Croatia

The Republic of Croatia will participate to the 56th International Art Exhibition in Venice with a project by Croatian artist Damir Očko, titled Studies on Shivering: The Third Degree, curated by Marc Bembekoff.

The project conceived for the Croatian pavilion in Venice will expand the durational scheme that the artist has been developing over past few years with the film production and new works presented alongside his recent film TK, further exploring the context and the ideas behind his artistic intentions.

Damir Očko‘s artistic practice embrace a space of junction between poetical and political.
The core of his recent artworks has been the questions of the human body and the exploration of the physical realities of the body as a social or political matter. The violence inherent in his works mirrors issues brought by instability between the apparent state of tranquility and the underlying violence of today’s globalized world. Damir Očko’s poems and films embody a latent form of violence, which is linked to a trauma inherent by the evolution from socialism to capitalism. His works intertwine elements that rightly and poetically translate the social constraints imposed to our bodies, evoking moments of passage and transition zones.

Damir Očko (b. 1977, Zagreb) lives and works in Zagreb. In his vi­de­os, film mu­sic and drawings, the Croa­ti­an ar­tist un­der­ta­kes a quest for ima­gina­ry pla­ces, pla­ces that ap­pe­ar in the mind, far from the fa­mi­li­ar.
He of­ten ta­kes his ma­te­ri­al from li­te­ra­tu­re and mu­sic, trans­for­ming it in­to his own pic­to­ri­al lan­gua­ge. His works have been exhibited recently in Temple Bar Gallery in Dublin (2014), KM – Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien in Graz (2014), Yvon Lambert gallery in Paris (2013), Palais de Tokyo in Paris (2012), Galleria Tiziana Di Caro in Salerno (2012), and Kunsthalle Dusseldorf (2011).
Očko also participated in numerous collective exhibitions with institutions such as MUDAM, Luxembourg, FRAC Le Plateau in Paris, Kunsthalle Wien and Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, among others. His works are part of many public and private collections around the world.