Sky Blue (official), 2015

21*29,7 cm, fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag 308gsm

Sky blue (official) comprises shades of blue that represent the sky in national flags.

Untitled, 2014

7 metal plates, tin, zinc, brass, copper, aluminum, steel, nickel, each 0.1x40x40 cm; wooden pedestal 40x40x105 cm 

The work Untitled (2014), […] consists of a pedestal onto which have been stacked plates of congruent format made of tin, copper, zinc, nickel, brass, aluminum, and steel —the materials, in other words, used to produce euro coins. Formally speaking, an aesthetically attractive rigor runs through the artists’ works as a unifying theme. In the case of Untitled, this rigor is abundantly evident in the plain yet trenchant design of its pedestal onto which, as in earlier works, the metal plates are flush mounted to present a compact cube.

Sandra Dichtl, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2014).

Installation view; Dortmunder Kunstverein
photos: Roland Baege

Scheinbogen, 2014

fine art print on Hahnemühle photo rag ultra smooth 305 g/m², 150×150 cm.
alu-dibond, wooden frame, 152×152 cm

Scheinbogen consists of the seven colors of the seven euro banknotes from 5 to 500 euros. The colors have been taken from the specimen notes on the European Central Bank website and —starting with the 5-euro note and increasing in value— positioned diagonally next to each other so that they call to mind a rainbow. The rainbow, a magnificent spectacle of nature, has left its trace in the cultural history of mankind. […] The title Scheinbogen contains several meanings: the German word Schein can refer to the sheen of a rainbow, to a banknote, but it can also mean a mirage or illusion.

Sandra Dichtl, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt (Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2014).

Installation view; Dortmunder Kunstverein
photo 1: Roland Baege

Game, 2014
Digital video
00:35 sec

[…] a euro coin rolls uninterruptedly without toppling over. The proverbial “ruble is rolling” 2 and becomes a symbolic, precious-metal “hologram.” There is also a reference here to Christopher Nolan’s movie Inception of 2010. In the movie, a spinning top becomes the sign of a dream state, while one that has toppled over symbolizes reality. The uncertainty in Game as to whether the rolling coin ultimately stops or not holds the viewer’s thoughts and interpretations in a state of suspense, the entire financial system quasi-rotating before his eyes in the symbolic image.

Sandra Dichtl,
Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt
(Dortmund: Verlag Kettler, 2014)

Installation view; Dortmunder Kunstverein
photo 3: Roland Baege

Hemzemin, 2014

stainless steel flagpole 2x150x150 cm

The word “hemzemin” comes to Turkish from Persian. It is a compound word: “hem” meaning together, same, and “zemin” meaning ground, earth. A flagpole carries the idea of national belonging. Consequently, it has the meaning of staging national, international and cultural identity. It governs its surrounding by standing vertically against the human body. Its function is to fortify the represented image by carrying the image to an “inaccessible” point. For the work, a 12 meter-high stainless steel flagpole is melted and cast into a 150×150 cm big open mould and placed on the sidewalk of the Hoher Wall Street in Dortmund. By carrying a flagpole to the ground level, the work changes the physical relation between the human body and the pole.

photos and film stills: Günyol&Kunt

BTO-28, CBT-65, BTO-22, 2013

multimedia installation
razor wire, wood, fine art print on photo carton, headphones, sound
each 60x65x140 cm music pieces;
BTO-28; 00:34 sec, CBT-65; 01:27’ BTO-22; 00:28’

Concertina (Dannert wire) wire was first manufactured by Germany during World War I. Different than barbed wire its purpose is to prevent human passage. It targets the human body directly. Since its invention, it has been used for prisons, mental hospitals, military purposes and high security facilities. Nowadays, it is starting to be used more and more for residential security. The work comprises of three music boxes, each consisting of a type of a razor wire, a music piece and musical notes. The title of each piece shows the type of razor wire that is used in this piece. While creating the music pieces, the artists firstly recorded their own sound: “Ouch.” Then, the sound clip of this recording is used to make a drawing of the shape of the module of the razor wire in a sound program. Afterwards, these drawings are translated to strings to create suspenseful music pieces like those in horror movies.

Installation view, TANAS, Berlin
photos 1,2: Uwe Walter

The Myth, 2013

ceramic vase 56x56x60 cm
showcase 80x80x190 cm

For The Myth, Özlem Günyol and Mustafa Kunt travelled to Avanos in Turkey this year to work with a local ceramist; Aydın Afacan and illustrator; Ersin Yazıcı who made for them a replica of an ancient, more than 2000-year-old vase found in the south of Italy and now housed in the Louvre in Paris. A scene painted on this ancient vase refers to the Greek creation myth of the European continent: it depicts the mythological figure Europa, together with the God Zeus in the guise of a bull. Precisely this portrayal of Europa is highly topical at the moment, being, as it is, “the new face of the Euro”. The European Central Bank presented the new series of Euro banknotes at the beginning of May this year, a series also known as the Europa series, as some of the new security features contain the portrait of Europa borrowed from the ancient vase. At a time when Europe and particularly Greece are struggling with the effects of one of the biggest economic crises since 1900, the countenance of Europa from Greek mythology is intertwined with money as a communication medium (after Niklas Luhmann’s theory of social systems). While the European Central bank “abducted” the face of Europa from the ancient vase, Günyol and Kunt devote their attention in The Myth to the other protagonist of the myth, the bull Zeus, father of the gods and ultimate representative of power in the ancient world. However, what we see here is not the ancient likeness of the bull, but rather the symbol of growing financial markets, the bull – the symbolic representation of power in our age.
The portrayal – a rearing bull which white ropes are trying to subdue – was borrowed by Günyol and Kunt from an Occupy movement poster designed by Alexandra Clotfelter, The Beginning Is Near. In addition, the vase is decorated with the Guy Fawkes mask familiar from the graphic novel V for Vendetta and the public face of the Anonymous movement. Where the mythological figure Europa has lately come to be inscribed in our money medium of daily use, in The Myth Günyol and Kunt inscribe the symbols of the major protest movements of our age into an ancient form of communication. The artist duo entwines sign systems of our media-informed experience with the ancient myth of Europa, continuing this tale, generating new contexts of meaning, and questioning the connected paths of historical narratives. In doing so, Günyol and Kunt pan out a complex historical field which prompts us to contemplate the genesis and contexts of current societal circumstances.

Denise Rigaud ars viva 12/ 13, Systems, visitors’ booklet (Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, 2013)

STAND-BY (stuck moment collection), 2013

Sanat Dünyamız 138. issue Jan-Feb, Fragmentation 11
curator: Necmi Sönmez, editor: Mine Haydaroğlu

The Turkish art magazine Sanat Dünyamız has made its 14 pages available as an exhibition space under the title FragMENtaTION.

The Stand-By project shifts the visual content from the artists to the art writers and aims to create a stand-by situation within the art magazine. For the project, many art writers were asked to send an image representing their stuck moments. 47 writers participated in the project.

The writers contributed:
Page 1: Azra Tüzünoğlu, Christiane Meyer-Stoll, Özge Ersoy, Sevil Dolmacı, Pelin Derviş, Rana Öztürk Page 2: Lara Fresko Page 3: Necmi Sönmez, Georg Imdahl, Yasemin Nur, Shulamit Çoruh, Marcus Graf Page 4: Evrim Altuğ, Seda Yörüker Page 5-6: Nazlı Pektaş Page 7: Ebru Nalan Sülün, Burcu Pelvanoğlu, Ayşe Erek, Elaine NG, Grit Weber Page 8: Nilgün Yüksel, Barış Acar, Ayşegül Sönmez, Merve Ünsal, Necla Rüzgâr Page 9: Elmas Deniz, Süreyyya Evren, Jörg Heiser, Erden Kosova, Nazlı Gürlek Page 10: Işın Önol, Jörg Restorff Page 11: Ceren Özpınar, Huo RF, Fırat Arapoğlu, Berin Golonu, Didem Yazıcı, Ferhat Özgür Page 12: Şener Özmen, Çelenk Bafra, Derya Yücel, Michele Robecchi, Nermin Saybaşılı, Tevfik Çağrı Dural Page 13: Özgül Kılınçarslan, Ali Akay Page 14: Tuba Parlak

Spread the Word, 2012

interactive room installation
wood, small-scale printouts, confetti canons, foil, permanent pen, tape, video

The work comprises an index of words, thousands of small-scale printouts of each word used in that index and hundreds of confetti shooters. Words used in political party statements mentioned on posters hung in public spaces in Germany in the recent years are separated from their contexts and shown in an alphabetical order. In this way, each word gains an independent position. But in a way, this independence is still dependent on the statements. Because, by putting all these words in one pot, the work creates an index of words, which also gives statistical information on recent political topics and their psychological behavior. While this whole process leaves the visitors with a group of words and with their meanings, the work also welcomes them to build their own statements for possible new meanings. Thus the work completes itself with the contribution of the visitors. Each contributor who builds his/her statement by using the index of words is asked to write this statement on the white surface of the two shooters. Afterwards, both shooters are filled with the printouts of the words that the contributor selected for his/her statement. The contributor keeps one of the shooters with himself/herself and the other stays with the work. In this way, one edition of the new statement stays permanently with the work, the other edition spreads the new combination of words back to the public space.

Installation view; Neues Museum Nürnberg
photos 1,2,5: Anette Kradisch, 6,7: Anna Luft, 8: video still, taken from

Installation view; Neues Museum Nürnberg
photos 1,2,5: Anette Kradisch, 6,7: Anna Luft,
8: video still, taken from the video “Making of ars viva Preis für Bildende Kunst des Kulturkreises”

Untitled (money), 2012

Steel, copper, carton;
framed, 34,8 × 28,3 × 2,8 cm

After receiving the ars viva award, we were asked to produce an edition exclusively for Kulturkreis. Since this was our first “edition” project, we have decided to work directly on the relationship between an edition and value.
Untitled (Money) is a framed work with a steel and a copper plate, showing the exact ratio of the two metals in 200 one-cent pieces.

photo: Kulturkreis der deutschen Wirtschaft