Teun Hocks at P.P.O.W

Art in America, March, 1998 by Janet Koplos

In his photographs, Teun Hocks poses himself against painted backdrops, playing an innocent Everyman in an always strange and often funny world. His narrative approach expands on the precedent of Ger van Elk and reflects attitudes characteristic of his native Holland. The Dutch are travelers, and Hocks explores worlds of his imagination; the Dutch are informed observers, and Hocks's humor is frequently based on deadpan or passive responses to things beyond his control; the Dutch are traditional and family-centered, and Hocks often portrays unnecessary or even inappropriate convention in dress and behavior. Thus it's ironic that his work is not wholly favored in Holland itself, where some people complain that his photos are one-liners. But it's typical of the Dutch, too, to discount what they have at home.

To dispose of that question of obviousness, consider what may be the simplest image in Hocks's recent show of about a dozen silver prints hand-tinted with oil paint, most of them 3 or 5 feet in the largest dimension. In an untitled 1997 work, the artist, dressed in a suit, tie and white shirt, is seen in a vast primeval or apocalyptic landscape as he looks down at an enormous shoe-print in which he stands. Is this Walter Mitty imagining an adventure, or a modern Robinson Crusoe discovering evidence of a gargantuan Friday? One immediately tries to devise a story to explain the man's attire, his presence in this desolate place, the fact that only a single shoe-print is visible. He looks down at it but also, it seems, at his own shoes. Is he simply comparing, or is this a science-fiction story of shrinkage? Regardless, half the fascination of this work is in Hocks's acute depiction of a particular instant of reverberant recognition, a moment of thought, with all its possibilities.

This scene is a little exotic, and so is one with a volcano backdrop. In front of the belching cone, a guy in casual dress wants to make coffee (Dutch lifeblood), and awaits the aerial arrival of a strategic cinder to start his campfire. Hocks has always made works about waiting and hoping, which may be the keys to his oeuvre. The two themes are encapsulated poignantly and amusingly in one of the few photos in which Hocks does not appear. In this work a sapling about 2 feet tall has been braced with a stout stake. A watering can sits on the ground beside it. Someone clearly wants this little tree to grow. And that must be the same person who, looking forward to the tree's maturity, has optimistically hung a noose from it.

In other images a painter seeks inspiration before an empty landscape, a writer labors with a pen attached to an IV bottle filled with ink, a lumberjack relaxes by looking at a painting of tree trunks. These moments are isolated, as if on stage in a spotlight. Hocks studies human nature, and his response is more piquant than plaintive.