Concept
Jan Kopp (born May 26, 1970, in Frankfurt/Main, Germany) is a German visual artist. He has lived in France since 1991. After graduating in 1996 from National School of Fine Arts of Paris / École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts/, France, he became assistant to the artists :fr:Jochen Gerz and :fr:Esther Shalev Gerz. In 1997 he co-founded the independent art-space GlassBox in Paris, one of the first artist-run-spaces in the French capital. Jan Kopp has been in several international artist-in-residence programs such as PS1/Moma with the Clockwork 2000: P.S.1 & Clocktower National and International Studio Program 1999-2000 in New York and Hors les Murs/Institut Français in Brazil with "Niemeyer dancing, playing with modernity, run the streets" as a subject of his residence in 2014. Jan Kopp uses different medias – drawing, sound, video, sculpture, performance, - without favoring one or the other. He resists to any temptation of specialization or classification. His works can be small drawings or large-scale installations such as Soulever le monde, created for the Children's gallery of Centre Pompidou, Paris in 2015 or Grand Ensemble' for the Contemporary art center La Criée in Rennes, France. In the most of large-scale installations, the visitor can take part of the work by touching or making in movement one element of it or only by this presence. For instance Das endlose Spiel / The Endless game challenges the visitor as to the nature of both his role and his participation: he can take part in this interplay of tension between the visible and the sensory only by making his way along the ellipse of "Das endlose Spiel's" platform. As Gaétane Lamarche-Vadel said, Kopp shares with Kawamata inclinations for simple materials, economic, common, clear paths, the incompleteness of the work, make a collective. Most of times, he uses many everyday objects to speak to everyone by putting them out of their usual context. By this move we can see the world differential, the artist says. Jan Kopp seeks to create artworks which don't reveal themselves in one glance.