In this exhibition where the audience becomes an investigator, the artists’ works appear as a found object that came from past to present day.
In the 21st century, art brings along lots of questions and discussions while becoming more popular. In the first quarter of 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” was presented for sale at Christie’s Auction House. “Salvator Mundi” is written up in history as the most expensive work ever sold in an auction house, whilst the issue of whether or not it is actually the
work of Leonardo Da Vinci is still being discussed by experts. This has resulted in the relationship between artistic value and economic value being questioned once again. The biggest problem here is the explanation of the artistic value of the work in an aesthetic context, because the relationship between the object and the subject in art, unfortunately, carries traces of the formalist roots that have been discussed since Kant. Maurizio Seracini, Professor of Art History at the University of San Diego, and his team discovered some findings on the walls of Hall of the Five Hundred at the Palace of Vecchio, which can also be classifıed as culture archaeology. This research was focused on the wall painting of the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo Da Vinci and the wall painting of the Battle of Marciano by Vasari. Vasari’s painting was covering Da Vinci’s like a green mold. This analogy – from which the exhibition’s name was derived – describes the work of Leonardo as corroded under the soil. The name of the exhibition project, developed by Sami Aslan, was inspired by the green mold metaphor that was mentioned by Emre Zeytinoğlu in his article about New Popularization in Art. It was a metaphor strikingly used by Walter Benjamin in Passages “Chemical analysis of green mold on a bronze work can help determine the authenticity of that work.” The exhibition is questioning the true work of art, is it the one under the mold, or is it the work that exists together with the mold? The audience will experience archaeological excavation while having a chance to be a researcher and a part of the process of history writing.
Bilal Yılmaz’s works in the “Memories of Objects” series refer to the spatial existence and multiple connotations of ffound objects in their initial state as a raw material, before they take on a new form. This is an attempt to say something about
the story and identity of the objects, which were found while wandering around the city.
The work titled Self-performance by Deniz İkizler combines the previous performances with a single performance and acts with an idea that it transforms into an installation. While bringing these two types of art together, the artist also takes care of the next chapters of the time a video and photographed performance art first meets the audience. In this way, it offers multiple viewpoints by combining each layer of Self-performance into video, photography and installation, and presenting each layer of its performance to the audience. While focusing on the the quality of self-performance, she questions which is the main performance; the one audience is watching now or the previous performance. Eda Aslan’s works sometimes focus on a lost place that is hidden in the city, and sometimes focus on time and pieces that she can remember in her personal history. In the center of her works lies obsession of registration. She questions the possibility of writing history in her own practice and how places, objects and memory in the city that she grew up, lived and produced can create a narration in the other geographies.
A chemist, Stefano Mariottini from Rome discovered the sculptures that are the subject of photo work by Giuseppe Lo Schiavo, during his dive in the Tyrrhenian Sea. He saw an arm and thought that it belonged to a corpse but soon realized that there were two sculptures deep down in the sea. These Greek statues from the 5th century BC are regarded as one of the best examples of bronze art. The restoration of the statues that are in the permanent collection of the National Museum in Reggio Calabria is still in progress and their identity cannot be explained yet. According to the most recent studies, Bronze A might represent Tydeus, a fierce hero from Aetolia, Son of God Ares.
Gökçe İrten, with a new series called “I looked at you from another hill, dear Istanbul! ”, invites the audience to follow the history in Istanbul. In addition to the production of collages, the artist also uses the discipline of ceramic art. While she focuses on Istanbul’s multicultural texture, its concrete spirit also allows us to see the stacked lives and distorted urbanization in the city that has been home to different civilization for thousands of years.
“Blacks”, the series of works by Horasan, presents to the audience the coincidentally united, layer-by-layer processed patterns on a black background. He is reinterpreting the concept of time with the production of the unconscious movement of ink on paper just like the water creates its own path on a surface. The statues that are emphasizing the struggle between nature and man, mention that the winner will always be nature if it wishes. The work that addresses the time and place anonymously is a figure captured by nature and biologically reshaped. This reaction between nature and man is open to the individual interpretation of the audience.
The new series of works by Nergiz Yeşil, “Same Roots Different Species ‘Other Possible Normals’” is formed by creating new species in reference to familiar living things (made by using kombucha tissue culture/ scoby to create organic material) and displaying them together with cupboards like cabinets of curiosities, including an artist book about the possible anthropology of the new species. The critical approach is towards the historiography and epistemology, with
the acceptance of their cumulative nature, creating an alternative way of mental reality.
Sami Aslan seeks to make the viewer feel the traces of the past on the surface and to take the audience on a journey of mysteries from the past. While doing this, he intends to recreate the archaeological field without being bound to the historical documentary and by questioning his own mind’s interest to the past. This questioning is to be understood more as an opening of the doors to the sub consciousness than an accounting. It includes the desire to be free -which he wants to have shaped in his mind – by studying carefully the causalities of the process of recreating.
Sırma Doruk examines visual and aural norms in the modern world from a perspective centered on identity and the
fundamental problems that are caused by our perception through the material world. In her works, revealed using image
and sound, she creates a whole by dividing the substance into pieces then reuniting them into an entirely different meaning. Aural expression also emphasizes the variability of perception and meaning using asynchronously with both itself and the image.
Sinan Logie’s work can be seen as a process focusing on the triangle of space- body-mind, through a look from inside and outside. In the frame of this journey, the artist’s praxis leaves room to the deteriorations of the materials.
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