot-com era infused media art with a heady energy. Hackers,programmers, and tinkerer-revisionists from North America, Europe, and Asia developed a vision of art drawn from the technology of recent decades. Robotic pets, PDAs, and the virtual worlds on the Internet provoked artists to make works with user-activated components and lo-res, game-boy screens. Now that "new media" excitement has waned, an exhibition that illuminates the period is timely. Automatic Update is the first reassessment of its kind, reflecting the artists ambivalence to art, revealed through the ludicrous, comical, and absurd use of the latest technologies. [1]

Proposal for MoMA
Just before Gordon Matta-Clark died in 1978 the Museum of Modern Art approved a proposal by him to cut into the façade of the original MoMA building before the first renovation and expansion of the building.
The piece was never executed. Gordon’s proposal was a bit of one-upsmanship on a certain level. Christo had proposed in the 1960’s to wrap the façade of MoMA but it remained a proposal. Cutting into the façade of MoMA was a lot more destructive than a gentle wrapping in canvas tarps.

RE-EDIT: Herzog & de Meuron at MoMA: The Limits of Pedagogy and the Specter of the Dysfunctional Museum
Artist's Choice: Perception Restrained
Museum of Modern Art, New York
June 21 through September 25, 2006

(This text was comissioned by Paletten Art Magazine, based in Gothenburg, Sweden. It will appear in issue #266, January 2007, focusing on art and pedagogy. www.paletten.tk )

Museums certainly have a lot of explaining to do these days. Rare is the exhibition that arrives without a tremendous baggage of pedagogical tools in tow, designed to inform, cajole and manufacture consent. Aside from the catalogue, a panoply of aids attempt to channel the viewer’s perception of the art on display. These include wall texts, published brochures placed in Plexiglas sconces, audio tours with the voice of the curator or artist, and roaming bands of docents speaking in the various tongues of the civilized art world. The art object is rarely allowed to signify on its own terms.