Visual artist Teun Hocks died on Sunday, February 27, 2022, at age 74. Hocks was a pioneer and icon of Dutch staged photography. He achieved cult status with tragicomic works that occupied the space between photography and painting. He was a talented and successful artist, but above all a good friend. TORCH Gallery had worked with Hocks since 1986.
Beginning in 1975, Hocks worked tirelessly on an idiosyncratic body of work in which a single image told an entire story, often with a generous dose of humor. Hocks himself played the leading role in the tragicomic worlds he created. His large-scale, hand-colored photographs were his stage, where he took on the role of a man caught in almost surreal situations.
Teun Hocks did not play the archetypal hero who fearlessly confronts the most unlikely challenges. Instead, he was an ordinary man who faced everything with a degree of acceptance and resignation.
The final exhibition TORCH created with Hocks was Drawings in the spring of 2021. It presented a selection of drawings he had made the previous year while isolated at his home in central France. His drawings often received less public attention, but Hocks drew throughout his life and also taught drawing at the Gerrit Rietveld Academie and Design Academy Eindhoven.
Hocks remained active until the end. Among other projects, he collaborated with TORCH Gallery on a new publication titled Dag in dag uit. The monograph brought together all of his photographic work and was scheduled for publication later that year.
In his final years, Hocks divided his time between Rotterdam and Saint-Pierre-les-Bois, France.
Thank you, Teun.
TORCH Gallery
