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Exhibitions

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