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January 7-29
A new exhibition at CDA Projects, EXISTRONG, is a story of the human struggle to exist as beings who write, draw, produce and create as they bring meaning to their existence.
These struggles, which are much harder compared to most hard-fought battles and are experienced silently in the minds of people, rewrite history each day.
EXISTRONG is an exhibition that reaches beyond reality, focusing on the individual and the compromises he/she makes in his/her mind. It visualizes the unique life experience of humankind, intertwined with mistakes, defects and worries and, most important of all, a great sense of excitement. It opens this private area to be shared with sincerity. The most important way of the seemingly trivial methods of winning this struggle, the purpose of which is to bring meaning to existence, is productivity and prolificacy.
The exhibition opens a new dimension on understanding the person and his work as an unequivocal experience that integrates time and space in itself and can define whole new worlds in the interspace created by the operating of the hand and the mind in unison. This is the prerequisite of being an individual, of being “something.” Being an individual is courageous politics in and of itself.
At times, when politics turns into a confrontation in the common sense of the word, people become the ever-loyal sides of this confrontation and their thoughts only seem to echo one another, whereas real politics begin right when people in society take a step outside and face each other. While history continues to flow mundanely, people have neither the time nor the attention left to catch up with those that are declared with exclamations and enthusiasm.
The image and communication technologies stand in front of the artists with their opportunities to reverse this flow and to create alternative lives in this living experience, the flow rate of which is increasing rapidly. This selection, consisting of videos and installations with pixel-defined borders, is composed of works that witness humankind as the creature that is the most fundamental common denominator of art at all times and in all regions.
Works in EXISTRONG
Selçuk Artut’s “Lower Steps” creates an opportunity, as “shocking” as it is inviting, for the audience to think it all over again throughout all this motion. His installation concerns humankind and the steps they take with their motivation to advance.
Dağhan Celayir, in the "Rebellion of the Machines," is a fugitive witness of the deserted Haliç Dockyard, where not only machines but also time has stopped. These machines and what they’d once produced echo the ideal of Modernism, in which craftsmanship and technique had been combined with elegance. They give us a sense of nostalgia left from those innocent years, when the culture of disposable goods had not yet emerged and the mass productions in the far east of the globe had not yet consumed the little lives of people.
“Crazy Foreigners” are a part of a series of photographs that Celayir and Nazlı Eda Noyan produced together in Bundanon, Australia. A confrontation with the feelings of identity detached from its connections on the other end of the world is achieved over de-contextualized daily objects. The deprival of these objects that have become an extension of the human body with their functionalities creates a strong imagery concerning existence.
The lonely figures of the works titled “Hope” and “Lost” from the “Somewhere on Time” exhibition of Canadian artist Gabriel Jones, who lives and produces art in Brooklyn, New York, have the power to bend time by accumulating that part of the story which has been lived and is to be lived right in "that moment.”
In “The Most Accomplished Saturday of Our Lives” the artist’s past in one sense creates the foundation of the artist’s present efforts. The figure in motion in the videos reflected on the photographs of the Jones family from the 1960s and 1970s takes a stroll in the past and strives to shape its present.
Zeynep Kayan’s installation “Do You Hear the Birds?” gives the audience different experiences with stories containing multiple-choice decision points. When what we can comprehend is defined by the limits of our physical perception, how much of what we see with our eyes should we believe?
“Side Effects of a Song-on-Repeat” is an installation consisting of a book composed of sound and concurrent visuals. It follows a song being listened to over and over again and the constant reproduction of the image of this moment. The loop can only be completed when the place of the song missing in the personal ritual consisting of a series of experiences is filled in by the audience.
In the two-channel video titled “Black and White,” as the mysterious pieces of cloth swaying in the wind are revealed, a simple and powerful story regarding nature begins to recount itself.
In the photographs of Civan Özkanoğlu, who is continuing to create his works in New York, the mobile relationship between that which sees and that which is seen turns into a mutual struggle for existence over nonchalance, power and incoherencies. When that which is seen clears away, the images are formed. When that which cannot be concealed in the “Insecured" effuses from the lid that has been lifted despite all its layers and coverings, the hard-to-believe realism of the "Expected" dazzles.
All these works are shaped by the life experiences and devices of the artists who look, see and process what they are seeing. The images that have been created are posed and projected on the layout of CDA-Projects, over two rooms and a hall.
A new exhibition at CDA Projects, EXISTRONG, is a story of the human struggle to exist as beings who write, draw, produce and create as they bring meaning to their existence.
These struggles, which are much harder compared to most hard-fought battles and are experienced silently in the minds of people, rewrite history each day.
EXISTRONG is an exhibition that reaches beyond reality, focusing on the individual and the compromises he/she makes in his/her mind. It visualizes the unique life experience of humankind, intertwined with mistakes, defects and worries and, most important of all, a great sense of excitement. It opens this private area to be shared with sincerity. The most important way of the seemingly trivial methods of winning this struggle, the purpose of which is to bring meaning to existence, is productivity and prolificacy.
The exhibition opens a new dimension on understanding the person and his work as an unequivocal experience that integrates time and space in itself and can define whole new worlds in the interspace created by the operating of the hand and the mind in unison. This is the prerequisite of being an individual, of being “something.” Being an individual is courageous politics in and of itself.
At times, when politics turns into a confrontation in the common sense of the word, people become the ever-loyal sides of this confrontation and their thoughts only seem to echo one another, whereas real politics begin right when people in society take a step outside and face each other. While history continues to flow mundanely, people have neither the time nor the attention left to catch up with those that are declared with exclamations and enthusiasm.
The image and communication technologies stand in front of the artists with their opportunities to reverse this flow and to create alternative lives in this living experience, the flow rate of which is increasing rapidly. This selection, consisting of videos and installations with pixel-defined borders, is composed of works that witness humankind as the creature that is the most fundamental common denominator of art at all times and in all regions.
Works in EXISTRONG
Selçuk Artut’s “Lower Steps” creates an opportunity, as “shocking” as it is inviting, for the audience to think it all over again throughout all this motion. His installation concerns humankind and the steps they take with their motivation to advance.
Dağhan Celayir, in the "Rebellion of the Machines," is a fugitive witness of the deserted Haliç Dockyard, where not only machines but also time has stopped. These machines and what they’d once produced echo the ideal of Modernism, in which craftsmanship and technique had been combined with elegance. They give us a sense of nostalgia left from those innocent years, when the culture of disposable goods had not yet emerged and the mass productions in the far east of the globe had not yet consumed the little lives of people.
“Crazy Foreigners” are a part of a series of photographs that Celayir and Nazlı Eda Noyan produced together in Bundanon, Australia. A confrontation with the feelings of identity detached from its connections on the other end of the world is achieved over de-contextualized daily objects. The deprival of these objects that have become an extension of the human body with their functionalities creates a strong imagery concerning existence.
The lonely figures of the works titled “Hope” and “Lost” from the “Somewhere on Time” exhibition of Canadian artist Gabriel Jones, who lives and produces art in Brooklyn, New York, have the power to bend time by accumulating that part of the story which has been lived and is to be lived right in "that moment.”
In “The Most Accomplished Saturday of Our Lives” the artist’s past in one sense creates the foundation of the artist’s present efforts. The figure in motion in the videos reflected on the photographs of the Jones family from the 1960s and 1970s takes a stroll in the past and strives to shape its present.
Zeynep Kayan’s installation “Do You Hear the Birds?” gives the audience different experiences with stories containing multiple-choice decision points. When what we can comprehend is defined by the limits of our physical perception, how much of what we see with our eyes should we believe?
“Side Effects of a Song-on-Repeat” is an installation consisting of a book composed of sound and concurrent visuals. It follows a song being listened to over and over again and the constant reproduction of the image of this moment. The loop can only be completed when the place of the song missing in the personal ritual consisting of a series of experiences is filled in by the audience.
In the two-channel video titled “Black and White,” as the mysterious pieces of cloth swaying in the wind are revealed, a simple and powerful story regarding nature begins to recount itself.
In the photographs of Civan Özkanoğlu, who is continuing to create his works in New York, the mobile relationship between that which sees and that which is seen turns into a mutual struggle for existence over nonchalance, power and incoherencies. When that which is seen clears away, the images are formed. When that which cannot be concealed in the “Insecured" effuses from the lid that has been lifted despite all its layers and coverings, the hard-to-believe realism of the "Expected" dazzles.
All these works are shaped by the life experiences and devices of the artists who look, see and process what they are seeing. The images that have been created are posed and projected on the layout of CDA-Projects, over two rooms and a hall.
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