Visual artist Ivan Mesek graduated from the Gymnasium in Varaždin in 1989, and in the same year entered the teaching department at the Academy of Fine Arts in Zagreb in the painting class of prof. Eugene Kokot. During his studies in 1992 and 1993, he attended the International Summer Art Academy in Salzburg, in 1992 in the painting class of Antonio Dias, and in 1993 in the class of Dick Higgins. In 1996, he enrolled in postgraduate studies in Munich, which ended in 1999 with the work "Application of art therapy in art education". From 2000 to 2001, he worked as a professor of vocational subjects at the Secondary Vocational School in Varaždin, from 2002 to 2004 he was an expert associate for culture in the Department of Cultural Science and Sports at the City of Varaždin, and from 2004 to 2010, he was the temporary director. public institution in culture "Gallery Center Varaždin". From 2010 to 2018, he was the director of the public cultural institution "Gallery Center Varaždin", and from 2018 the director of the Varaždin City Museum. From 2000 to 2010, he was the president of the Croatian Society of Fine Artists Varaždin, in which capacity he initiates and organizes art projects ("Days of Croatian Performance", "Biennale of Fashion Photography", "From A to B", "IMPRESSION-IMPRESSION", "Artist in the City").

His creativity unites a wide spectrum of artistic disciplines, media and methods, starting from painting through performance, video and their hybrid forms of actions and installations in public space to design and the spillover of artistic activity into direct political engagement. The topics he deals with are reducible to the elucidation and criticism of the transitional and post-transitional economy and the local and national socio-political deviations caused by it, economic impoverishment in the era of global dominance of liberal capitalism, and the related disintegration of human and cultural values ​​established in the era of modernism.