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.

I arrive at the Zwirner Gallery’s double show of Rirkrit Tiravanija and Gordon Matta-Clark, rolling my bicycle up to the front of the kitchen and locking it before the window-like openings. I enter the dumpster with the maze built inside it. With its back panel open, the dumpster is the major opening of the double installation to the street.

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