ART CITIES:Instabul-A Day at Hotel
The group exhibition “A Day at Hotel” conceives of the “hotel” as a ground on which both a dark comedy of the class society and an endless drama reminding us our ephemeral presence in the world are performed. Whether singular or social, the transitory states of being torn and the intersections between the coincidences/obligations of the mortal life are at the center of the exhibition.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Zilberman Gallery Archive
Starting from Erinç Seymen’s drawing with the same name, the exhibition includes works by Başak Bugay, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan, Can Küçük, Şant Mengücek and Erinç Seymen. The hotel, just like the metropole, hosts strangers who have met as a result of different fates, needs and motivations. The cultural codes and the property law which govern these encounters change in different geographies and epochs. Erinç Seymen’s work looks at power relationships, and use metaphors and anthropomorphic forms which coalesce to create a narrative that directly critiques and curtails modern and traditional hetero-normative realities, especially apparent in his newest series. He cynically deals with the controversy and asymmetry stemming from the discrepancies in intentions, tracing the permanent impact of devotedness, shared values and the culture of belonging. Erinç Seymen depicts the hotel building as an intricate theater “enlarging inwards” with vague boundaries of the beginning and the end, where the luxurious consumption that class privilege enables and the unnoticeable service collide. Can Küçük uses the generic direction signs of the hotel in such a way that the viewer would journey over the outside, the recent past and the present. By following the traces of the layers of space and time which navigate between the invisible waves of memory, Hera Büyüktaşcıyan keeps a record of the inevitable fate of the transformed places and the cyclical temporality. While Başak Bugay scrutinizes how finding shelter in a foreign context brings out the basic human need to security by equalizing the social and biological differences of identity. Şant Mengücek reflects on the canvas the portraits of the hotel staff whose personalities are made ready to consume and whose appearances are imposed to ease the hierarchical division, resulting in the lack of emotions and character in the portraits.
Info: Zilberman Gallery, İstiklal Cad. No.163, Mısır Apartmanı K.3, D.10 Beyoğlu, Istanbul, Duration: 21/9-17/11/18, Days & Hours: Tue-Fri 10:00-19:30, Sat 12:00-19:00, http://zilbermangallery.com
