On the Stage, 2010
video performance digital video
3’30’’
A dancer is invited to compose and to perform a scene that comprises the images of the people from the actual demonstrations. Here the body movements of the people from the demonstrations are intended to transform into a monumental platform for a moment.
performer: Sezen Tonguz
…AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!, 2010
sculpture
acrylic spray color on cotton cloth
2200 cm.
Our view […] changes entirely when we learn that this piece of fabric turned into a rope is in fact a 22-meter-long banner used at a demonstration that reads “…AND JUSTICE FOR ALL!” The fragmentary demand would surely have made quite an impact on such a large format. But maybe a more tangible tool was needed to actually bring about the called-for change —and maybe a piece of rope would be just such a thing: It could be used for pulling out prison bars, tying someone up, or at least staging a tug-of-war. […] Incidentally, it remains unclear whether the banner was ever actually hung anywhere, or whether in fact it might not even be a readymade, but an artifact created by the artists for the purpose of realizing this piece. The only thing that is certain is that the work was created in 2010, the very year the judicial reform proposed by Prime Minister Erdoğan was approved in the context of the Turkish constitutional referendum.
Holger Kube Ventura’s laudatory speech on the occasion of the opening of the exhibition Beyond the Horizon by Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, in the Deutscher Künstlerbund project space, Berlin, September 5, 2017
Production views; Hessenpark Open Air Museum, Neu-Anspach
photos: Günyol & Kunt
Perfect Couple, 2010
photo installation
fine art print on photo carton, two pieces, each 35×50 cm; wooden pedestal, 60x75x75 cm
After the death of Friedrich Ebert, the first president of Germany in 1925, Richard Scheibe was invited to make a monument of him. Scheibe was the director of Städelschule at that time and his name was mentioned as one of the Nazi artists until he begun a new career after 1946. Friedrich Ebert Monument was finished and placed at the facade of Paul’s Church in 1926. In 1933 the National Socialists took it down. Between 1933–50 the pedestal of the monument at the facade of the church stayed empty. In 1950, a new version of the monument was placed in the same spot, also made by Scheibe. This can still be seen at the facade of St. Paul’s Church, whereas the old version was at the back garden of the Frankfurt History Museum in 2010. For the work, the artists took the photographs of both the old and new versions of the Friedrich Ebert Monument and placed them on the one-to-one replication of the pedestal of the monument at the facade of St. Paul’s Church. In this way, the work points to the gaps in the memory of a public space and different visualizations of a monument in two different eras.
Installation view; Gallery Heike Strelow, Frankfurt
photos: Günyol & Kunt
THE PEDESTAL THAT HAS LOST ITS MONUMENT, 2010
sculpture
painted wood, brass 105x105x145 cm
A pedestal is the carrier of the idea of giving immunity to images, thoughts, historical figures, which mostly represents the moral values of the current location. Its function is to fortify the represented image by carrying the image to a higher point. The work shows a classical type of a pedestal without any representational image on it. In this way, the viewer is confronted with the pedestal and its function alone.
Installation view; Gallery Heike Strelow, Frankfurt
photos: Günyol & Kunt
When the justice properly works, then there is no room for compassion, 2010
sculpture
painted pencil, painted wood, glass 35x85x105 cm
When the judge has to give a death penalty even if he/she doesn’t personally agree with the decision but he/she has to give the death penalty according to the laws, he/she breaks the pencil, with which the decision is signed. This symbolic act means that the judge doesn’t agree with the decision and doesn’t want to make such decisions again.
Installation view; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
photos: Günyol & Kunt
Hullabaloo, 2009
multimedia sound installation
32 channels, 266 loud speakers, 1 subwoofer, 1 computer, acrylic paint on wood 255x235x60 cm
There are 266 countries that lay claim to a national anthem. In Hullabaloo those national anthems are played in such a way that, after half of one has been heard, all are collectively audible for a brief interval. The national anthems are played according to a clearly planned composition. Nevertheless, a jarringly loud carpet of sound is produced, with the individual melodies drowned out in cacophony. Chaos instead of music or melodiousness. The work recalls the Tower of Babel and the punishment of man’s hubris with linguistic confusion. The viewer is confronted with a wall of 266 loudspeakers like a bellowing being. […]
Thomas Köllhofer, HECTOR PROMOTIONAL PRIZE 2009, Exhibition Catalogue (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2009).
Installation view; Kunsthalle Mannheim
photos: Cem Yücetaş
Ceaseless Doodle, 2009
wall drawing
320×320 cm
This work includes all the national borderlines in the world. To make it, the borderlines of all the countries in the world were printed on A4-size pieces of paper, thus equalizing the territorially smaller countries such as Luxembourg with territorially larger countries such as Canada or China. These images were drawn on transparent papers, scanned into a computer, then projected and traced onto a wall and drawn on one another. The effect is of an intricately interwoven orb of the world, a seemingly aimless “globe” scribble that is actually composed of precisely drawn borderlines.
Installation view; Kunsthalle Mannheim
photos: Cem Yücetaş
Flag-s, 2009
thermal transfer print 105×150 cm;
wooden frame 155×200 cm
Images of 246 national flags were printed atop each other onto A4 paper with an ink-jet printer. When this process was completed, the final image was transferred to cloth.
Installation view; Kunsthalle Mannheim
photo: Cem Yücetaş
f.skl.246, 2009
digital print
fine art print on cotton paper 70×152.6 cm
Colors of 246 national flags are sorted in alphabetical order of by country names. Format of the work is decided according to the proportions of the Rwanda flag: as the difference between width and height proportion is larger than the other country flags.
photo: Işık Kaya
State Paintings, 2008 – ongoing project
artist book
12 pages, leather cover, 45x58x5.7 cm;
fine art print on cotton paper 24 images each 20×30 cm
One’s passport as an officially binding legal document is proof not only of one’s personal identity but also of one’s nationality and, as such, an indispensable travel document to be shown at border check-points. The artist’s book State Paintings shows 24 enlarged details of the patterns from various countries’ passports. These detail shots change into images consisting of abstract decorative lines, which no longer have any recognisable link with their original function.
Stefanie Müller, HECTOR PROMOTIONAL PRIZE 2009, Exhibition Catalogue (Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2009)
photos 1,3: Cem Yücetaş, installation view; Kunsthalle Mannheim
photos, 2,4: Günyol & Kunt, installation view; Römer9, Frankfurt
