Ivan Mesek (Croatia, b. 1971) uses performance, intervention, and constructed situations to reexamine notions of gesture, perception, and social communication. Often using his own body as a stage or site, Mesek's work explores the space between art and the everyday, the area between the private and the public, and the pressing, essential questions of social and human relations. By subverting ordinary situations, Mesek inverts the traditional relationship between spectator and subject, examining how temporary dislocation can showcase the complex meaning inherent in our day-to-day life. Mesek has created a series of performances, each an insertion into the everyday urban milieu. This is the rare opportunity to experience one of these works live.
Homesick (2011) takes an ordinary scene from another landscape and transposes it into a new terrain. Staged in both industrial North Brooklyn and in the streets of Manhattan's vibrant Chinatown, Homesick is a public intervention: an unexpected action in a place inscribed with different expectations. This contradictory transfer of meaning directs attention to the forms our social exchanges take, allowing for a reexamination of the relationship between performance, gesture, and everyday practice.
Ivan Mesek has performed and exhibited at venues including; The Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb; Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka; Galerija Miroslav Kraljevic, Zagreb; Multimedia Center Luka, Pula and The Croatian Art Society, Varazdin. This will be Mesek's first performance in the United States.
New York City, NY; NYC