German artist Jochem Hendricks is known for his work addressing complex moral and ethical issues. His practice explores the social codes and boundaries that we live by, as well as questioning received ideas surrounding beauty and value. His projects often involve investigative processes more normally associated with scientific enquiry, questioning the boundaries of legality.
One example is a series of works which sees organic matter - birds, a human leg and a human ear, which the artist acquired in the former Eastern Block - transmuted into diamonds, carried out in two former Soviet research establishments. The subjects were first converted into pure carbon which was then used to produce synthetic diamonds. For Hendricks an 'official' collaboration with the institutes was impossible, resulting in a series of complex and sometimes dangerous negotiations and transactions to realise the works. Jochem is also well known for his ‘Concetti’ works which are - unlike Fontana’s works - made by piercing or puncturing various surfaces including, canvas, copper and aluminum with firearms.
For the work Grains of Sand (1999-2007), the artist paid assistants, often illegal immigrants in Germany, to count precise numbers of grains of sand, up to several million. The quantities of sand are presented in beautiful hand-made glass vessels, making it impossible to verify whether or not the numbers given are accurate or not. Such works raise questions about the value and meaning of labour, as well as notions of truth and imagination.
Jochem Hendricks (b. 1959) studied at the Stadelschule, Frankfurt. Solo exhibition have been held at the Kunstverein Freiburg, Germany (2002), the Kunsthalle St. Gallen, Switzerland (2001) and the Museum fur Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2000). Recent group exhibitions include Light InSight. NTT InterCommunication Center [ICC], Tokyo, Japan (2008), Sand: Shifting Boundaries/Fluid Meanings, Parrish Art Museum, USA (2008), And Therefore I Am, The Tang Teaching Museum, Saratoga Springs, USA (2006), Rundlederwelten, Gropiusbau Berlin, (2005) and What’s New Pussycat? Museum fur Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt, Germany (2005).
