The individual and the group
About JocJonJosch
JocJonJosch is the Anglo-Swiss-Slovakian collective of Joc Marchington, Jonathan Brantschen and Joschi Herczeg. As a collective of three artists JocJonJosch are interested in issues of identity relating to the individual and the group both on a universal as well as a more self-reflective level. The individual and the community, success and failure, efficiency and waste, purposiveness and pointlessness, are features of the collective’s work that at different times become tangled and ambiguous. These oppositions represent a reference point in the process of making new work and what interests the artists is how that journey can evolve through a symbiotic relationship of conversation and creation. In JocJonJosch’s work sculpture becomes a kind of tool of alchemy, which is designed to evoke imaginary journeys in the mind of the viewer. The purpose of the sculpture is not as an ending but instead to open up possibilities by making suggestions of what might have been and what may still be. As with Worstward Ho! it is unimportant whether a voyage has been embarked upon or whether it is imagined, what matters is not the destination but the voyage itself.
The round boat with three oars is symbolic of the collective’s dynamic, in which Joschi, Jonathan and Joc wrestle towards a destination. There is a sense that each time one member attempts to move forward his movement and the direction in which he would like to travel is countered by the action of the other two. It is an exhausting exercise and the collaborators often feel as if they are going nowhere, that they are turning in circles. The boat is a useable sculpture, that is to say it is a boat built to be rowed on water. It’s significance however, is not in any specific journey that the artists take or plan to take in the boat but instead in the ambiguous and challenging journey that it suggests.