Katinka Bock at Lafayette Anticipations, Paris
Since spring 2018, the Galeries Lafayette Foundation has been located in an industrial building in the Marais district of Paris, redesigned from floor to ceiling by Rem Koolhaas. In that space, an audacious program has been set in motion that capitalizes on the flexibility of the space, which has four mobile floors, 875 sq m of exhibition space, and workshops in the basement. For her first Paris exhibition, Katinka Bock has installed a group of new works.
Born in Germany in 1976, Katinka Bock graduated from Lyon’s Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and remains a fixture in metropolitan France. Now living in Paris, she won the 2012 Prix Fondation d’Entreprise Ricard and is a finalist for the 2019 Prix Marcel Duchamp. However, she has not previously exhibited in Paris. In addition to what Bock’s work conveys through its own materiality, the show at the Galeries Lafayette Foundation building, known as Lafayette Anticipations, is also symbolic. Bock creates sculptures, installations, and performance art that attempt to revive the “physicality” of a location in its historical, political, and social identity. For instance, the Anzeiger-Hochhaus building in Hanover caught her attention for the political-cultural myth it represents – it was where the newspapers Stern and Der Spiegel were founded. This red-brick building with a copper dome was recently renovated to mark its historical importance and Bock was permitted to recover some of the copper. In her exhibition she highlights similarities between the Anzeiger-Hochhaus building and Lafayette Anticipations: both are places for the production of thought and its translation. The artist has planned a huge suspended installation, a poetic expression of equilibrium and a vision of materiality and time.
Katinka Bock, “Commotion at Higienópolis,” from October 9, 2019 to January 5, 2020, Lafayette Anticipations, Paris.