The video work titled Cityscapes allows viewers to observe various places of the city from the perspective of twelve monuments in Istanbul, which are, due to their historical significance and views, photographed or filmed endlessly on any given day. While a stationary camera captures seemingly ordinary angles at first glance, belonging to 12 different ‘heroes’, it allows the viewer to experience the city in almost life-sized dimensions, adding a new perspective to all these images. Cityscapes shares the unique perspective of the monument’s main character, making it accessible to everyone.
Backstage video and cover image: Fuko Creative Installation photographs: Nazlı Erdemirel
Inkjet print on wall each; 350 cm high (adaptable dimensions) Line thickness; 3 mm
Self-portrait series shows the world’s largest flagpoles in life-size dimensions. These self-portraits, folded dozens of times to fit into the exhibition space pictorially, bend the flagpoles in a movement that is the complete opposite of their function, almost bowing them in front of the viewers.
Installation view; Upfalling Ones exhibition at Dirimart, istanbul Photo: Nazlı Erdemirel
Artist video, featuring Özlem Günyol and Mustafa Kunt as they discuss their creative processes and artistic practices related to their Upfalling Ones exhibition at Dirimart Dolapdere
“Bildik Bilinmeyenler: Özlem Günyol ve Mustafa Kunt” Duygu Demir moderatörlüğündeki bu konuşmada Özlem Günyol ve Mustafa Kunt sergideki iki iş ve onlarla çeşitli akrabalıkları olan diğer üretimlerinden bahsederken birlikte çalışmak ve varolan formlardan türeyen soyutlama çeşitlerinden de bahsedecekler.
The Picture Before the Picture (2019-2023) Ink-jet print on mesh vinyl 850 × 1191 cm
The Picture Before the Picture refers to colors that appear as placeholders under the ‘Images’ tab of the Google search engine before the final image is fully loaded. The first iteration of this work was based on the searches the duo made using this feature during the European Parliament elections in 2019. The artists kept adding search words suggested by Google to their search tab and applied the resulting colors on the walls of the exhibition space with paint. The colors used in the installation made for the façade of İmalat-hane in Bursa are derived from the results of screenshots of Google searches made between the first and second rounds of the 2023 Presidential and Parliamentary elections. Using VPN to perform searches based out of Turkey, the artists selected a certain sequence of suggested search words. These pictures before pictures represent an abstraction of the news items that shape the agenda at a specific time and in a given location. For instance, when the duo entered “Twitter” into Google Images, titles such as “bandwidth throttling,” “access blocking,” and “The Information and Communication Technologies Authority” were suggested by the algorithm, painting a picture of that particular moment through the most frequently used search terms.
The fact that these abstract and angular images, the colors of which are determined by the dominant hues of the partially downloaded pictures reach us before the intended data, reflects our once-removed relationship with data itself. Thus, the viewers find themselves looking at a picture that records the distance between the written content and the image. This digital surface with which we, as web users, are all too familiar points to an image regime that obscures the reality and the influence of web design strategies on users. Sterilizing our interaction with data –ignoring its content, scientific credibility, political bias, or brutality– the colors transform into a spectacle of pacifying abstractions, referring to the increasing data flow, information pollution, fake news, and censorship. Covering the façade of the exhibition space, the installation builds a layer that also becomes a threshold between the inside and outside of the exhibition space. While preventing us from seeing the “big picture,” this picture before the picture also refers to the historical discussions around the relationship between institutional frameworks and art, serving as an interface that casts the shades of its colors on the exhibition.
Text: Duygu Demir booklet; 10: ABSTRACTIONS, INTIMATIONS, RUMINATIONS İMALAT-HANE, Bursa
Neither Up nor Down (2019-2023) paint on polyester, 262×225 cm
The project consists of a 1:1 scale model of a cross-section of the staircase that once led to the world’s tallest flagpole on a 3-hectare pedestal-like square in Baku, and takes a humorous look at the race to be the world’s tallest.
From 1982 to 2010, Kaesong, North Korea, held the record for the tallest flagpole at 160 m. Baku, Azerbaijan, took the record in 2010 with a height of 162 m, but lost it less than a year later to Dushanbe, Tajikistan, with a 165 m flagpole. In 2014, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, took the record with a 171-meter flagpole, and in September 2021, construction began on a new 191-meter flagpole in Baku to reclaim the world record. While scheduled for completion in 2022, a 202-meter flagpole was erected in Cairo, Egypt, in late 2021. Since then, the construction of the new flagpole in Azerbaijan has not been completed (July 2023).
Stairs, like flagpoles, have the main function of moving (things) up or down. With the flagpole as a representation of power, these stairs create a vertical, almost sacred path to that power. They bring people to the base of the giant flagpole. But the closer you get to the pole, the smaller you become with each step.
“Neither Up nor Down” disrupts the way power is represented through verticality by shifting the perspective to the horizontal. With a 1:1 scale model of the staircase parallel to the ground, this staircase is shown as dysfunctional; one can neither go up nor down, separating it from a path to power.
Photo: Nazlı Erdemirel
Installation view; Summerfestival at Kulturakademie Tarabya, Istanbul
Not Yet a Still Life (Europe), 2021-2023 Oil on canvas 95,5 × 123,5 cm
For their work Not Yet a Still Life(Europe) (2021 – 2023), the artists commissioned a painter to create an oil painting of a bouquet of thirty different plant species that are on the ‘red list’ of highly endangered plant species in Europe, a list that is published at regular intervals by The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). The plants depicted form an arrangement that would not be possible in this form in reality, because it shows the endangered species deviating from their true sizes and in a state of flowering, which would normally never occur at the same time. As fictitious as the perfect arrangement may therefore appear, the fact that a simultaneous flowering of the plants can be seen, while there are also fallen leaves lying next to the vase, indicates a real and acute necessity of their reproduction and. preservation. Though the classical still life paintings (French: nature morte) of the seventeenth century primarily depict dead objects, Günyol and Kunt employ the traditional art historical image genre to draw attention to the highly threatened existence of these plant species as well as the current and catastrophic consequences of climate change and the loss of biodiversity. The decorative and aesthetic bouquet thus becomes a metaphor for the decline and devastation of the plants and their habitats. Christin Müller
The Clock, 2022 wet painting on aluminium, anti reflex glass, electric clock movement 23 * 104 cm (diameter)
If a clock hangs on the wall, people can still read the time even if there are no lines and numbers on the dial, assuming 12 is at the top, 6 is at the bottom etc.
If, however, you put the clock on the ground, time cannot be told without the lines and the numbers. Without those, the position of the person relative to the clock on the floor determines how that person reads time, and therefore changes with every new person. Therefore, it functions consistently in its context, but the perception of time becomes blurred as there is no reference point.
A clock is set according to the time zone of the area in which it operates. It therefore contains information about the time zone and thus about geography. In this sense, every different angle we look at when reading the time from the clock lying on the ground marks a different place.
As the clock rotates in lying position, the concepts of time, space and direction gets blurred with every new person looking at it.
Free Solo is a climbing wall project consisting of 1:1 replicas of numerous monuments in Frankfurt, Istanbul and Çanakkale.
For the project, we first moulded the pedestals of these monuments in small pieces. Additionally, we moulded some parts of the figures on top of these pedestals that can be reached by hand. The moulds are then cast with polyurethane and painted with a special paint used for climbing holds on artificial climbing walls.
Usually, when we visit/view monuments, we look at them in their original shape, from pedestal up to the sculpture on it. Monuments can be a gathering place for celebrations and/or protests, and therefore, bring people together. During these gatherings, many people tend to climb these monuments. This desire, to climb the monument in order to rise beyond its physical presence and power in that time and space, is the starting point for the work.
Installation view; “How do we work together?” 8th Canakkale Biennial
Fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 g/m² mounted on alu-dibond
90 × 270 cm
But I kept going is an abstract panoramic sunset / horizon landscape consisting of 4768 horizontal lines, each 270 cm long, 0.1 mm thick, in 3 primary colours. The total length of the lines used to create the work represents the 8-mile distance Ameer Mehtr swam from Kuşadası (Turkey) to Samos Island (Greece) in 2015 to the EU.
The two of the three primary colours (yellow and blue) used in the work is taken from EU flag and the red is taken from Turkish flag.
Installation view; “Would you still love me if I painted parrots all day?” exhibition, Dirimart, Istanbul
