PRESENTATION: Füsun Onur-Retrospective, Part II

Fü­sun Onur uses everyday materials in her painting and sculpture to reflect on space, time, rhythm and form. Over the past few years, the Mu­se­um Lud­wig has mount­ed ma­jor sur­veys on sig­ni­f­i­cant artists whose work had pre­vi­ous­ly on­ly been cur­so­ri­ly ac­knowl­edged, in­clud­ing Joan Mitchell (2015), Nil Yal­ter (2019), and Isa­mu Noguchi (2022). This exhi­bi­tion with Fü­sun Onur rep­re­sents another fo­cus on a body of work whose sig­ni­f­i­cance has not yet been ful­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed (Part I).

By Efi MIchalarou
Photo: Mu­se­um Lud­wig Archive

Füsun Onur, who was born in Istanbul in 1938 and currently based there, is one of the most outstanding artists working in Türkiye today. Although her impressive and varied oeuvre has been readily accessible to an international audience in group exhibitions on a regular basis, it has not been sufficiently appreciated. The first survey exhibition of her work was held at Arter in Istanbul, ten years ago. The Museum Ludwig is now presenting her work to a larger audience in a major retrospective. The ex­hi­bi­tion in the Mu­se­um Lud­wig com­pris­es nine­ty-four in­s­tal­la­tions, some of which fill en­tire rooms, from the past six­ty years. In ad­di­tion, Onur will cre­ate a new, large in­s­tal­la­tion for her ret­ro­spec­tive. Onur grew up in Is­tan­bul, where she studied sculp­ture at the Is­tan­bul State Acade­my of Fine Arts be­tween 1956 and 1960 dur­ing the pe­ri­od of rad­i­cal change in Turk­ish art his­to­ry of the 1950s and 1960s. As presti­gious state com­mis­sions for art de­c­lined at that time, the in­flu­ence of the state al­so waned, and artists be­gan cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment in which they could ex­per­i­ment with new forms. Af­ter gra­d­u­at­ing from the acade­my, a Ful­bright scho­lar­ship took her first to the Amer­i­can Uni­ver­si­ty, Wash­ing­ton D.C., USA, where she studied phi­lo­so­phy, then to the Mary­land In­sti­tute Col­lege of Arts where she cont­in­ued her studies on art. As a stu­dent Onur had al­ready felt en­cour­aged to de­vel­op her own artis­tic per­spec­tive, and she cont­in­ues to pur­sue this goal to­day. Her ear­ly work, which can­not be cat­e­go­rized in any of the art move­ments of the time, con­veys an idea of her in­de­pen­dence. Her sculp­tures com­bine a vi­su­al vo­cab­u­lary em­ploy­ing el­e­ments of ab­s­trac­tion, Con­struc­tivism, and Min­i­mal­ism with hu­mor. A re­oc­cur­ring el­e­ment in Onur’s work is her con­nec­tion to Is­tan­bul and her fam­i­ly’s home in Kuz­gun­cuk, where she lived with her sis­ter, İl­han Onur, who died in 2022. It is filled with fur­ni­ture and me­men­tos that date to the ear­ly twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry. Lo­cat­ed di­rect­ly on the Bos­porus, the house served Onur as a start­ing point for new works, en­abling her to cre­ate pie­ces that of­ten evoke the the ex­pe­ri­ence of liv­ing on the wa­ter with their con­s­tant­ly chang­ing, new aes­thet­ic forms. Each new in­vi­ta­tion to par­ti­ci­pate in an ex­hi­bi­tion gives the artist the op­por­tu­ni­ty to use the venue as a point of de­par­ture for her con­tri­bu­tion. This al­lows her to cre­ate works that re­act to so­cial de­vel­op­ments and cul­tu­r­al politics. For ex­am­ple, she re­spond­ed to the paint­ing hype of the 1980s by fashion­ing paint­ings that ex­pand in­to space. Her in­s­tal­la­tions, which were pro­duced large­ly in con­nec­tion with Eu­ro­pean in­vi­ta­tions, crit­i­cal­ly re­flect on West­ern ex­pec­ta­tions in the 1990s and 2000s. Her works chal­lenge vis­i­tors to give space to their own imag­i­na­tion. This is es­pe­cial­ly the case for the synes­thet­ic in­s­tal­la­tions in which Onur trans­fers mu­sic in­to the sur­round­ings us­ing rows of ev­ery­day ob­jects. Most re­cent­ly, Once up­on a Time, her con­tri­bu­tion to the Turk­ish Pav­ilion at the Venice Bien­nale in 2022, brought her back in­to the public eye. The large-for­mat in­s­tal­la­tion con­sists of mi­nia­ture fig­ures hand-made from wire that tran­s­port vis­i­tors in­to a world of fan­ta­sy.

Photo: Füsun Onur, Pink Boat, (1993) 2014, video, color, without sound, 8 hours, Arter Collection, Istanbul, video still, © Füsun Onur

Info: Curators: Bar­bara En­gel­bach and Emre Baykal, Mu­se­um Lud­wig, Heinrich-Böll-Platz, Cologne, Germany, Duration: 16/9/2023-28/1/2024, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:00-18:00, www.museum-ludwig.de/