Murat Germen questions tastes with ‘Aura’

 The exhibition is made up of Germen’s photographs, which he has been working on for a year. “I went to the Paris Photo fair in November 2008 in order to see what was going on,” says Germen, in an interview with Today’s Zaman, “I was looking at which countries were represented, what kinds of works were there and how they were evaluated. My first idea came to me then and I started to take photographs at the fair.” However, Germen’s original concept was a little bit different from how the exhibition turned out. “The first name I thought of for the project was something like ‘If/Value’ ((D)eğer),” notes Germen. “In other words, if certain conditions are realized, your works gain value under these conditions. Moreover, who you are can change perceptions about your work, and I think it shouldn’t be this way.” For Germen, artwork should have inherent value. “In order to have a value there should not be any conditions,” indicates Germen. “Who organizes the exhibition, where the exhibition is held, what kind of relationships I have, these should not influence the value of my work,” says Germen. “But I am aware that this is only a very naive aspiration,” he adds.  

Discovering inherent value

What Germen is disturbed about is the tendency to accept a person as “continuously successful.” “It is impossible for a person to create works of the same quality,” states Germen. “You must evaluate a work only because you really find it valuable. Even if an artist who you admire makes some bad artwork, you must see it.”

In this respect, Germen criticizes the way artists are appreciated and the process of deciding whether an artist is successful. “If an artist wants to become famous, he then tries to establish good relationships with certain people,” notes Germen. “I definitely have trouble doing this. My only expectation from relationships is to be good friends.”

Strategies for artwork

It is not unusual to hear about the marketing processes of artwork, either in music, literature or other forms of art. In the art market, there are certain selected people whose works are presented through certain marketing strategies and this turns into a process coercing people into liking the works of artists available in the market. However, for Germen, these strategies ruin the success of artwork. “Strategy is used for political, military or economic reasons,” says Germen. “If an artist says he considers social issues and conducts such strategies at the same time, he would conflict with himself.”

In today’s world, however, success is evaluated according to many polemical criteria, for instance, the amount of sales. “As it is a mistake to make an analogy between the number of albums sold to that of bread and cheese, it is also wrong to consider the success of a work according to the sales numbers,” stresses Germen.

So, what are the criteria for success? “The work must satisfy the artist himself,” replies Germen. “Other things come after that. For example, it is a success if your work is bought by the Fine Arts Museum in New York, but an artist should not just keep on dreaming about that.” At this point, Germen points out many historical figures who were not famous or recognized during their lifetimes but after their death. “The conditions may be there while an artist is alive. There are many people like this who have been called ‘losers’ and who have lived miserable lives, Van Gogh for instance...” But the essence of their success, for Germen, was that they created pieces that satisfied themselves in the first place. “You may not become a biennial curator, but art is not only made up of biennial. An artist should continue to create.”

Picture-like photographs

The photographs in “Aura” will be a new experience for the audience. “There are photographs, but there’s a feeling of brush strokes in the works,” describes Germen when discussing his recent work. “I wanted the photographs to be in one edition. This makes them more special,” says Germen. “We thought of this with my dear friend Ahmet Ayhan, and I tried to create a unique situation in terms of both aesthetics and edition and even the frames.”

The photographs have been taken in various places like Italy, Poland, Hong Kong, London, İstanbul and Paris, and the main concept is art galleries, museums and bazaars. “I don’t think that my future projects will all be related to this concept, but since I have a certain perspective, the topics that I study are connected. I’m fond of things which don’t look as merely what they are and I think I always pursue these hidden things.”