When the justice properly works, then there is no room for compassion., 2010

sculpture
painted pencil, painted wood, glass 35x85x105 cm

The work When the justice properly works, then there is no room for compassion (2010) brings together a linguistic form of communication with a historically rigidified gestural one concealed behind it. Formally rigorous in its arrangement, the work consists of a vitrine standing on a base with the same basic dimensions. The black vitrine with its glazed upper side, sits on the lacquered white base and contains fifty-nine accurately sharpened pencils laid out next to one another. A letter or punctuation mark is imprinted in gold paint on each of the pencils so that it is possible to read the title of the work. The sentence When the justice properly works, then there is no room for compassion, which serves as the title, refers to a common practice of judges in Turkey, as well as other countries, of publicly breaking the pen with which a death sentence judgment was signed. Those who do not find such judgments ethically acceptable, despite being required by the legal situation, follow this practice. The symbolic act is expressed in the field of tension that arises between the state function of the judge and subjective assessment of the judgments he or she issues. In this sculptural work, what becomes particularly visible is the strategy that the artist duo often employs of staging the inherent quality of aesthetic experience through evocatively and metaphorically charging it. The formal rigor of the work, as well as the hermeticism, with which the pencils— precisely positioned and distanced from the viewer by means of a massive pane of glass—are presented is associated with the negation of scope for action, although the symbolic reaction of breaking the pencil is still allowed as a minimal, subjective form of articulation vis-a-vis the government. The experience of the work and the social background to which the work refers, as well as the associative relationships that are established between these two parameters, form a lucidly choreographed setting.

Felix Ruhöfer, ars viva 2012 / 13, Systeme / Systems, Exhibition Catalogue, Hatje Cantz Verlag

Installation view; Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein
photos: Günyol & Kunt

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

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

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

Star Clusters, 2008

fine art print, 16 pieces, each 40×50 cm

The work consists of sixteen different star clusters that don’t belong to nature. The shape of each cluster is composed by using the insignias of military forces of different countries.

Installation view; AtelierFrankfurt
photos 1-3: Eduardo Perez

Balkon, 2008

multimedia installation
copper, brass, wood, pebble, iron 570x503x230 cm;
digital video, 15’26’’

The work brings together two speech balconies in two different countries from two different eras. A one-to-one replication of the speech balcony at the facade of the building of Faculty of Language and History of Ankara University is shown together with the video of the speech balcony in the Museum für Moderne Kunst, Frankfurt. While the speech balcony of the university building is located on the exterior and faces to the area where ceremonies takes place, the museums’ balcony is located in the interior and faces the big hall where opening speeches are made. Although both of the balconies have never been used except in the opening ceremonies of the buildings, the meaning they imply and the possibility of being used remain.

Installation view: Museum für Moderne Kunst-Zollamt
Images 1,23,7,8,9: Axel Schneider

Flagpole, 2007

performance-sculpture
aluminum, 110x250x400 cm;
video documentation of the performance 21’04’’

A flagpole is the carrier of the idea of belonging to a nation. Consequently, it has the meaning of staging national, international and cultural identity. The work transforms national and cultural belonging when transforming a flagpole into an abstract sculpture.

performance: in front of St. Paul’s Church, Frankfurt
installation view, Basis e.V., Frankfurt

photo 3: Cem Yücetaş

Avrupa-lı-laş-tı-r-abil-di-k-leri-m-iz-de-n-mi-sin-iz?, 2006

aluminum, white lack paint on polystyrene, scheme of adhesive letters; two pieces: Logo in the exterior space, 81×2600 cm; scheme in the interior, 190×200 cm

Avrupa-lı-laş-tı-r-abil-di-k-leri-m-iz-de-n-mi-sin-iz?
(Are you one of those who we were able to make become European)
A question of where do you stand. A game like construction. A word that does not seem meaningful at first sight. A question proposed in Turkish with its variety of historical connotations. Are you a European, did you at least become one? A question asked in Turkish to a passer-by in Frankfurt. Frankfurt: a city as hybrid and hygienic as it can be…
The language that is used in the installation, is proposing the question in its own sense. A language of possibilities to make long words as possible with annexes, suffixes and prefixes.The elementary school years where one gets to learn how to read and write. Learning to make up words with suffixes and deconstructing them into the smallest syllables. Adding as many syllables as possible to make up a meaningful complex word. The a priori input of learning a language, Learning the rituals, the acceptances, the wish-to-happens, the truths as the culture with its dynamics. Turkey, founded in the 20th century, a country with fresh breathes, with an urge to catch what is happening next. Where to go and what to follow. The Europe being the source of development: cultural and technological castle of the new, the better, and the best of all that happens.And the melancholy of the train that is missed and will never be caught. The feeling of sitting at the train station, looking after the missed, on its track… With the knowledge of not being able to catch up to modernization, which nevertheless has been declared a national need. What has become of Europe today is not what it has resembled in the 80’s or in neither the 70’s nor 60’s. Europe, the urge of having a political stance in the world, wanting to state something for the humankind, dealing with the economical constraints. Putting up standards of westernization. What is to be European today is to belong to something that avoids the other, the other in its all means. Avoidance as such, being dispersed in its every structure and statements of internationalization. The transformation of senses. Sense of belonging. Otherification. Normalisation. The result existing in its very first attitude. A question in Turkish, for a Turk to understand and carry the question. The Turks who have migrated as first or second or third generation, living and working in Germany. The cliché of being stuck with one’s own culture, the failure of integration and the success of implementation and adjustment. Are you, did you, could we make you a European, who is too arrogant to see what the other is dealing with, how the other is surviving? Europe, fortress which 1276 people have been killed on trying to get into, within a year. A castle with imaginary solid borders. Hard to get in and to get involved afterwards. Europe realizing the need to be hybrid and rejecting it in its own means. The Turks who have migrated and the Turks who never left their home country. How did the process of Europeanification succeed? Is it to leave the humanity behind for the sake of good life with functioning traffic and facilities or is it the means of accepting to be constructed as closed and narrowed as far as you could be to protect the values that have been attained as being European.. The resemblances are questioned, especially in this work by Özlem Günyol and Mustafa Kunt. Is it not sad to be European or to be turned into one without your own initiative and your own active enrolment? Fatos Ustek

Photo 1: street view; Elbestrasse, Frankfurt
photo 3: street view; The Kosova National Art Gallery, Prishtina
photos: Günyol & Kunt

photo 4: street view; Centre of Popular Arts and Traditions, Atina
photo: Locus Athens

photo 2: Helmut Claus