ART CITIES:Istanbul-Young Fresh Different IX
The series of the exhibitions “Young Fresh Different” at Zilberman Gallery in Istanbul as one of the different projects alongside the main exhibitions of the Gallery that is on presentation as the last exhibition of the season every year. The selection accepts all applications from artists under 35 years of age and does not have any limitations on subject or material.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Zilberman Gallery Archive
The series of the exhibitions “Young Fresh Different” is being organized through an open call for Turkish young artists with the aim of supporting them. Each year applications are evaluated by different and independent jury members. “Young Fresh Different 9” features works by: Serdar Acar, Ayşegül Altunok, Şener Yılmaz Aslan, Elif Büyüknohutçu, Işıl Çelik, Abdulhenan Doğan, Ali Kanal, Beril Or, Cem Örgen, Okay Özkan, Ezgi Tok, Ezgi Yakın, Damla Yalçın and Sinem Yeniaras. In his work “Untitled” (2018), Serdar Acar questions the solitude of the 21st Century individual and her position in the face of this solitude. While pursuing this question in his works, he uses the image of the cypress that he defines as the ideal object of desire. Charging this image in his mind with meanings far deeper than those of a simply sexual object of desire, he portrays the cypress in locations which are shaped by an almost surreal reality and which he calls as his “own interior”. Ayşegül Altunok in “Pink Square” (2018) makes use of the contrasts by which she alienates the exploratory lines of a stainy element from itself and creates a new composition out of these two elements belonging to each other. In this composition, she uses a linear structure to recompose the same form against a stainy value, and marks again the point of touch between the two contrasting structure with color and light – therefore, with a third value. Şener Yılmaz Aslan in the series “Ten Thousand Year Look” (2018) deals with Tigris Valley which embraces Hasankeyf. With history that spans nine civilizations, the archaeological and religious significance of Hasankeyf is considerable. Some of the city’s historical treasures will be inundated if construction of the Ilısu Dam is completed. In Elif Büyüknohutçu’s “Everyone” (2018) there is no space left between the words so that the text can be read at a single breath. The text which is organized without space keeps secret the tips about the beginning and the end of the phrase. Its circular form encourages the individual to make a tour around. The installation invites the viewer to the surveillance site drawn by the authority, the recording of which we are not conscious of and not accustomed to be/make become aware of. Işıl Çelik’s work titled “Offender” (2014) departs from the extrajudicial assassinations in Turkey in the 1990s, which were committed one after another by “unknown” assailants and remained unresolved due to indefinite, and thus prescribed, processes of prosecution. The recorded assassinations from the 1990s up until today are coded according to their number and times of occurrence, and these codes are used in the folder tags. The ceramic folders the artist uses in this installation stand for the covered up assassinations, the courts which are not or fail to be fair within the system and the perfunctory justice these courts deliver. “Confrontation” (2017, is a story of searching. Member of a family who was forcibly migrated from the village of Arısu, Mardin to Adana, Abdulhenan Doğan is embarking on a journey towards his village for the first time to produce this work. In between the stops throughout this journey being made in the opposite direction of the initial migration, we bear witness to different moments of meeting. The journey starts with a sense of curiosity and desire for encountering, yet gradually transforms, especially in the village, into a confrontation as family members of the photographer are involving, at times voluntarily and at times distantly, in it. From the series of “Khalvat” (2018) by Ali Kanal, the foreground of this work, like others in the series, is produced through a certain repetition of composition. Although the randomness of the found object constitutes the unpredictable structure of the work, the artist aims at displaying a decisive attitude out of this randomness at hand. He re-interprets the composition with found objects that are placed on an old wooden panel that he found in a pile of rubble. The “Sleep Series” (2017) by Beril Or is emphasizing uncontrolled isolation between sleep and life. While brings together the dichotomies of soft/hard and comfort/disturbance that reside inside this isolation, and includes the audience in this act of sleeping. To sleep is very comforting and relaxing in our comfortable beds, but it’s also disquieting just as much for it cuts all our ties with the outside world. It’s a singular state in which we can be both like everyone else and just ourselves at the same time. A state where we’re equal to all but also separate from all, one where we’re in many places at the same time or nowhere at all… Cem Örgen’s “Ceremony” (2018) is a composition of a blackboard and a hand drill. The object which is the surface of conveyance in education and which enables visibility, support for the narrative and intelligibility of the knowledge turns, in this process, around its own axis. As to the hand drill which bears the technical knowledge on the blackboard, it is the source and the power of spinning. The X as a hate sign, being frequently used in recent years in Turkey and having a traumatic place in the memory of Okay Özkan, is the departure point of his work. In a while after having started to archive the examples of marking X on the houses of the unwanted and/or the minority whose existence was therefore threatened, Özkan noticed that the same sign was being used with the same purpose in different parts of the world. He has gradually realized that this sign meant the same thing for houses to be destroyed and trees to be cut, and he included them in his archive. In the video titled “Waves” (2017), Ezgi Tok attempts at producing a pattern of the random traces the nature leaves and questions the possibility by which the excess might be organized and made an intelligible unit. While profiling the status of the natural disorder in the moment and the flow, she thinks of the probability of the way the ephemeral might be rendered visible and lasting. Three works from Ezgi Yakın’s series “Strange Time-Story of Things” (2017) carry the ambiguous traces of the inner time within the pessimistic reality of our contemporary world, and encourages the viewer to take on a gaze which is nurtured by imagination. The world of images the artist creates grows out of a process which interact with the collective unconscious and investigate the elements of the self. In the climate of despair imposed by daily hassles and the rational look, the pictures are not the reflections of the external world but, rather, indirectly relates to it and meet us as outputs of the subjective imagination. In “Shadows” (2017), Damla Yalçın resorts to the self-discipline and instils on the paper the bond she seeks to establish with the places she has lived in and with her memories. Her reference in doing so are the shadows of those on the photographs from her own story. Sinem Yeniaras’ series “Feelabsorbers” (2018) is the beginning of a search down into the mind and composed of such peculiar, spontaneously created and unrepeatable characters which absorb the feelings inside the moment. The forms in this series begin becoming a part of the viewer’s drive of “trying to understand what she sees by likening it to something else”. And the amorphous dimensions on the sculptures induce everyone to see what each one looks at from the cosmos inside. The artist suggests that to be conscious about beings too far or deep-set to see would change our perspective towards everything.
Info: Zilberman-Project Space, İstiklal Cad. No.16,3 Mısır Apartmanı K.3 D.10, Beyoğlu / Istanbul, Duration: 26/6-13/7/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-19:30, Sat 12:00-19:00, www.zilbermangallery.com
