The exhibition Tender Days, dedicated to the Croatian artist Damir Očko (b. 1977), opened at Gaep Gallery at the end of September, closed yesterday.

Gaep presented two of his solo exhibitions: Pear Fate Meter (2020) and Repear After Me (2016). Očko won the HT Award for Contemporary Art in Croatia in 2019. Damir lives and works in Zagreb. He has had solo exhibitions at Kunsthalle Krems, Museum of Contemporary Art Zagreb, Jeu de Paume (Paris), CAPC (Bordeaux), National Gallery Prague, DAZIBAO (Montreal), Croatia Pavilion at the 56th Biennale from Venice, Künstlerhaus KM (Graz) and Palais de Tokyo (Paris). His works – video, collages, sculptures, objects, sound installations – examine the complexity of language, codes of social control, the political dimension of the body and various forms of violence, fragility and resistance.

For the September 20 opening, the artist sent the following letter:

“Hello,
Today, the art handlers picked up the works from my studio, and there’s something I’d like to share with you. It feels a bit strange not having these pieces here anymore, but I trust you’ll take great care of them.
Among the works, there’s a small box containing a handful of sparkling dirt. Over the years, I’ve collected this material from parties and dance floors. After the queers would leave for afterparties, the dance floors would be swept, and I’d filter out the shiny bits—like searching for gold, in a way. I’ll be using this dirt to dress a waterfall for you.
A few birds are coming your way too. There’s a group of twelve blackbirds hiding in a periwinkle bush, each an interval on a frozen clock. Then there’s an Ibis named Gypsy, violently killed in the valley of Neretva in Croatia. You’ll also find a cattle egret I encountered in a cocktail bar in Lanzarote this past February, now proudly perched on a child’s broken bike. There’s a grey parrot that prefers to make up words she doesn’t like, a pelican covered in oily black tar, and a mundane scene with a few sparrows in various nude tones—colors you might find in my makeup kit.
There are some flowers too: a grey bouquet of wild roses and poppies with one pink amaryllis lily, and another bouquet, withered and dry but home to a not-so-small spider.
Finally, you’ll find a chess game gone wrong and a fun fact about traje de luces—bullfighters’ suits that are always tailored without a contoured pouch for the penis, often resulting in some unusual but sexy bulges appearing elsewhere.
These are my tender days, my dragforms, and I’m happy to share them with you.
xx from Zagreb and see you very soon!
Damir
ps
of course there is also a cat!”