ŽIga Okorn

For one and a half decades I have devotedly pursued the quest for an image that would invite, reconcile or heal by touching our profound artistic experience, which is associated with empathy, sensation as well as compassion and love. These fragile, simple images, which the painter with earthly pigments and some drops of water literally pours over the paper or canvas, open up perspectives that we actually experience internally, but fail to realise sufficiently externally. They are the invocations of our sensitive yet forceful conditions, where mind and body, reason and hand, the head and the heart are interconnected.
The watercolours of children, in front of which the viewer stands as if confronting his own future, are fashioned so elementarily that it is hard to overlook them. To overlook and not let oneself be touched by them, let them touch the place in us where still a tiny child resides, a child who is waiting for us to view the world through its wide-open eyes. What it is watching and feeling is here and now, is omnipresent and eternal. The “here-present” is unfathomable already through language, unreachable neither through imagining not projecting, it is a creative process and a part of ourselves. The artistic basis of an im...

As a member of the Sestava group, I have participated in a number of professional-civic initiatives related to art and culture in the fields of education (against the exclusion of art education from primary schools), monument preservation (initiative for the preservation of the Robba Fountain and the demolition of old Austro-Hungarian buildings) and artistic vocation (co-organiser of the auction to save the Association of Fine Artists of Slovenia).
Since 1991 I have been exhibiting regularly in Slovenia and abroad. In 2002 I received the prize for the best watercolour at Ex-tempore Piran and in 2008 at Ex-tempore Grožnjan. Together with the group Sestava I received the prize of the city of Ljubljana in 2004 and the Golden Nest Award in 2009. In 2006, 2008 and 2011 I was a co-winner of the Golden Pencil Award, given by the Slovenian Chamber of Architecture. I have also devoted myself to illustration, photography and graphic design and have designed several permanent and temporary museum exhibitions (permanent exhibition in Bled Castle, Slovenian National Museum, 2008).

Major exhibitions and projects
1992: Robba Fountain. Exhibition and Exhibition of ex-Jakopič Pavilion (with Jiři Kočica), Ljubljana.
1993: From Painting to Parquet, Ambrož Square Studio and ŠKUC Gallery, Ljubljana.
1995, 2000, 2005 Illuminated, Equrna Gallery, Ljubljana.
Since 1997: The Image of Your Openness, work in progress.
2004: Addressing the Freedom of the other (with Jiři Kočica), Božidar Jakac Gallery, Kostanjevica na Krki.
2006: Ljubljana - Zagreb - Beograd - stop, live scenography painting, Teater Bu and Glej Theatre, Ljubljana.
2008: participated in the Venice Biennial of Architecture, together with Odprti krog, A+A Gallery, Venice.
In-between Anaesthesia and Ecstasy. Equrna Gallery, Ljubljana.
Ex tempore Grožnjan and 1st Prize for the created work Memory, Grožnjan, Croatia
2010: Little Trigger, Srečišče Gallery, Hostel Celica, Ljubljana.
2011/2012 Liebe gegen Angst/ Love against Fear, Gallery Scheifmühlgasse 12-14 Vienna
2013 Love Against Fear. Celica 1993-2013 (celebrating the 10th anniversary of Celica and the 20th anniversary of KUD Sestava), Srečišče Gallery, Hostel Celica , Ljubljana
2015 Refugij, Srečišče Gallery, Hostel Celica , Ljubljana
2016 Refugij II, Gallery of the National Institute of Chemis...