Through video, poetry, installations and works on paper, Damir Očko explores the mechanisms of the human body, as well as its relation to the social and political context. The body explored in his works becomes a critical space for thinking about violence, power, fragility or our interactions with the environment. His exhibitions unfold as apparatuses by which the artist often questions his approach to the process of artistic production itself, establishing a subjective space where film and poetry meet in a critical dialog. 

The exhibition at Eastwards Prospectus includes the artist’s recent film production, from We saw nothing but the uniform blue of the Sky (2012) to The Third Degree (2015), in which the artist integrates the issue of social responsibility of film making process by turning the camera itself into the subject of the film. By doing so, he develops a visual narrative that tackles the issue of collective responsibility. Two other films, SPRING (2012) and TK (2014), reveal the dialogue between the cinematic and the poetic languages embedded in the subject. Both extensively polyphonic works in which poetry, music, movements of the filmed subjects and image overlap, emphasizing the artist’s interest in the mechanisms of the body and in the themes of violence, oppression and resistance. In We saw nothing but the uniform blue of the Sky, black-and-white scenes interchange while a man with a speech impediment recites a poem with an extraordinary effort that comes to stress and amplify the disturbing meaning of the words.

Damir Očko (b. 1977) lives and works in Zagreb. In 2015, he represented Croatia at the 56th Venice Biennial with the project Studies on Shivering: The Third Degree. His works have been exhibited at Galleria Tiziana Di Caro (Naples), Dazibao - centre de photographies actuelles (Montreal), Temple Bar Gallery (Dublin), KM - Künstlerhaus Halle für Kunst & Medien (Graz), Yvon Lambert Gallery (Paris), Palais de Tokyo (Paris) and Kunsthalle Düsseldorf among other places. He also participated in numerous group exhibitions at institutions such as Württembergischer Kunstverein Stuttgart, Mudam - Musée d’Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean in Luxembourg, Collection Lambert in Avignon, FRAC Le Plateau in Paris, Kunsthalle Vienna and Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb. 

Damir Očko’s works are part of numerous public and private collections, among them Fondation Louis Vuitton (Paris), FRAC Le Plateau (Paris), CNAP - Centre national des arts plastiques (Paris) and Mudam (Luxembourg).