OKO

OKO is a fine artist WHO a ne THAT often combines different urban and street techniques. Although she is an accomplished draftswoman – just take a look at the virtuoso style of her surreal portraits – she indulges in installations and performances as well.

Mysterious and self-effacing, OKO is always bound to surprise our senses.

OKO portrait

OKO is a young Croatian, and primarily Zagreb, artist whose artworks are products of urban, street art and skateboard scene of Zagreb, the city where she grew up and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts.

Today she lives and works between London and Zagreb. Her illegal instalments created in printmaking techniques such as linocut, as well as her drawings have been present in the streets for more than a decade. Her art, although intertwined with urban culture, is not confined to the streets only, but rather can be found in private collections and museums such as the Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb, whose collection of artworks features the artist’s mural.

Moreover, her work has been shown at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Zagreb gallery Lauba, and as a part of the ex-flux art platform in New York in addition to many other venues.

OKO has honed her work using line drawing, mainly in black Indian ink, inspired by the 18th and 19th century illustrations and compositions. Her palette is comprised of fluorescent, bright and pastel shades which were preferred shades in pop art throughout the 50s and 60s in the UK and USA.

Recurring motifs in her artworks are anthropomorphized animals; figures with the body of a human and the head or mask of an animal evoking thus ancient drawings of the Egyptian deities. Social class and gender of the figures are conveyed by their clothes and accessories. Combining zoomorphic and anthropomorphic aspects, OKO’s inquisitive art tackles social and class issues as well as the interplay of social structures that surround her work.

In the manner of fables which taunt people through depiction of their relationships leading to the inevitable moral of the story, OKO’s figures become sages of the space they occupy.

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