DAMIR OČKO: PSST
27. 03 – 30. 04. 2013.
We are more than happy to announce that
Damir Očko (1977, Zagreb), Croatian artist is having his frst
Hungarian debut exhibition at TRAPÉZ. Damir Očko is a celebrated
artist in the contemporary Croation art scene, one of the most well
known Croatian contemporary artists of today. In 2003 he fnished his
studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb. In 2007 he was an
artist in residency at the HIAP at Helsinki, between 2008 and 2009
he was on scholarship at the Akademie Schloss Solitude. He had solo
shows in such prestigius institutions as the Palais de Tokyo, the
Yvonn Lambert Gallery, the Kunstverein Leipzig and the Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf. His works can be found in collections like the Fondation
Louis Vuitton, the Le Plateau FRAC, the Centre National des Arts
Plastiques (CNAP) and the MUDAM Luxemburg.
With his exhibition entitled PSST at
Trapéz Damir Očko invites us to explore linguistic turns,
distortions and twists to point out the poetic and musical
characteristics of speaking with integrating the dimensions of sound
and picture. The exhibition consists of twelve photo collages and a
sound installation. The photo collages are made out of either
punched or inserted elements, fragments of sentences and other
abstract and geometric shapes, while the base of the artworks are
photos of the artist's hand and interiors. The V shaped installation
has a sound installation inside of it as the one exhibited in the
Palais de Tokyo in 2012* and it uses the onomatopoetic words Psst!
and Hush! which are also the basis of the photo collages. These
words are the abstraction of language, referring to the situations
when we quiet someone or ask to join us as an ally. They are between
sound and words transforming the soundinstallation into a cacophonic
music composition. Očko's working method is transparent: through his
research for materials or themes he uses quiet and invisible
elements for his works, and he made them hearable and visible with
the help of poetic, political and theoretical gestures.
“Music and literature frequently serve
the artist … as a point of departure for his flms, drawings, artist
books, and installations. Situations and quotations are invariably
mere starting points for an excursion into a metaphorical realm, a
journey which moves from a specifc, concrete area into zones of the
indeterminate by expunging everything obvious and translating it
into a unique artistic idiom. His intellectual approach, which one
might situate in the vicinity of symbolism and pittura metafsica, is
in itself too well-refected and deeply humorous to throw the balance
between pathos and sense of distance out of kilter.”**
*Damir Očko – The kingdom of glottis,
Palais de Tokyo, Paris, 17. 10. 2012 – 11. 02. 2013.
**Damir Očko – On Ulterior Scale, written by Magdalena Holzhey, published in the Damir Očko – On Ulterior Scale, Kunsthalle Dusseldorf, 2011 exhibition catalogue