The work of Teun Hocks (Leiden 1947 – Rotterdam 2022) brings a smile to your face. There is always something that grates in his tinted photographs of staged scenes, in which the artist himself appears. You can just sense that things are about to go wrong, that the situation is too absurd, or too good to be true.
After training at the St. Joost School of Art and Design, Hocks took his first steps as an artist in Breda. At that time, the art world was dominated by several movements whose aim was to provoke. Hocks was interested in pop art and conceptual art, and also in the disruptive approach of Fluxus. He experimented with similar procedures, but eventually went his own way, creating his own visual idiom combining elements of theatre, silent film and comedy, plus comic strips.
Untitled (1999) is typical of the development in Hocks’ work, depicting the human condition, in all its perfection and imperfection, as tragicomedy.
Teun Hocks, Untitled (1999) | Photograph coloured with oil paints | object number: G00273 | On loan from the Friends of Stedelijk Museum Breda