Devised to challenge our habitual cognitive and behavioral patterns, her investigations of light, space and perceptual thresholds take forms of large-scale installations, sculptures and drawings.
Often orchestrating complex geometries with transparent materials in ways to direct our gaze towards the unseen and the invisible, her installations offer a much needed sensory rest, a pause and a break from our usual ways of seeing—of transiently paying attention and extracting relevant information from the never-ending flow of visual information in our surroundings as quickly as possible, by employing our preconceived mental categories and biases.
Her works require insights into unknowns as a prerequisite for imagining different possible futures.
Her solo exhibitions include Perceptual Drift (Galaxies in Mind), Museum of Contemporary Art in Zagreb (2017), Retreat into Darkness. Towards a Phenomenology of the Unknown, Schering Stiftung Project Space in Berlin (2017), Your country of two dimensions is not spatious enough for me. Limits of Perception Lab, Savvy Contemporary, Berlin (2020), Travel Along Unknown, Schauspielhaus – Oval Office, Bochum (2020), Aperception, LAUBA People and Art House, Zagreb (2022) and Twilight. Neither perception nor non-perception, Kunsthalle Bern (2022).
She also represented Croatia at the 52nd Venice Biennale with the solo exhibition Latency in 2007.
Her projects were commissioned for 9th Architecture Biennale in Venice (Frameworks, 2004), Manifesta 7 in Bolzano (Liminal Level, 2008), 11th Shanghai Biennale (Disorientation Station, 2016), 9th Yokohama Triennale (Resonance of the Unforeseen, 2020).
Other exhibitions include MoMA P.S.1. 2001, Neue Nationalgalerie, 2014 and Hamburger Bahnhof - Nationalgalerie der Gegenwart, 2017 in Berlin, Sammlung Falckenberg, Hamburg, 2017, Palazzo Esposizioni, Rome, 2017, MACBA, Barcelona, 2018, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka as part of Rijeka 2020 - European Capital of Culture, 2019, Zhejiang Art Museum, Hangzhou, 2022, and City Gallery Ljubljana, 2022.
She recently took part in the large group exhibitions Dimensions – Digital Arts since 1857 inside 10,000 sqm of a former industrial site in Leipzig (2023), and Brain(s)/Cerebro(s) at CCCB-Centre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona (2022) Espacio Fundación Telefónica Madrid (2022), Museo San Telmo in San Sebastian (2023) and Centro de Historia de Zaragoza (2024).
Her works are part of public collections including MACBA - Museum of Contemporary Art, Barcelona, MSU - Museum of Contemporary Art, Zagreb, Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Rijeka, Filip Trade Collection of Contemporary Art, Zagreb and the European Parliament’s Art Collection.
Ivana Franke has collaborated with artists Carl Michael von Hausswolff, Silvio Vujičić and Damir Očko, architects Petar Mišković, Lea Pelivan, Tomo Plejić and Tommi Grönlund / Petteri Nisunen and scientists, neuroscientist Ida Momennejad and vision scientist Bilge Sayim.
In June 2024 she was elected associate member of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts