:mentalKLİNİK leads its audience to ask the right questions

“We are talking about a world where the human being and the object are in almost equal positions,” says Baydar, in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “We depict indecisive regions, frozen times and atmosphere without atmosphere. We argue, where does today’s person stand? What is he aware of? As two people educated in the 20th century and generating works in the 21st century, what do we have to say? We think this is important. We are not interested in what is local, but rather in the issues regarding the entity of being a human being. And our starting point was the four concepts of human, object, culture and value. The relationship between human beings and objects shifted in the 20th century, and we are now in a period where objects lock up human beings and dominate everything. But today, for us, human beings and objects have been balanced in terms of a relationship of both being data.” This shift brings together a political dimension as well. “If today, every one of us is turning into data with our behaviors and experiences, then the most political thing we can do is to be concerned in this process,” says Baydar.

The exhibition, displayed at Galerist, Galatasaray and running until Nov. 21, is composed of the couple’s recent works. Based in their own space in Nişantaşı, :mentalKLİNİK doesn’t seem to embrace the idea of “gallery.” “We show our work on specific themes, maybe we could call them projects, maybe exhibitions, maybe various weekly presentations or forms of sharing,” Baydar says. “We don’t choose to call it a gallery. We perceive it as a space, and we usually use it for ourselves.” Demir highlights another characteristic of the project, “This is a project that always continues and is renovated all the time, just like an organic structure.”

A new experience each time

For :mentalKLİNİK, every exhibition is a new experience, both for themselves as well as for the audience. “We usually don’t repeat the same figures in our works,” notes Baydar. “Every piece of work that we realize makes the audience experience a new situation, and every time, the form of the audience’s experience changes as well. Sometimes, they are able to participate in the exhibition, and sometimes they are only receivers.”

The couple uses many different materials for their exhibitions, from sculpture to software. “The exhibition is composed of what we call pieces,” says Baydar. “At first sight, the general form is sculpture, voice and video, but not installation; we would rather say that this is an exhibition about the possibility of pieces standing side-by-side.” “They are in fact types,” Demir adds, and Baydar confirms, “There’s the fact that these types always have the possibility of coming together.”

“In fact, we’re against categorizations and any kind of attempt at coding,” Baydar says, explaining their efforts to search out new forms: “We always want to try new forms in which other forms can expand. And here we interrogate where we can go from the point where the person that we call a modern person is stuck among the molds of the 20th century. By dismantling these categories, as :mentalKLİNİK, how can we form a new pattern with these pieces?”

As the exhibition contains different possibilities as well as opportunities of either breaking free or destruction, it also seeks to lead -- or encourage -- the audience to ask the right questions. “The audience’s questions depend on their perception and how much they give themselves to the exhibition,” notes Baydar. “In fact, these questions do not have to be something very intellectual, but they should be free from all prejudices and clichés. It’s about opening up to the cloudy and foggy world of the abstract.”

“We’re living in an abstract period indeed,” adds Demir. The couple also notes the importance of the difference between visiting an exhibition and examining an exhibition. “We think that the audience can only conceive our works if they explore the exhibition for as long as possible,” says Baydar, “Today everything moves so fast, but some things need some time to be conceived. The point is to not only take a look but to really look.”

The Rabbithole also presents different dimensions of reality. “We know that art is interested in different dimensions of reality,” notes Baydar. “There was realism, then surrealism, hyperrealism and after all these, we are living in a world of augmented realities. We interrogate what is being reflected from here to what is objective and philosophical. You are going to see the results of the impact of augmented realities on us. There’s a borderline between entering this world and not entering or to be aware of being inside or not. For us, being aware is the primordial political behavior.”

Other projects

:mentalKLİNİK also has another exhibition happening simultaneously related to the Rabbithole. “The Tag Cloud can be the pioneer of this exhibition in many respects, because the Tag Cloud is a form of exhibition in which we have tried to make patterns out of the things that we have been interested in over the last two years and that we have been tagging,” Baydar says. “And during this time, we discovered many things which led us to make the Rabbithole.”

The couple has new projects in mind. “Maybe we can publish a book about :mentalKlinik,” Baydar says, “because it’s been 10 years since :mentalKLİNİK was established. It can reflect our perspective as well as many other texts written about us. There are texts written by very different disciplines, so we think maybe we can compile them.”