Curated by Roxana Marcoci
Belgian artist Jan De Cock is best known for large-scale, site-specific structures made of fiberboard in shades like pea green and burnt sienna. But many of these projects—all titled Denkmal, the German word for “monument” or “memorial”—also have afterimages: light-box photographs of works displayed later at the same location and massive books illustrative the artist’s process. So it might not come as a total surprise that De Cock’s first US museum exhibition is organized by a photography curator, Roxana Marcoci. For Denkmal 11, the artist takes the museum as muse, presenting—alongside his plywood constructions—photographs of the Modern’s galleries, conservation labs, movie theaters, and other spaces, digitally combined with images from the histories of art, architecture, and film. After New York, he will bring elements of the installation on a cross-country tour of America’s own monuments, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater and the Grand Canyon.
