!!home and away!! // canavarlar

sergi slovenya home and away zamanlama

HOME AND AWAY / moving images of new turkish art
Umetnostna galerija Maribor/ Maribor Art Gallery
Slovenia, Maribor, Strossmayerjeva ulica 6
15 December 2006 ? 21 January 2007

opening: Friday, 15 December 2006 at 7 p.m.
opening performance: Erinç Seymen + son:DA, performance for song - part
two

artists: OSMAN BOZKURT, OSMAN DOĞU BINGÖL, HATICE GÜLERYÜZ, SEFER
MEMISOGLU, AHMET ÖGÜT, DIDEM OZBEK, CANAN ŞENOL, ERINÇ SEYMEN
curator: Simona Vidmar, Curotor of Contemporary Art at Maribor Art Gallery

Umetnostna galerija Maribor invites you to get deep into streets of Istanbul
with eight young established Turkish artists! You are wellcome to explore the
real images of the city, its political identity, traumas and particularities as well
as its incredable creative potentials. On show are new works by artist living in
Istanbul and intensivly shaping international art sceene, working mainly in the
field of moving images and its derivates.

The artists selected for this event are addressing their home, Istanbul, by
delineating it in intimate tales, searching within it for their personal heritage
(whether that be political, cultural, or national heritage?), they are
commenting on problematic issues, they are angry, they are playful. Through
their art they have established a set of unfinished conversations that above all
highlight the multidimensional ways of conceptualising, understanding as well
as producing contemporary art today. The paramount inclusion of the moving
image of contemporary Turkish art is by no means coincidental- it is precisely
the moving image and all its derivatives (multimedia installation, document
performance, video stills?) which are quickest in arresting our attention by
translating the ordinary into the extreme and vice versa.
''Home and Away'' is about tension: on the one hand there exist well-defined
identities, cultural structures, and belonging, whereas on the other hand a
resolved will is felt, calling for rebellion against these values, the need for
asking questions, the search for distance, and even superficially declared
acceptance when necessary? ??Home?? is a mythical conception and in our case
as much a mythical place as Istanbul itself. Still, the untenable conglomeration
is much less of a shelter than it is a platform for provoking and reshaping
political and social ideas. Istanbul is doubtless a city where change ranks highly
on the agenda and where questions posed are always consequential. Let us
then approach them by accentuating the sense of the visual!

The works of Osman Bozkurt, a photographer and videast from Istanbul,
namely the video Highway Parks of Istanbul and the photograph Rest in Peace
provide an illustrative introduction into the complex interplay of feelings of
belongingness and the expression of being different. Both works are explicitly
concerned with ??investigating bizarre situations that demonstrate the nexus of
social paradoxes, ironies and parodies as modes of rejection?? (Basak Senova).
What is most striking is the universal presence and recognition of the
aforementioned practices, which effectively, though strange as these practices
are, return them to the realm of commonality and mediocrity. In a fashion
similar to Bozkurt, but with a different choice of format, videast Osman Doğu
Bingöl, a decade younger, chases extraordinary situations. His short work
Untitled offers no comments, gives no statements but rather lightly presents a
paradoxical transformation of the main character from the depreciated worker,
a cleaner, to the socially critical figure of spiritual leadership, the imam. Away
from the city and then back again describes the path of a Dutch-born artist
Hatice Güleryüz, currently living in Istanbul. Her complex work Strange
Intimacies, a video presentation supplemented by an authorial book,
photographs and texts, is first and foremost an artist?s testament of alienation,
migrations and the eternal need to define home, to posses feelings of
belongingness. Hereby, the author walks the edge and seeks extreme
illustrations again just to build her story on intimate confessions of strangers
living in Istanbul, through which ??a kind of obsessive, hopeless and
overexposed love towards this addictive and uncanny city? is revealed (Basak
Senova). At the forefront of dramatization stands the highly aestheticised
dialogue with the city presented in a markedly cinematic, short video Untitled
by the young artist Sefer Memisoglu. The starting-point of the perpetual
sequence presented in the video is the emblematic image of the tower Galata,
once a symbol of power, and an overseer of the city, now lost amidst the
skyscrapers and the modern centre. It is used to tell a dark yet delicate story
of a childhood, as seen by the author himself. With the next author, a young
Kurdish artist living in Istanbul, Ahmet Ögüt, we are led astray from the direct
attachment to the city and its emblems. His realm is play, comical yet simple,
his language ? pronounced modesty. Thus, things remain small, short and
quiet. And yet this very style of short, slow and humorous videos and
animations, such as Death Kit Train and Light Armoured provide an attempt at
stimulating the general awareness of daily actions, the activation of the
collective consciousness and memory. The artists Canan Şenol and Erinç
Seymen share the determination to convert the quiet critical perceptions and
denial of memory into disclosed and committed fight against factors, which
dare to obstruct their paths. They belong to two generations, live in Istanbul in
visualize their work as a kind of political statement. In both of her works,
namely a book entitled Nisa-I /Pertaining to the Woman and a video
installation Strange creature, the artist Canan Şenol embarks on the
demanding field of the ?female question?, i.e. the feminist problematic in
Islamic society. Although, the works were created with the interval of 7 years
falling between them the elements employed in both cases are virtually the
same- the author draws upon old, traditional heritage (manuscripts) adding
contemporary flavour in due course, adding her own image (personal
photographs), which allows her to internalise and personify the problem she
wishes to expose, the problem that she wishes to feel on her own skin. The
works of the young author Erinç Seymen are intentionally radical and
provocative and thus, create ??humorous transgression on the recently
emerged sensitivities of moral conservativism, homophobia and the institution
of religion?? (Erden Kosova). In the photographic installation Boys Club the
author assumes the role of voyageur, in order to expose the homophobic
nature of the male-centred world, which defines the life in the public sphere of
the Islamic world. He goes even further flaunting about a flag mimicking the
style of Nazi symbolism and bearing the name, embroidered in gothic font, of
the most famous Turkish fast food dish Börek. He is being actively provocative
and on the outlook for reactions to nationalistic intimidation and the art of
propaganda. In the performance for a poem - part two, the author is due to
perform at the opening jointly with a Slovene artistic tandem son:DA (part one
took place in Istanbul, in summer 2006), the author wearing the traditional
Turkish wear recites an absurdly and a blatantly nationalistic Turkish poem.
The screams, the discomfort, the hiding behind the manipulated picture and
sound (the performance takes place in a space inaccessible to the viewer) tell
us of distress and distrust facilitated by intolerance. The series of unfinished
dialogues with the city is left off at its very starting-point; the series of real-life
images of Istanbul today, which, neatly wrapped and distinguished by the high
quality of reproduction, may serve as official postcards. Didem Ozbek, the only
designer among the artists, offers Real postcards of Istanbul for purchase.

Exhibition will be inaugurated by Ms. Naciye Gökçen Kaya, First Counsellor,
Embassy of the Republic of Turkey in Ljubljana.
After the opening you are kindly invited to our NEW YEARS PARTY!

Project supported by: Ministry for Culture of Republic of Slovenia, City Chamber
Maribor, Turkish Airlines, RTS
http://www.umetnostnagalerija.si/raz_pre138.html