slagWithout Hintersinn

September 12 to October 10, 2009

Opening reception: Saturday, September 12, 2009, 6-10pm

Slag Gallery is proud to present Without Hintersinn , a group show curated by Benjamin Fellmann , as an official parallel event for 11thInternational Istanbul Biennial.

Bilsar , Istanbul, generously sponsoring the exhibition by providing the venue, Bilsar building in Istanbul (Me ş rutiyet Street. No. 90, Beyo ğ lu – İstanbul).

Without Hintersinn assembles three striking artistic positions in different forms and media, summing up to a dialogic contention in questioning human perception of society and art. The works by Turkish artist Serkan Ozkaya and two Romanian artists Dumitru Gorzo and Mircea Suciu are carried by subversive tactics of influential display, taking a critical viewer into account. Picking up a direct reference on this year’s Istanbul Biennial notion of Bertolt Brecht’s question raised in the Threepenny Opera’s second finale, “What keeps mankind alive?”, the exhibition follows his path into subtle layers of ascertained criticism.

The Brecht-given answer reads: “Only thereby lives mankind, that it profoundly is able to forget that mankind it still is”. Recent developments around the world have witnessed fundamental changes, leading to a renewed challenging awareness of social and economic formations. Transcending the question to the art world, a spreading consensus suggests that crises may permit a more critically analyzing of socio-political significance of artistic creation. That, however, in itself is not more than self-referential. In the present context, Brechtian ironic demur expands to a more substantial guideline:

In his exploration of propagandesque depictions used in building of nationalistic identities, New York-based Dumitru Gorzo entails a view on the tense long-lasted Romanian-Turkish relations. His works displayed in the show emanate from canvases treated with a mix of clay, animal glue and horse manure. In this somewhat experimental process, he prepares the ground for a seductive rapprochement of painting to sculpture: In extending originally two-dimensional nationalistic depictions into sculptural depths, he reflects on both rural matrix and pan-European nationalistic image culture following the mechanisms of prospects spreading into societal spaces.

Mircea Suciu, who currently lives and works in Bucharest, fathoms consequences of social systems detaching each other in history’s course. Being a painter, his exceptional project for this year’s Biennial traces the marks of inner conditions leaving their imprint on their bearer’s outside in photographs which in their making are subjected to the ways of painting. Questioning the errors of our century into meanings of “Guilt”, he extends the ironic character of his photographs and an accompanying film from the process of cleaning to extinction – thereby casually commenting on Brecht’s and later Walter Benjamin’s concern about the relation between a traditional work of art and new media.

Istanbul-based Serkan Ozkaya widens the display with his room-aspirating installation “A Sudden Gust of Wind”, questioning determinants of appropriation of space and time in a frozen motion of white and undescribed paper sheets. His work pulls on associations of recommencements, yet both orderly and as farrago. Extending into open space against the background of historic and societal mechanism explored by Gorzo and Suciu, his installation builds a bridge towards a notion not only in excess of close transnational relations and individual impacts, but also au-delà the historic dimension of close linkages in itself: Towards a layer beyond globalization, affecting each and anyone.

Without Hintersinn’ : Dumitru Gorzo, Serkan Özkaya ve Mircea Suciu 
Exhibition dates : 12/9/2009 – 10/10/2009
Opening: 12/9/2009, 18.00-22.00
Curator: Benjamin Fellmann
Address: Bilsar Building, Me ş rutiyet Street. No. 90, Beyo ğ lu – İ stanbul
Organised by: Slag Gallery | www.slaggallery.com
Venue Sponsor: Bilsar | www.bilsar.com