10 x 10 x 50 cm, wood, gypsum, paint
During 2014 - 2017 sculptor Jan De Cock (B) made some exhibitions in private galleries, showing miniatures of monuments that he subsequently constructed, without asking permission, in a public space of the city.
The miniature owned by the Museum travelled from Brussels to Milano and Lisboa and finally to Laveno Mombello. The work is on loan, but is anyway seen as a gift by the artist to the Museum and the town of Mombello.
An interview at the occasion of an exhibition in Milano sheds some light on why the work actually fits in the Museum.
"... Now it’s time to change the capitalist system, which means we have to create an alternative and provide some sort of new common ground where everything that has to do with the economy—and here I am talking about museums, galleries, private collectors, everyone who has to do with money—can no longer be included anymore. Why? Because the first thing we need to do now is to abstract beauty from money. I use the words “common ground” in the pre-capitalist sense: a ground where you could grow vegetables to feed yourself and your family. If we could do the same in art—I know it might sound a little too simple now—we would create a sort of exchange economy that is only about quality and beauty. The common ground would be a romantic place, the beginning of a new way of seeing. It would allow our children to understand that there is an alternative to the world that is manipulated by marketing industries and by big money companies—because if they can’t see, they can’t understand. That’s more or less what I believe will be the model of the future. (see also Cat. Nr. 46)
... There are many people who work in public spaces. I think that there are more people working in public spaces than working in museums or institutions. I have always worked in institutions, and I am not saying I don’t want to go back. What I would like to see more often is people treating public spaces the way they treat museums. This is what I miss a little bit. It’s not because you are working in the streets that you have to make street art. Not at all. On the other hand, you make a museum exhibition; why would you make another white cube? This has been done already; we’re over it. The most important thing to do today is to create our own museum—our own collection of thoughts and ideas—everywhere we can imagine it. (Jan De Cock, in an interview with Simone Menegoi, for Mousse Magazine, Milano (IT), Nov. 2017)
postmaster@museumofanthropocenetechnology.org, via Leggiuno 32
Laveno Mombello
21014
Italia