Katinka Bock (Frankfurt am Main, 1976) is a sculptor who creates his works closely to the geographical and contextual environment in which he works. It takes into account the architecture, urbanism, society, climate or the environment of the place where it works, so it develops local projects. The sculptures it creates – from wood, copper, ceramics, clay, steel – present them in a special way in space through subtle and careful displays. Blend, superimpose and tighten with skill the exterior and interior ends, natural and artificial, ephemeral and eternal. It creates meeting spaces between sculpture and space, weaving fine threads that bind and attract them.

To prepare his exhibition in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Bock made several trips to the Basque Country and the Artium Museum. I wanted to see over and over again the exhibition hall, analyze the multiple possibilities that space could have and get to know the surroundings of the museum so that its works had some kind of intertwining with the environment. On one of these trips he left Vitoria and along with a group of young artists he met the factory of Albaola de Pasai San Pedro. It was astonished to see how the San Juan nave was being built, which is being built in an artisanal way with the materials and tools of the time. He drew attention to the wooden boards with which the boat is built, the tables with which the keel, the mast and the ribs of the boat are built along a long piece of oak wood.

After seeing this, and after meeting Selma Huxley, he wanted to relate the exhibition hall to what he met in Albaola. One of the long wooden boards that were used to build whaling boats thought it could go through the showroom side-by-side. On the other hand, it worked as an excuse to bring some rays from the coast to Vitoria. Thus, with the help of the carpenters of Albaola, he worked the wooden curved table of eight meters length and prepared it for the exhibition. The effect produced by the piece of wood in the room is enormous, as the simple curvature of the wood part somehow breaks the rigid shape of the room and the reading of this exterior element (ocean, whaling, whaling) is very different. The Segment with Unknown Radius (Segment with unknown radius) has titled the work that shapes the exhibition hall located on the subsoil of the winery of a boat and a whale.

However, this is not the only intervention he has made in the architecture of the Artium hall: With the work Confusions Possible (Possible Mixtures) has made openings in false walls of the room, removing fragments of pladur and revealing the internal structure. Like the whale-shaped boat, the bow ribs have also been highlighted here inside the walls. Also, the circular windows with previous locks have been opened in line with this exhibition, and the circular windows that illuminate us from the outside, further accentuate the mood that makes us think we are inside a boat. Gradually, with very simple gestures, the artist has taken over the exhibition hall.

In the room we can see, rather divided, the works that Bock has done in the last five years, such as the sculptural installation One to Eight of Eight (one to eight, eight of luck). It is a set of eight pieces that, over eight easels, we find half a bronze comb, a shoe, a spoon or a fish, elegantly presented, as pieces of a parade. They could be objects that we would find at the bottom of the sea or in the belly of a whale, a collection of ancient instruments. It is interesting to observe how it works with different materials, especially when at the center of our journey we find an absorbent or radiator that binds to unconventional materials such as ceramics or wood.

In 2019, Bock performed an individual exhibition at the art center Pivô in São Paulo. I have to admit that I have known few sites that I found as special as this one. In the 1960s, the architect Oscar Nienmeyer built the imposing Copan building (6 blocks, 37 floors, 1,160 apartments, 72 shops and a church inside it), in which he is situated in the lower space dedicated to artistic research and exhibition. For the exhibition Avalanche (Elur-jausi), Bock first explored and studied the building itself and its surroundings, as usual in his working methodology. From these inspections came the idea that a month hung a blue cloth of 20 square meters from the Copan building. The weather and meteorology did their work and after a while picked up the fabric, cut it into small pieces and linked them to the exhibition. The sculpture of plants and cements that he created for this project built his own irrigation system that, through a system of canals, pipes and boats, provided a irrigation that reached the plants.

Katinka Bock puts forward proposals that need to be looked at in the corners, corners, slits, holes and more unsuspecting places. The visitor looking up at the Artium exhibition will find the Selma Huxley ceramic bust, which takes care of everything. Because this logbook is a journey that starts and ends with it.