FischGrätenMelkStand, 2010

For FischGrätenMelkStand – the final project at Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin – the artist John Bock has developed a masterful meta-structure within which he installs works by 63 artists. An eleven-meter-tall walk-in steel costruction creates a range of spatial situations over four levels, linking the individual works into a kind of Gesamtkunstwerk, or total art work. Unlike the classic white cube, this scenario offers the works on show anything but a neutral setting. Within a structure that is functional and grotesque in equal measure, the artworks fuse with the space that surrounds them. By this means, John Bock creates surprising poetic, formal and thematic connections and contradictions that refer to pop culture, architecture, film, science, and everyday life, as well as to parapsychology, music, and fashion. The comprehensive selection of images allows the reader to explore the precarious installation in detail.

Published by Walther König Verlag

German / English
ISBN: 978-3-86560-872-7
Hardcover, 144 pages, 111 colored illustrations
Edited by Temporäre Kunsthalle Berlin / Angela Rosenberg, John Bock
with texts by Andreas Schlaegel and Angela Rosenberg