TEODOR BOK - SCULPTURE
Born in 1947 in Szczecin, the artist has lived in Denmark since 1973. From 1969 to 1972 he studied in Warsaw under the sculptor Bronislaw Koniuszy. Later he studied at the Danish Design School in Copenhagen. The exhibition of Teodor Bok's works was presented from April 23 to May 15, 2004 at the Central Museum of the Textile Industry in Lodz and was a part of our project Rendez-vous with Denmark.
Individual exhibitions of his works have been held in such places as Hamburg, Bremen, Copenhagen, and in Warsaw's Galeria Studio. He has taken part in numerous joint presentations in Denmark, Sweden, and Poland (to wit, Poznan's Garden 1981; Here we are 1991 at Zacheta; Poles among the Danes and Presence as part of our 2003 Denmark in the Castle project. Besides sculpture, Bok also practices painting and drawing.
In one of the catalogues accompanying Teodor's exhibitions, Izabela Bok wrote:
Teodor Bok's sculptures from the first half of the 1990s were inspired by primitive art. The wooden constructions filled with details are simple; the towers and little pyramids, the large heads and bullets are rough. These sculptures often bring to mind magical and/or ritualistic objects, ones that tellingly and compellingly link our reality with an unsettling and unfathomed universe. Nonetheless, the rawness of these sculptures is eased with a joke or the grotesque of a poetic detail that in the dark, symbolic mood of the sculptures oft'times functions as a cheerful smile - or as a wicked giggle that bequeaths the dark symbol with a human embrace and renders it a place there.
Nor in the artist's newest works is there an absence of his characteristic way of rending a solemn moment with an ambiguous joke. On the one hand these works hauntingly hearken to the threats of today's world - to conflicts and war and confrontation. Being neither surrealistic military vehicles nor cosmic projectiles, these portents strike as an ostensibly naive warning. In all certainty they entail a taming of fears we all feel however latently. As if for balance, in his next works the artist turns to a sheltered realm, to constructions that recall fables and fairy tales, ones of farmyards, homes, and towns that seem to express longing for the lost innocence of childhood - or perhaps for a world of peace, goodness, and gentility.
Bok's works arise through the technique of toilsomely crafting the whole of wooden floor strips just centimeters long. Entirely devoted to his creative work, unsubmissive to the pressures of modern reality that would force artists to undertake efforts that do not coincide with artistic imperatives, Teodor Bok abides in the magic world of his sculptures, ones that inhabit every nook and cranny of his modest home. The most important pieces of equipment in that home are his lathe and his oven, where the artist bakes his own bread.