Damir Očko: Human Scale / Paolo Scheggi: Oplà Stick 1969-2019

Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb announces the autumn program opening with a first major institutional exhibition in Croatia by Damir Očko, presenting an extensive insight into his  films, collages, books, and installations and the exhibition dedicated to Paolo Scheggi and his 1969 action Oplà Stick, a Passion According to Paolo Scheggi.

Damir Očko: Human Scale
MCA, Temporary Exhibitions Space, September 12–November 14, 2019
Opening on September 12, 2019 at 8pm

The Human Scale exhibition evolves around five key films by Damir Očko: SPRING (2012), TK (2014), Third Degree (2015), DICTA I (2017), and DICTA II (2018), in which corporeal figures indicate interactions between the society of control and the violence it produces. The images and words from which these complex structures emerge deal with the political implications and the social codes of control, punishment, violence, fragility, and resistance, as well as various degrees of oppression, focusing on the marginal states of the body. In Očko’s art, the poetic persists as a political statement—the rhythm of rebellion that is physical pulsation. The “human scale” of the exhibition title suggests the vulnerability and transience of corporeality, and feelings of insecurity and uncertainty. Here, the human body is both subject and object, both the vantage point and the gradation or scale.

Damir Očko is one of the most prominent Croatian visual artists of his generation. He has exhibited at numerous solo and group exhibitions. The most recent exhibitions include Jeu de Paume in Paris and CPAC Bordeaux (2018); the National Gallery Prague (2018), KM Künstlerhaus - Halle für Kunst & Medien Graz (2014), Palais de Tokyo (2012), and Croatian Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale (2015). His works are included in many international  museum and private collections, such as MUDAM Luxembourg, Le Plateau, Fondation Louis Vuitton, and CNAP Paris National Collection.

Curated by Branka Benčić and Jasna Jakšić

Supported by: Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Croatia; Gaep Gallery, Bucharest; Tiziana di Caro Gallery, Naples.

Paolo Scheggi : Oplà-stick 1969-2019
MCA Gallery, September 5–October 11, 2019
Opening on September 5 at 7pm

The first solo exhibition by Paolo Scheggi at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, in collaboration with the Paolo Scheggi Archive and with the support of Tornabuoni Art  and Croatian Ministry of Culture, recalls the historic performance Oplà-stick, a Passion According to Paolo Scheggi that took place in Zagreb 50 years ago. The performance opened the historical Typoetry exhibition at the Student Centre Gallery, as a part of the international Tendencies 4 exhibition, and it became the visual landmark of the performance, visual poetry and revolutionary aspirations and delusions of the late 1960s.

50 years later, this re-enactment is a tribute to Paolo Scheggi, one of the most important Italian artists involved in the New Tendencies movement, but also an opportunity to analyse the dialogue between the visual arts, language, and performance in the late 1960s, along with the role of visual and concrete poetry in experimental art and the neo-avantgarde. The exhibition will present archive documents, photographs, and the original artwork. The premier of the reconstruction of Oplà-stick, a Passion according to Paolo Scheggi by performance collective BADco will take place on September 5 at 8pm.

Curated by: Ilaria Bignotti and Jasna Jakšić

Paolo Scheggi (1940–1971) participated in important international exhibitions dedicated to Spatialism, kinetic art, and New Tendencies. He took part in many international shows in the late 1960s and his works were exhibited at the Venice Biennale in 1966, 1972, and 1976. His work is housed in international museums such as the Guggenheim Collection, Venice; The Art Museum SUNY, New York; Sammlung Goetz, München; Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci, Prato, and Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna, Rome.