Jan de Cock

Jan De Cock (born 2 May 1976 in Etterbeek) is a contemporary Belgian visual artist. From the start of his career, his art has revolved around production and the ways in which an artist relates to the broad culturally-injected concept of Modernism. In 2003 Jan De Cock entered the competition Prix de la Jeune Peinture Belge (Prize for Young Belgian Painters). He is, after Luc Tuymans, only the second Belgian artist to have had a solo exposition at Tate Modern and the first living Belgian artist to have an exhibition at MoMA, which opened on 23 January 2008. Much of his work draws on visual and formal comparisons between early-20th century abstract art movements and contemporary design and mass production. During the first decade of his career the artist worked on the intersection of sculpture and architecture and he succeeded in extending the underlying functionalist consequences of the Russian Modernist artist El Lissitzky‘s Proun Room, thus completing a missing link within the modernist program yet to be completed in late twentieth century modernist art.

Since the second decade of the 21st century his works evolves around the concept of Romanticism. On several occasions, he stresses the independence from market controlled mechanisms which are in an outspoken opposition to a romantic and utopian stand. e.g. the integration of an already existing school in the artist’s studio: The Brussels Art Institute.

From his exhibition ‘Eine Romantische Ausstellung onward the focus of his works shifts towards disruptive interventions in order to destabilise art market mechanisms.

After the departure from Brussels and the relocation of Jan De Cock's studio to Turin, Italy and then Bruges, Belgium and the closure of The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute was founded in 2019. Just like its predecessor The Brussels Art_ Institute, The Bruges Art_ Institute is invariably labeled a 'romantic place' (quote) by its founder Jan Frederik De Cock.The Bruges Art Institute is home to The Flemish Masters, Grandiose Shipyards and Jan De Cock Advisory. It is a complex of fine arts salons, a studio, a school where the various functions of living, working, studying are united in an anti-modernist way with a Wunderkammer, a showroom and a school.

He is represented by Francesca Minini in Milan.