The architectural and artistic heritage of Islamic art and Byzantine architecture, such as the Süleymaniye Mosque and the Hagia Sophia Museum, reflect a minimalist approach with repetition and geometric abstraction, which are the main characteristics of an ongoing contemporary art exhibition at the Petit-Champs Pasajı in İstanbul's Tepebaşı neighborhood in Beyoğlu.“My intent was to challenge the viewer and to see what their response would be,” says Suzanne Egeran, the curator of the show, during an interview with Today's Zaman. “‘In The Between,' the show's title, refers to the space between an object [of art] and the viewer. When you look at an artwork in İstanbul, New York or London, basically your perception of looking is influenced by the surrounding.” In this respect, İstanbul seems to be a good example of “being between” the onlooker and the artwork, “given the history of art and architecture here -- the Islamic art history, the Byzantine art history, all of which affect the way you see an artwork,” according to Egeran.
The exhibition brings together works by a multinational group of artists, including Ali Kazma, Ahmet Öğüt and the late Hüseyin Alptekin from Turkey and Peter Coffin, Martin Creed, Martha Friedman, Tom Friedman, Diana Al-Hadid, Christian Marclay, Ivan Navarro and Cerith Wyn Evans from abroad. “I wanted to foster the dialogue between the local and international art communities,” says Egeran.
Kazma takes part in the show with the video series “Obstructions,” made up of three pieces called “Household Goods Company,” “Studio Ceramist” and “Casa di Moda.” Kazma takes the notion of “being in between” as a process of transformation. “There's a certain transformation of a raw material into an object [of art],” says Kazma, 38. “There can be many economic and cultural consequences of this transformation, but what I'm really focusing on is values formed with forms of production.” As repetition becomes part of production, or even the production itself, industrial production shows itself on the social level as well. “When something gets alienated from its roots, when it becomes impossible to see the whole, especially under the conditions of a factory, then the human being becomes part of a machine. This is true especially for those jobs in which every person carries out a small part of the whole work that needs to be done and which is based on repetition,” notes Kazma. “This is reflected in the society in the form of rapid consumption.”
Counting images of violence
One of the most interesting videos in the exhibition is “Things We Count,” by Öğüt, 28, the youngest Turkish artist in the exhibition. Filmed in the Sonoran Desert in Arizona at the airplane graveyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, the film is an attempt to showcase the cold face of the history of war. “This is the largest airplane graveyard in the world, and there are airplanes used since the Vietnam War and in special missions,” says Öğüt. “If you take this into consideration, it is not very difficult to discover how deep and complex the story behind these airplanes is.” With a voice in the background continuously counting the number of planes, the film is as a huge monument of war planes, making them look like wild creatures. “In my work, video serves as a sculpture; it's like creating an atmosphere.” The counting starts in Kurdish, continues in Turkish and ends in English. “Why I chose Turkish and Kurdish is that they are the languages of faraway places,” says Öğüt. “Actually, what is dramatic about the film is that the planes are produced in the US, but are used in very far away lands. It is this distance that attracts me in terms of being ‘in between'.” The numbers say a lot: the planes, death tolls, the languages of people living in faraway lands. “These seem so abstract to us,” says Öğüt, “but just because there is a huge distance between [these locations], it doesn't mean what is being experienced there is abstract. A certain level of awareness should be established, thus we can expand our own reality.” “In The Between” is on view until Oct. 10.
