Titled “Tools & Human-Animal,” the show features 25 works on paper and an installation. “The relationship human beings have with the world, which is completely based on producing tools out of it, made me think of such a title for my exhibition,” Pancar says in an interview with Today’s Zaman. “Parallel to all other relationships of the human kind with the material world, our relationship with animals is also based on usage. There is no other way of perception. For example, a river means a dam and energy for human civilization, or an animal means fur, meat or skin. Everything is just a tool for humans.”The concept of the show is based on a certain narrative, Pancar elaborates. “I thought about printed materials, keeping in mind the tools we use and the meanings attributed to these tools by us. I endeavored to produce an image resulting from the merger of two printed pictures; I took one printed picture, which has an arbitrary meaning, and limited that print with another print,” he notes, adding that these changes produced a certain narrative as a whole within the show, together with the character of the material.
Pancar started to work on this show two years ago, and his initial aim was to get closer to the animal world by analyzing the morphological qualities of animals from an artistic perspective. When he read Giorgio Agamben’s “L’aperto. L’uomo e l’animale” (The Open: Man and Animal), he encountered another aspect of the same subject. “The writer says that human beings have an anthropocentric perception of the animal kingdom just like they have toward all the other beings in the world. This means that the structure of human thought includes the existence of animals. This is constructed based on the basic time and space understanding of human kind. However, the animal kingdom exists in a completely different understanding of time and space. With this collection I tried to reverse the situation and create a human existence that is included in the animal perspective, such as a horse race going on inside of a horse or the people who are betting,” he says, concluding that the viewer can consider these people as being enclosed by the horse or subordinated by it.
However, the paintings do not depict these many details clearly. Rather, they give a sense of these connections in a semi-humorous way. “If this show can only make the audience feel this weirdness a little bit, that would be enough for me,” says the artist.
In addition to the paintings, the second part of the show features a wall installation produced out of paper birds. “The piece is called ‘friz,’ which is an architectural element. My objective with this piece was to create a contrast between easygoing taste and classical decorative tradition. The birds exist here with their animal identities in a decoration and create a pleasing image for us,” Pancar explains.
“Tools & Human-Animal,” Pancar’s seventh solo exhibition, will run through the end of the month at the Kare Art Gallery, located on Abdi İpekçi Street, No: 26/9 in Nişantaşı. For more information, visit www.karesanat.com.
