SELECTED EXHIBITIONS

 THE DIALOGUES I

‘’A Collection of Turkish Contemporary Art”

Curator: Efe Korkut Kurt

The Artists: Harun Antakyalı, Eylül Aslan, Kezban Arca Batıbeki, Alper Bıçaklıoğlu, Kadriye İnal, A. Cem Şahin, Merve Şendil, Sait Mingü

03/03 / 2017 – 09 / 03 / 2017

ALAN Istanbul is pleased to announce it’s first exhibition in New York. “The Dialogues I: A Collection Of Turkish Contemporary Art” exhibition will represent a selection of Turkish Contemporary Art in Mana Contemporary as a parallel art event to world’s one of the most significant art fairs The Armory Show. The exhibition which will be organized between the 3rd and 9th of March will be the first leg of the dialogue between Istanbul and New York connected through the contemporary art.

New York and Istanbul are two different cities with their dynamic social life and their reflection on the artists. It’s not a coincidence that in such big metropolitans with many people from different social classes and places living next to each other, contemporary art is always in a constant progress. That’s why, two different group of artists from these two cities are aiming to create a bond and explore the limits of contemporary art in the series of ‘’THE DIALOGUES’’.

The first exhibition will be held in one of the most well-known contemporary art spaces of New Jersey, MANA Contemporary at the spot of Apostrope NJ. THE DIALOGUES I: A Collection of Turkish Contemporary Art, which brings the works of Turkish contemporary artists together, aims to reflect reproductions of the cultural fragments under the styles of new figurative art and new pop-art with different type of mediums such as new media, painting, photography, prints and sculpture.

The exhibition is planned to be on the same dates of The Armory Show, one of the most significant art events of the world that will be held just across the Hudson River, in New York on the 2nd and 5th of March, 2017. Thus, this exhibition is created as a parallel art event to The Armory Show and it aims to connect the art lovers from all over the world and make them have a better understanding about Turkish Contemporary Art.

In the exhibition, Harun Antakyalı will bring street art onto the walls of interior by his works in which he creates a concrete effect on canvases. The young Turkish artist Eylül Aslan will reflect her attitude on feminism with her analog photographs. One of the well-known artists of Turkish contemporary art Kezban Arca Batıbeki will question how women manage to survive in different societies and classes of Turkey. Alper Bıçaklıoğlu, will be there with his works reflecting streets of Turkey with his graffiti-like silk screen prints and acrylic paintings. Kadriye İnal will represent her sculptures on women.  A. Cem Şahin will create prints that display the darker parts of the subconscious of a human, living in a big metropolitan. Merve Şendil will use her unique technique looking like the pixels of a faraway object on painting. And, finally Sait Mingü will be questioning society and people with his c-print diasek mount prints

YOU ARE HERE

Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, İrfan ÖnürmenArdan

Özmenoğlu, Halil Vurucuoğlu

Curator: Efe Korkut Kurt

18 / 09 / 2014 – 08 / 11 / 2014

YOU ARE HERE FOR A NEW EXPERIENCE!

With its new show “You Are Here”, ALAN Istanbul invites viewers to an experience that is to take place for the first time!

The new show at ALAN Istanbul entitled “You Are Here” focuses on the relationship between art and space; one of the most important issues in contemporary art. Making its viewers a part of the show, the works in the exhibition reach beyond their own boundaries and turn the space itself into a “work” of art.

Taking a never-before-seen exhibition experience one step forward, ALAN Istanbul also includes secondary means of circulation in the experience, while approaching the issue with reversed strategy. The usual sequence that begins with the gallery space and ends with published media is reversed; resulting in a course beginning with the magazine and ending with the exhibition. The walls in the show are treated as the pages of a magazine, thus making it possible for a two-dimensional publication to extend beyond its boundaries and present itself in the form of a new experience.

Published bimonthly with the goal to help spread information, activities and developments concerning art production in the international circulation networks of contemporary art, WARHOLA magazine will release its 7th issue at the same time with its presentation in the gallery space, and will be distributed in Istanbul and New York.

The exhibition entitled “You Are Here” features the significant Turkish contemporary artists Ramazan Bayrakoğlu, İrfan Önürmen, Ardan Özmenoğlu and Halil Vurucuoğlu; it was realized with the help of the graphic designer Bürkan Özkan.

CHE VUOİ?
‘Fantasy Screen of Contemporary Art’

Rasim Aksan
Kezban Arca Batıbeki
Ramazan Bayrakoğlu
Kadriye İnal
Komet
İrfan Önürmen

27 /01 / 2016 – 27 / 02 / 2016

Curator: Efe Korkut Kurt

At what point does an image trigger desire? This question is obviously on the agenda of every artist and theoretician working in the field of contemporary art. It’s an important question, for it’s been a part of all thought systems that have influenced art theory since the beginning of the 20th century. However, what makes this question so focal for the practice of art is the fact that the bombardment of images has currently reached a peak, encapsulating all areas of life. Images have become means of direct seduction on individuals and tools of social manipulation; and the question of what they mean to the production paradigm of contemporary art is a complicated one and has multiple answers. Located at the heart of the criticism of post-modern culture and having a tendency to reduce contemporary art to an accomplice of the system, this area of expression possesses an inadequacy that needs to be overcome.

The show “Che Vuoi?” addresses the question of how images function within the interval between contemporary art and desire, by presenting works of significant Turkish contemporary artists. It aims to point out the blind spot of desire which can not be reduced to a tool of ideological mystification and which resists capital and political strategies. From a visual standpoint, desire is linked to not what we see, but what we don’t see. Lacanian theory defines this interval through a screen of fantasy. In this regard, the continuity of desire is only possible through the impossibility of reaching its object, and thus fantasy takes the place of this non-existent object. This inversion leaves viewers face to face with the big question: “Che Vuoi?” (what do you want?). This is the moment when the contemporary artist recreates himself as the unanchorable trigger of desire by means of the fantastic scenario he/she comes up with. This show is an attempt to experience this “moment”.

New Photography

Eylül Aslan, Bora Ayonur, Zeynep Beler, Asger Carlsen, David Chancellor, Alejandro Chaskielberg, Yusuf Darıyerli, Engin Gerçek,  Yiğit Günel, Gert Jochems, Catherine Larré, Cansu Korkmaz, Camille McOuat, Evzen Sobek, Arslan Sükan, Devin Yalkın, Cemre Yeşil

12 /05 / 2015 – 27 / 06 / 2015

Curators: Efe Korkut Kurt, Zeynep Özkanca

With “NEW PHOTOGRAPHY”, ALAN Istanbul presents a selection of works from prominent contemporary artists who work with photography.

One of the most decisive artistic and technical tools of production in today’s contemporary art, photography is indispensable as an exceptional field in the production of fine art, in addition to its influence on plastic arts. As both a wide-spread “medium” in contemporary art, and a unique way of expression with the possibilities it offers, photography needs to be better evaluated and understood.

This project-exhibition brings Istanbul-based contemporary artists together with a selection of internationally renowned artists. The selection of works transforms the presentation of images on a bright screen into an installation with emphasis on space. Each photograph is printed with a suitable technique, and by presenting them in space with a texture that makes it possible for them to communicate with each other, a reference to collective perception is made.

Considering the fact that artists utilize photography in different forms, contexts and processes, it seems necessary to group them into certain categories. Therefore, the first stage of NEW PHOTOGRAPHY project brings together works of young artists who have developed their own styles within the possibilities of photography by making use of data in which visual aesthetics are prioritized. It aims to establish a dialog between works and artists.

INTENTIONAL OVERDOSE

in OVERTHOSE

KEZBAN ARCA BATIBEKİ, İSMET DOĞAN, KOMET, AYLİNE OLUKMAN, ARDAN ÖZMENOĞLU, MURAT PULAT, MERVE ŞENDİL, HALİL VURUCUOĞLU

20.12.2014 // 28.02.2015

OVERTHOSE, Nişantaşı's new culture-arts and event venue, is hosting the "INTENTIONAL OVERDOSE" exhibition with ALAN Istanbul.

The “Intentional Overdose” exhibition brings together contemporary Istanbul-based artists who are prominent in the World Contemporary Art day by day, working in the international arena and who are well-known.

"Intentional Overdose", which is realized with the participation of people who have a strong imaginative aspect and who produce visually influential works on the audience, is not at the level of discourse of each participating artist's work. It has been designed in a way that is integrity within the context of the contemporary equivalent of contemporary aesthetics.

So what exactly does "Intentional Overdose" - "Intentional Overdose" mean?

Common feature of prominent two-dimensional works of contemporary art; It can be summarized as saving the image from two dimensions by using color, texture or technique and moving to the third dimension. It; basically, it is an understanding of art that prioritizes the space and escapes its limits by pulling the space into itself. In this respect, the works of the artists deserve to be considered not only in their inner integrity, but also with their overdose of interventions. The "Intentional Overdose" exhibition focuses on the possible impact on the audience of the works coming forward like a show of power throughout the space. This is the experience that the direction of how to communicate with each other in the space of Turkey's prominent contemporary artists to OVERTHOS of jobs. "Intentional Overdose" is the name of the collection of loud speech and high voltage images.

The Ideology of the Image

Artists: Ardan Özmenoğlu, Ayline Olukman, Bahar Oganer, Halil Vurucuoğlu, İrfan Önürmen, Murat Pulat and İsmail Eğler

Curator: Efe Korkut Kurt

18.06 – 28.09.2013

“’Ideology’ can designate anything from a contemplative attitude that misrecognizes its dependence on social reality to an action-orientated set of beliefs, from the indispensable medium in which individuals live out their relations to a social structure to false ideas which legitimate a dominant political power. It seems to pop up precisely when we attempt to avoid it, while it fails to appear where one would clearly expect it to dwell.”

Slavoj Žižek

The Spectre of Ideology

The previous century witnessed the nourishment and reinforcement of the dominant system by the counter-cultural production. The process through which this oppositional relationship collapsed was defined as a post-ideological world. This was accompanied with somewhat ironic theses of the end-of-history. Was capitalism a roly-poly toy that absorbs all political and cultural institutions in the superstructure with a tendency to resist capitalism?  While posters of Che and flags of the Soviet Union became t-shirt designs, was artistic production being reduced to a visual entertainment financed by capital?

In a world where art biennials are sponsored by big capital, the power and dominance of commercial art fairs is increasing and auction houses play a determining role, the criticism that art has been losing its ongoing social role since the Renaissance has been in discussion for a long time. The comments that art has been transformed into a trading-investment instrument or wall ornaments for the bourgeoisie are being articulated feverishly during the late-capitalist era. New avant-garde movements from 1960s to 2010s, accompanying these pessimistic questions, which reduced art to an ethical platform were joined by the trend of adopting a disdainful approach towards aesthetics and the diachronic establishment of this attitude as a new aesthetic regime. In other words, contemporary art has become what it was intended to be the opposite of.

On the other hand, during the same process, art has rediscovered its real power at the very place where it had lost it: in the image. Even the hopeful role of art, envisioned by the pessimist thinker Adorno, starts right here. This exhibition aims to emphasize the ideology of images today as images of ideology have become void. The exhibition also implies the necessity to face the ineffable power and reality of the image again; a power and reality that does not accommodate negation and cynicism and avoids rigid rational formulas. In this context, it features a selection of works by contemporary artists renowned for their powerful and influential imagery. Works by contributing artists present a totality, not on the level of discourse, but within the context of contemporary aesthetics. This is the exact moment ideology reveals itself.

Ne pas ceder sur son desir!*

Curator:

Efe Korkut Kurt

Artists:

Harun Antakyalı, Sercan Apaydın, Eylül Aslan, Alper Bıçaklıoğlu, Ece

Kalabak, A. Cem Şahin

According to Lacan phantasy is the foundation of desire - desire cannot

remain standing without it and it goes missing like a flash-in-the-pan. So, what puts the phantasy into action? If we say it in psychoanalytic terms, it is the one’s unbearable void of desire felt for the other. We could say that phantasy is the curtain that we install in order to cover up this void. If we approach from this perspective, phantasy functions as a base for the

realisation of the impossibility of desire, and in a broader sense the ideal of real happiness.

In this context, it is clear that neither a life, a struggle, nor societal can survive. So, what is the desire for this desire that will never reach to its goal? To where does this desire call us, what does it demand from us?

What are we going to do with this desire that is in our hands? A new and bigger construction of a phantasy, far from moving away from it, will support the reality and open up meaningful channels in the name of

creating a new life. If the imaginary production of such possibilities are

awaiting to be realised through the artists, this exhibition will be an attempt to promenade around this answer.

“Ne pas ceder sur son désir!” - “Not give up on your desire!” is a reference Lacan presents in the seventh of his seminars. This is an

ethical emphasis of what we are going to to when we start to face with our phantasy field and confront our true desire. We suggest this

reference as an expression of transition from an ambiguous idea of utopia to a new idea of utopia that tramps around the boundaries of truth.We think that the envisions that can emerge in the dialogue in between each works and with the other exhibitions can give us clues of a new utopia.

* Not give up on your desire! (J. Lacan, Seminar VII)

“Perception Machine”

Bahadır Çolak, Ceylan Öztürk, Sevgi Kesmen

06 / 03 / 2014 – 12 / 04 / 2014

“Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here.” was engraved on the door of Plato’s school. According to Plato, there exists a perfect world of forms beyond our world of daily perceptions. This perfect world contains the idealized forms of our imperfect lives. Though this concept survived through the ages till today as a reflection of the male intelligence of Western metaphysics, it was deconstructed by a series of art and thought movements that arose within the 19th and 20th century modernism. As the claustrophobic solidness of the world of perfect forms evaporated, a new ethical and aesthetic perspective affirming life has influenced our age.

The relation of contemporary art to life is far from being a relationship of contrast. It’s a space of production in which sometimes the positive powers of life are revealed, and which sometimes carries the codes of constant structures’ lines of flight. Then; is there a way of preventing the alienation to the world of objects that surround us, that become spatial and take over all our senses? Why do we insistently prefer to live as happy or unhappy slaves to the cultural world that we ourselves created, the world in which we’re engraved? Does the only possible line of flight is a flight to nature? As architects and designers think about rhizomatic liquid plans and structures, how can one –within an artistic dialogue– respond to this geometrical order in which we continue to live and which is represented for the most part in modern cities?

Perception Machine is an exhibition in which 3 young contemporary artists deal with these questions by means of various tools and media. Bahadır Çolak, Ceylan Öztürk and Sevgi Kesmen bring together visual abstractions and works related to ALAN İstanbul’s architectural and spatial equation within the human scale. Thus the viewer is invited to a process of experience in which the virtual and the actual exist together. 

“WARHOLA”

Komet – Kezban Arca Batıbeki – Arslan Sükan – Kerem Ozan Bayraktar

Hande Şekerciler- Tayfun Serttaş – Aslı Özdemir – Sılacan Köseler

Curator : Efe Korkut Kurt

November 8th 2012 – December 1st 2012

Venue: ALAN İstanbul – WARHOLA Magazine – WARHOLA Web

WARHOLA, an exhibition focusing on current circulation networks producing one another with relation of contemporary art, can be visited at November in ALAN İstanbul.

Nowadays, the consumption of art on the social platform is materialized depending majorly on media and Internet relationship. Therefore, the art object is being locked up in between. In other words, the genuine art object is being replaced by visual images.  Argument puts out that, depending on range of the object and the image circulating the medium a significant deformation occurs between image and the object.

WARHOLA puts out the work of eight contemporary artists views synchronized by circulation of three different representative ways. In extent of exhibition, each artist will display his or her work as one genuine piece in ALAN Istanbul gallery. At the same time they will position their work in contemporary art magazine WARHOLA. Also it will be projected genuine and simulation work on the web site. In other words, different psychics-real space – magazine and web – presence works, aims to highlight the differences in perception of the viewer.

In the exhibition, there will be artists from different generations who are the most prominent in the recent period of time. Such as Komet, Kezban Arca Batıbeki, Arslan Sükan, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar, Hande Şekerciler, Tayfun Serttaş, Aslı Özdemir and Sılacan Köseler. Each artist will perform their work especially for the exhibition and they will discuss the dimensions of connotation with their own language in magazine interviews that will take place.

POPARTISTANBUL

At Pop Art, the shuttle movement between the surface and the depth is inevitable and is the feature of its own traumatic reality.

Hal Foster

If we are to approach the history of art as the summation of systematic development stages, we can observe that POP ART is the distinctive breaking point throughout the chronology of the art history. POP ART is regarded as the “terminus a quo” of “art after the end of art” as

introduced by Arthur Danto in citing this systematic narration, or as the point of defeat of the genealogy that emerged during Renaissance. It is evident that the final stamping ground of the development process of contemporary aesthetics has been the abstract expressionism. This era

of abstract expressionism during which the European-centered art also migrated to the new continent, just as the case for all poises altering in the economy and politics during the postWorld War II period, and New York gained influence again emerged from this city in an unexpected manner within the dynamics of this American geography. As expressed by the theoreticians of the post-modern trend, manifestation of the cultural center that moved from Europe to America somehow started with POP ART.

Well then, let’s look back and think how POP ART had such influence? If we are to give aconcise (and somehow structuralist) response, it was clearly inevitable. It was an era whenlate capitalism was propagating its own reality and the cultural medium, where such recent

reality iconized, naturally found a post-modernist reciprocity. By looking into this moreelaborately, we can mention that POP ART fed on the tools introduced by capitalism and thevariables of the consumption culture of the era From this point of view, it is a natural fact that

the art evolving out of the self-content of the system at the spot where discourses based on theantagonisms of the modern strategies failed (or will fail), revealed itself as a sound trend andmarked the entire course of affairs. This is the creative and enthusiastic aspect of the art: an

unaccounted for minor movement and an open-ended complexion. As majority of the artistsare somehow loathsome from Andy Warhol, the era that we live in to some aspect, we arealso irritated and found the reflection of a reality where even we cannot free ourselves from

that insipidness revealing the desire and intention of any artist solely to become popular and earn money.

Today, we can see how influential POP ART was. Anyone in search of the genealogy of the contemporary art within the contemporary art itself explicitly put forward that such history

incorporates Warhol and Linchestain as it also incorporates Duchamp and there are linear bonds between each other. If we are to link such bonds that extend from ready-made objects of Duchamp to Marilyn of Warhol; at this age of globalization scattered from a seat to

multiple seats, the reflections of that epoch continues to regenerate itself within this transformation imposed by that era. This is an unavoidable outcome of this gruesome late capitalism era where almost all major metropolitans of this Earth are transformed into smallscale Americas. The concept of “Pop” at any geography is reshaped within its inherited local feature and reveals it in a flexible manner. Thus, while POP ART corresponds to a patterndemolishing functionality within the meaning of its origin on one hand, it also seems to become institutionalized within its own structure on the other hand; as is the case for all things. What will be the destination of this biaxial situation? Rather than any destination, the situation emerges into infinity of possibilities within the existent. This abundance of

possibilities coincides with the existence of contemporary art and somehow must beacknowledges “as is”.

As Istanbul is (being) in transformation into one of the recent cultural focal points frequented by the aforementioned global capitalism from its standing as a major metropolitan of an underdeveloped third world country, protean artistic developments adequate to the concept of

reality experienced reveal themselves. The innovative private schools besides the traditional academic education, innovative young artists educated in western centers, new multinational actors getting into the circulation of this ancient metropolis from various locations of the

World, numerous new spaces varying in the range of small initiatives to the corporates naturally revives a new and vigorous art environment and makes out an ample artistic

production dynamics. Thereby, distinct presences and dialects within this redundancy offer new opportunities without generating the threat of extinction the other. An environment to complicate the modernist art to breath with POP ART and similar trends within an academic

continuity is substantially surpassed for Istanbul. At the modern society befuddled with visual images under a bombardment of information and subjected to the manipulation of all tempting objects of consumption as an obligation within the prevailing steep capitalist torments of our

era, the young artists in this metropolis create their artistic strategies within their self-auras, which, in turn, introduce itself as a sound artistic performance and output.

The three artists attending POPARTISTANBUL exhibition should be approach in the context of their link to this genealogy and process. The concomitance of different works of 3 distinct artists within the frame of a single exhibition generates a situation open for multiple perusals.

This is exactly what is intended with an exhibition on POP ART substantiated in Istanbul: to accommodate the multiplex layers of production and exhibition aspects of the art within a

specific timeframe with its completely authentic characteristics. In this aspect, being exhibited in a gallery space located at Beyoğlu Tünel, such as ALANistanbul, that underwent a significant transformation is yet extremely meaningful for the monolithic statement of the

exhibition.

At her photographs, Kezban Arca Batıbeki introduces us images on daily urban life in Istanbul. These photographs sometimes coincide with the controversies within the reality of the metropolis by presenting fetish consumption objects and sometimes with reproduction of

the reality over these objects. The large scale of these photographs virtually enables perceiving of the elusiveness which transforms into a kind of show and simulation that we currently reside in by thoroughly absorbing the spectators into the image. We are invited by a

perception that is difficult to distinguish the fiction from the reality within the construct reality of the pictures.

The works by Ardan Özmenoğlu present the quid pro quo of POP ART from many aspects, but authentic to the bone. The prints by the artist on harlequin post-it papers transform into striking clip art or compositions. The referrals of such compositions are again various images that the daily life imposes on the society as a bombardment. Such images return to the spectators by reiteration within itself at the works of Ardan Özmenoğlu. In this aspect, a very image of the soundest POP ART strategies reveals itself in these works.

Bahar Oganer attend to the integrity of the exhibition with, in particular, use of colors as a style at her large scale paintings. This striking color selection consolidates with an expression

bearing graphical features at large scale canvas. Oganer’s plain attitude converging to the American POP ART artists disposing comics, posters, advertising boards, fashion, and newspaper illustrations reveals itself as a background at her authentic works.  POPARTISTANBUL is like an epochal initiative for an exhibition that could be further

elaborated. It is an initiative on generating multiplex meanings for contact, parallelism and confrontation of different artists and works at the broad perspective of the contemporary art. It is a local and universal anthology running over millions of images and codes that the capitalist

machine, far stronger than 60s, introduced to circulation via popular culture.

Efe Korkut Kurt

AN EXHIBITION ON ARCHITECTURE 

Is it possible to introduce a new perception to architecture over contemporary art practices or can architecture be comprehended via new sensation? Today, the trans-disciplinary attribute of contemporary artistic practices deviating from other art practices and artistic expression, pattern and trends and rather corresponding to the spirit of time within the contemporary arts is frequently revealed. It is also possible to say that the hints of today’s aesthetic paradigm reveal itself within the contemporary art practices. The discipline of Architecture–as conforming to its own existence-presents itself on a distinct plane in terms of this new aesthetic paradigm, particularly at implementation level. This differentiation can be better comprehended by looking into the divergence and convergence processes between the arts and the discipline of architecture. Contemporary art relatively standing against various encodings of modern, non-stationary, societal structure ravels out to another aesthetic insight that is different from the architectural practices which is rather intrinsic due to its societal structure. It is considered that such differentiation could enable a sound critical approach and assessment against architecture. It is possible to think that architecture has its unique feats and traits if considered comparatively to the other arts. Architecture, as creation of the space, incorporates a content that can manage the feeling of time as entirety besides being visual. From this aspect, the idea by philosophers like Deleuze in the context that the art of cinema generate/accommodate action-image and time-image is applicable to architecture. Furthermore, architecture is one of the tools more active in the societal terms if we are to look from the approach by Lefebvre entitled “production of the space” and the surrogate of the ideological language creating the subject if considered from Althusser’s idea. That is to say, architecture possess more effective/active aspect than many other fields of art for being social- and individual- oriented due to its functional structure. On the other hand, architecture, by virtue of this feat, is more intrinsic towards societal compared to other cultural production tools as indicated above. İsmail Tunalı introduces this as the difference in existence category between a technical product and an artwork. This, however, is thought to confine architectural design within an aesthetically restricted and conservative space by subjecting to the symbolism in the meaning of Lacanian toughts. When this limits the reasoned language of modern architecture, then it is possible to observe the exposed aesthetic formalism of the postmodern architecture. Such an assessment to be conducted with aesthetic paradigm to be introduced over contemporary art might ajar portals at theoretical levels for Jacobin aesthetic field of criticism on contemporary architecture. “An Exhibition on Architecture” emerges as an exhibition very troubled about architecture within the production equations of the contemporary art. Thus, it is to put forward the theory and practice by means of contemporary artistic tools at an autonomous ALAN as a problematic to be introduced by experiencing exhibit production stages of the art. Out of 7 individuals and groups created the works on exhibit, 2 are formed by fully professional architects, 2 are formed by architects engaged in production both in academic terms and in professional practice level, 1 artist collective whom produced numerous studies on urban and space, one photographer educated on architecture and one installation and video artist again focused on spatial issues. This broad range of participants creates broad expression opportunities for an exhibition realized on a discipline such as architecture. 

Efe Korkut Kurt

"La Production de L'Espace: An Exhibition on the City"

Murat Germen

Ceren Oykut

Muge Bilgin

February 17, 2011 - March 11, 2011

ALANistanbul-I

"La Production de L'Espace: An Exhibition on the City", consisting of the works of Murat Germen, Ceren Oykut and Müge Bilgin, can be seen at ALANistanbul-I between 17 February - 11 March 2011.

Contemporary art's approach to the city in two different styles draws the attention. First, it opens up to a language of painting in line with the ideology of the urbanized classes. This corresponds to an object of visual pleasure in which the urban imagination is aesthetized and fetishized, far removed from the "scream" of modern art.

The other way, on the other hand, tends towards the social "situation" of the city, considering the city as the geography of reality with a completely opposite strategy. The response of this orientation is faced with the danger of squeezing art into an intellectual scheme.

Well, at the point where the city is the subject of artistic practices in the plane of the image, can there be a third way, a new perspective? Is an up-to-date artistic production possible without giving up the sensory potentials of contemporary aesthetics? "La Production de L'Espace: An Exhibition on the City" is an exhibition project in which three artists working in different styles open a new channel in this context. The multiplicity of the city carries the potential that art can open up to a unique new aesthetic, and this exhibition emerged with this claim.

Best regards to Henri Lefevre:

With the concept of "La Production de l‘Espace - Production of Space", French philosopher Lefebvre, who says that what is hidden in the space of a society is production and reproduction, has a triple scheme developed on how the city is made meaningful, designed and experienced / experienced in a capitalist society. The elements of this scheme are spatial practice, representation of space, and space of representation.

The reproduction of social relations in spatial practice is a prerequisite. Spatial practice ensures continuity and a certain degree of compromise in terms of social formations and ensures people's performance as actors and their ability to cope with life. Meanwhile, (social) spatial practice, which includes all the contradictions in daily life, is a practical thing that, according to Lefebvre, makes people's knowledge functional in terms of material reproduction and includes the processes of interpretation.

Representation of the space that Lefebvre stated to be under the captivity of knowledge and power; it is the space that is designed. Scientists, urbanists, technocrats, social engineers, etc. It describes an order that is intended to be given to the urban space by the city space, that is, what they want to see at a particular moment. Those who hold the knowledge and power in the representations of the space use the system of verbal and graphic symbols in their abstract space constructions. Representations of space are always relative and changeable, as they are a mixture of the understanding and ideology of the powers.

The space of representation, on the other hand, is the way in which the dominant attitudes and interests (ie the living space) manifest themselves in a certain space. In the space of the representation whose boundaries are drawn with works, images and memories, the users of a particular space become both the authors and actors of this representation. The space of representation is also the active center of daily life: it covers the place of passion, action, lived situations and marks the time.

"La Production de L'Espace: An Exhibition on the City" is the view of art to the city through the scheme that Lefevre calls the "Space of Representation". Representational spaces of three different artists on two dimensions are a reproduction process in which the object is the city.

 POP ART EXTENDED 

“Some critic called me the Nothingness Himself and that didn’t help my sense of existence any. Then I realized that existence itself is nothing and I felt better. But I'm still obsessed with the idea of looking into the mirror and seeing no one, nothing”. Andy Warhol 

The post modernism in the history of art, like all historical events, could be understood as the whole of conflicts at a chaotic level. Millions of cultural production, in which a good many activity and interpretation are blended; too many of them remaining from the actions and reactions, sometimes are printed but returned, which also haven’t entirely come out (and will never come out) from the darkness of the history. In this respect, It means that it gains its legimitacy as the remaining and continues its “de facto”existence in the history of art and deserves to be understood in more depth. Interpretations beyond this are mostly ideological. The identity of artist in this movement, which was elevated all along of enlightement, was established as a priviliged area in where the art, which was the last refuge of the truth as attributed by Adorn’s a rather conflicting comment, was considered to be a superior culture. This privileged area determined the main codes of today’s art, with being dethroned by a revolutionary coup of two main movements, which coincided with the mid of the past century. Whilst avantgarde movements, under the leadership of Duchamp, showed tendency to undertand every marked object as an art, as for The Pop Art artists, especially Andy Warhol, walked straight to the area to be avoided and wrote afresh all the rules of the game by taking all consumption culture at the level of iconography. The tendency of taking Pop Art lightly as a sort of movement of fun and games, no fewer than art, a reaction against the noble art, didn’t last long and Pop Art continued to increase its strength, especially in America, as a strong movement, which expresses the spirit of its age. Arthur Danto the art idealogue sums it up in a quite obvious way as the following: “In my opinion the reason for change [in art], in a sense titled unfortunately and to my mind, was the emergence of pop art, which has been the most vital art movement” (2010: 155). Its creation of such a strong effect and the continuation of its determinant influence on today’s art obviously cannot be explained as a coincidence. Therefore Andy Warhol as an artist was the personage, who was quite suitable for the new circumstance and achieved to be attuned to the demands of the period with his instincts. Warhol was acting in an exact opposite direction of altering the trueness and the motivation of transforming singly to original work, which was suitable for great acclaim. In this respect an art shows itself using repeatedly the bombardment of the image in consumption culture, the indicators ultimately winning victory over the illustrated (Kahraman, 1991: 84). This; is not an art of which is facing the opposition of main movement culture, of the love  gravitating towards a reality or of having the aim to being monumental. As Baudrillard said: “Warhol is the first person who added the fetishism, which was is commonplace image and devoid of wish of an existence, into modern fetishism” (1998: 96). Everything is artificial in Warhol: an object is artificial because it is merely related with the wish of the object, not with subject. Here an image is artificial because it is only related with the wish of the image, not with an aesthetic request (Baudrillard, 1998: 96). Then at this very point it shows itself why Warhol was the subject of such a big artistic success. On the one hand as Warhol was agreeing with all codifications under his reign to the extent of reaching up to a capitalist nihilism and describing himself as a machine, and on the other hand [he] was making the existing codification visible and revealing it in a striking way. According to Foster this is the revelation of traumatic fact: the repetitions which are fixated on the traumatic fact, staging a traumatic fact or producing a traumatic fact (Foster: 2009: 173). In order to do this you only have to be Warhol ‘’I have never broken into pieces; because at no time I was a whole” (Warhol, 2011). In this regard the effect of Warhol’s artistic halo is bidirectional: On the one hand all the allure of money, fame and earthily the popular culture, on the other hand the feeling of nothingness at full steam, which is felt deeply by everybody at its extreme point. Donald Kuspit’s critical text writes this in his book titled “The end of The Art” as; “Warhol’s genious, was originating from him being a genie placed in objects which belonged to him – this power surpassed all his other qualities” (Kuspit, 2006: 92). Warhol died in 1987. But the time of the movement, which he made to reach to its height, to expand into wider areas started to reach to its real strength in those dates. Whilst The Eastern Bloc was collapsing totally, a new circumstance showed itself where the contemporary art were being influential in many centres, and Americanism and globalization starting to show its effects in full flood all over the world. In this respect the late capitalism, into which Andy Warhol was born, set the world’s determinant cultural foundation with its whole inclusiveness. Thus Pop Art provides a forefront context for the period’s artistic paradigm. This is the process in which Pop Art is being realized sometimes stylistically and sometimes on its keynote level. Pop Art makes a lasting suggestion in consumer societies’ (un)realities, which are based on simulation: Can you go up to the end? So at this point, the art we thought that we had lost will resurge and shows its strength again where it touches the human being. So at the time of such an age, to describe the existing period is both easy, and also even if it is not precise, trying to understand relations and common cultural implications may lead to productive results. Most of the young contemporary artists cannot produce with a certain group of people or in a shared platform. On the other hand they don’t develop risk, on the scale of their production’s genuineness and self-confidence, in their relations and distances with current movements like Pop Art, on the subject of taking part in a joint exhibition. Does it not fundamentally correspond to the very thing that Pop Art caused them to gain? An Art,  which is not escaping from the existing relation, not being outside but being inside; relying on its strength of converting the codification rather than being lost by being codified! We might say that the exhibition of POP ART EXTENDED is an initiative to understand their artistic levels afresh under a light of paradigm, while the Istanbul based young contemporary artists encounter with Andy Warhol. The dimensions of the distance inbetween them and what the established dialogue gives voice remains to be understood by each of the viewer’s own experiences. 

Efe Korkut Kurt