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Constructed Nature Exhibition Talk

Quick Art Space, which became operational in May 2023 within Quick Tower with the initiative of Maher Holding, will hold its first exhibition curated by its founding director Nergis Abıyeva between October 28 - December 1, 2023. The exhibition titled "Artifact Nature" features works by Gülçin Aksoy, Nazan Azeri, Seçil Büyükkan, Ahmet Rüstem Ekici & Hakan Sorar, Ekin Saçlıoğlu and Özlem Şahinler in various genres such as painting, video, installation, weaving and sculpture.The exhibition, which includes works that will be on view for the first time, is based on the architectural features of Quick Tower and the way it positions itself. The architectural privileges of the building, its relationship with its surroundings, the dogs coming in and out of the revolving door of the lobby with its huge windows, the lush, vibrant trees around the building, the crows perched on the trees, the cats sleeping in the lobby..."Constructed Nature" is an exhibition beyond the white cube experience, based on the inviting and embracing atmosphere of Quick Tower, located in the heart of Kozyatagi, where thousands of visitors spend time or 'pass by' every day. "When we think of nature, do we only think of virgin forests or endless seas? Can urban areas that are properly intervened and healed by human hands strengthen our relationship with nature? Can we move beyond the dichotomies of nature-culture, human-animal, woman-man, mind-body, work-home?"

On Thursday, November 23, between 15.00-16.00, you are invited to the exhibition tour of Artifact Nature with Nergis Abıyeva.

Constructed Nature Exhibition Tour

Event

<article><h2>Constructed Nature</h2><blockquote>The landscapes we build, whether real (our gardens) or fictional (our dreams), follow the same path as our word play.1</blockquote>I have curated the first exhibition at Quick Art Space based on the architectural features of the building and the way it positions itself. When I first visited Quick Tower in April this year, I was impressed by the building as well as how it relates to its surroundings. Dogs using the revolving door that opens to the lobby with huge windows, the lush, vibrant trees around the building, crows perched on trees, cats sleeping inside, all these show that this is also a living space for non-human creatures. The appealing, embracing atmosphere of Quick Tower, designed by Gerhard Feldmeyer, a Vienna-based architect, located in the heart of Kozyatağı, where thousands of visitors spend time or pass by on a daily basis, immediately convinced me that I could make “unexpected exhibitions” beyond the white cube experience.What made me think this place was a “natural” living space as it had actually been transformed, planted, and afforested? Is it only old-growth forests or vast seas that serve nature? Or, if properly intervened and healed by human hands, could urban areas also be capable of strengthening our relationship with nature? How far can we move beyond the binary oppositions such as nature vs. culture, human vs. animal, male vs. female, mind vs. body, work vs. home?The rise of modern cities where space is defined, categorized and parceled out led to the invention of the notions of landscape and scenery. Construct refers to things created with imagination. This word, as well as its implications, drew my attention while reading Bilge Karasu’s book Ne Kedisiz Ne Kitapsız [Neither Bookless nor Catless]. In his article titled “The Novel Still Ranks First in Image Production”, Karasu says the following.<blockquote>I presume that our life is comprised of a continuous production of artifacts. We are constantly living in a construct, or what we experience (as an important or unimportant, heavy or light, strong or faint element) constitutes the construct we call our life. The elements of this larger construct are more limited, smaller artifacts. Roughly speaking, do I argue that there is no such thing as “reality”? Not at all. I mean that we perceive, comprehend, make sense of, think about, understand what is called “reality” only with the help, mediation, and “creation” of certain constructs. I call these constructs images.2</blockquote>Constructed Nature is, in a sense, a continuation of Mental Imagery of Things not Actually Present, a group show that Uras Kızıl and I curated at Summart in 2021. As a matter of fact, Özlem Şahinler’s work titled “I am You” organically connects the two exhibitions. In this work, she considers her hair a micro-ecosystem and a hosting space where multiple interdependent species stray as inhabitants, and she reveals different forms of existence of a living system from her hair strands. Thus she emphasizes that what we think of as “me” is actually “us”. These beings in unique forms try to breathe in an anonymous geography with their identities that harbor a common essence. This work imagines the transformative process of various living anatomies “that have existed from a single essence again becoming a single essence” and reminds us that the changing and transforming living beings do constitute a whole.We also have six paintings from Nazan Azeri’s “Forgotten Time and Now” series in the exhibition, the first examples of which she started in Ayvalık in the summer of 2021. Painted with blue and red acrylic ink on handmade paper, this series can be read as a rebellion against the nature culture dichotomy. Questioning the systems that reproduce inequality built on the binary opposition between culture (masculine) and nature (feminine), the blue color in Azeri’s paintings references the Far East, Anatolia, the Topkapı Palace Circumcision Room tiles, and the ancient paintings of Egypt. Azeri adopts a “killjoy” style, reconsidering the symbolic meanings of blue and red in works from the history of art. Her “Forgotten Time and Now” series brings to mind Yves Klein’s use of naked women as human paintbrushes in his patented Klein blue or Leonardo da Vinci’s “Vitruvian Man” drawing, which puts the adult male human in the centre of the world. Azeri’s series is a silent feminist response to the canon of art history made/written by male artists.Gülçin Aksoy, as an artist who frequently uses the idiom “constructed nature”, has produced a new work titled “Reticulus volvulus” for the exhibition. According to Aksoy, a work of art is an artifact. More precisely, based on the distinction between human and nature, it is what is added to nature, which is deemed “unnatural” —that is, produced by humans. This discourse speaks outside the human vs. nature distinction, and the work of art or the human being exists as a part of this world and universe. In this case, we can understand our “doings” as natures added to that nature. Therefore, Aksoy is interested in human-made natures: What looks like a representation of a tree is a tree in the common imagination, but it is not a tree we can sit under. So is the image of a woven tree. Ergo, producing, distributing, pixelating such a tree is not an act outside the nature. As a pun she has invented, “Reticulus volvulus” refers to Latin medical terms. Produced with “natural materials”, this diptych work, one woven and the other stacked on top of each other, points to a world transformed by culture using the written signs depicting the human condition, which we have separated from nature for thousands of years, although itself transformed. Things that are written, drawn, crumpled up… They are transformed by communing with paper. The threads become entangled with each other. They seem to be involved in a complicated but attractive world.Seçil Büyükkan’s work, produced as part of “Roots Far from the Ground” series, first exhibited at the Atatürk Cultural Centre, is separated from the soil as the source of life, standing alone in a gigantic way. Standing vertically before us like a large and lofty cathedral, this work has already taken its place in our printing history as a work that Büyükkan made with linoleum moulds single-handedly, thus pushing the limits of printing techniques. In dialogue with both the trees around Quick Tower and Gülçin Aksoy’s work, “Roots Far from the Ground” makes us think that the concepts of reality and imagination are intertwined and the question of “pictorial representation” remains.Ekin Saçlıoğlu’s “Childhood”, previously shown at ArtSümer’s Fragmented exhibition, is another sculpture/work that reinforces the show, which she created by transforming the wooden skeleton of the sofa she spent her entire childhood on. Saçlıoğlu started sculpting furniture during the pandemic, based on the idea that while spending time at home, we mesh with inanimate objects in our homes and become a part of each other. The colorful pieces that make linear movements on the wooden skeleton belong to the roots of tamarisk trees that hit the Palamutbükü beach in Datça with the lodos. She places the waste styrofoam green form on the skeleton without any intervention. This work, which brings to mind a panoramic view with the upper part of the sofa as the horizon line and the entire work as the sky and the sea, returns to the Kozyatağı neighborhood where Saçlıoğlu spent her childhood on the occasion of Constructed Nature. When we look at a landscape, do we interpret it solely through what we see, or is it a “thing” that is influenced by our memory or autobiographical narratives?Ahmet Rüstem Ekici and Hakan Sorar’s “Theatrum Mundi”, a triptych video installation, is inspired by the idea that the world is a stage. This interactive experience is presented on three screens with introduction, body and conclusion stages, making the viewer a part of the experience, transforming them into an “experiencer”. This scene is designed not to be limited to a single angle or perspective, instead offering the experiencer the opportunity to observe the landscape from their own preferred angles, to change the sound, color and weather conditions. This experience encourages reflection on the mechanisms of control and the limits of personal freedom. On this artificial stage, where the distinction between the virtual and natural world is blurred, the viewer takes on the roles of a director, set designer and gaffer, focusing on urban and bodily traces in environmental relationships. The experiencer is entitled to shape the landscape with more than twenty control buttons and variations on the panel. This work provides the experiencer with multiple perspectives by allowing them to question the environmental relations of nature, destruction and the body. “Theatrum Mundi” creates a scene that is not limited to a single perspective thanks to the capability to manage the flow of the work with control buttons. On the other hand, it questions the nature of the image and the centre.All of the artists who contributed to the Constructed Nature visited Quick Tower. We had tea and coffee with some of them in the lobby, some under the shading trees. We took a walking tour with some of them in the greens of Fatih Sultan Mehmet Hospital and petted cats. And with others, we sat in the square, sharing silence, watching the cats and dogs frequenting the building. I am sure that Constructed Nature, created with seven artists who adopt different languages in art-making, has also been shaped by the unique banalities of our daily lives that we experienced together.Nergis AbıyevaOctober 2023, ErenköyTranslated by Zeynep Nur Ayanoğlu1Anne Cauquelin,<cite>Peyzajın İcadı</cite>, Dost Publishing, p. 78.2Bilge Karasu,<cite>Ne Kitapsız ne Kedisiz</cite>, Metis Publishing, p. 17.</article>

Initiated by Maher Holding, Quick Art Space, located within Quick Tower, started its activities in May 2023 and the first exhibition curated by the founding director Nergis Abıyeva will take place from October 28 to December 1, 2023.

Press Release

Promotion Poster

Constructed Nature

Photos from the Exhibition

<h2>Organizing Photography with a Non-Representational Gaze</h2>Kaan Kemal Öner’s exhibition In/Through the Belly of the Sky is based on his processual photographs taken across different places such as Cambodia, Thailand, Iceland, South Africa, Normandy and Mazı Village in Turkey. Persistence, repetition and endless experimentation are inherent in Öner’s artistic practice. His works are based not only on conveying the image, but also on apperceiving and implementing the processual character of the act of making. In his exhibition In/Through the Belly of the Sky, a selection of Öner’s seven-year production has been site-specifically produced at Quick Art Space.Using printing techniques such as Kallitype, Cyanotype, Vandyke, Platinum Palladium, Silver Gelatin, Gumoil, Mordançage as part of the act of making photographs, Öner’s photographs bear the traces of chemical reactions, errors, various environmental effects such as wind and dust rather than the digitally provided perfect image. The photographs, subjected to distortions and various interventions, are sometimes based on Öner’s drawings on them, sometimes his overlapping and/or appropriation of the found photographs, and other times, non-human matter is given space to reveal its own potential.The fact that all these techniques date back to the nineteenth century reminds us of the historicity of photography by creating networks that connect the past to the present. The state of re-sensation revealed through these networks inevitably arouses uncanny, ambiguous and vague feelings. This situation bears similarity to the transcendental expression that nineteenth-century Romanticism tried to reveal with its sublime insight. The elements of nature that evoke in the viewer feelings of fear and awe due to their dimensions...The act of keeping records is realized through the involvement of a non-representational gaze. The gaze has existed since the beginning of the history of photography. So what is meant by the non-representational gaze? There is an act of (re)seeing here, inherent in posthuman epistemology. A gaze that adds the concept to the process and is capable of making visible the relations between the human and non-human. Then what does it mean to involve the non-human in the practice of photography? Does including non-humans in the process consist of visualizing them as images per se? Although making animals, plants, objects, organics and inorganics visible in the image has an important place in posthuman thought, the act of making photographs is also a part of the articulation in question.Like his contemporaries who deal with photography conceptually, Öner prefers to depart from the (passive) position of taking the photograph towards the (active) position of making it. A return to the primals of photography by adding layers of matter to the process may be possible with the reuse of old techniques. Of course, the reuse of old techniques cannot be the sole element sought in a non-representational gaze. However, the artist’s manipulation of the chemical processes related to the primals of photography is an important step towards giving photography an organic integrity. In this way, the artist’s gesture becomes palpable. Photography thus begins to assume a position that mobilizes different emotions. While the relationship between the artist and the work requires the artist to master the knowledge and technique of the material, such mastery also prevents the artist’s alienation from his work.This type of a “comeback” is an integral part of Öner’s art practice. The materials and techniques he uses emerge as the act of photograph-making and lead to the re-sensation of the artist’s gesture. It is undeniable that what photography is today is more than a linear “progress”, but rather a retrogression. However, such retrogressions do not mean excluding digital possibilities at large, they can only be achieved by re-establishing the balance between the digital and the non-digital. In this way, a better ethical-ontological-epistemological approach can be achieved in which one does not exclude the other. This is why the exhibition In/Through the Belly of the Sky includes works produced with old techniques as well as digital and video.The technical recall in the exhibition also applies to the reception of landscape painting. Öner’s imagery inherent in landscape painting presents unmanned views, reminiscent of the landscape paintings of Romanticism. In the landscape views with no human beings in sight, elements of nature stand out that sometimes outperform human beings in scale. When the size of mountains, stones, rocks and trees are compared to humans, they create a contrast in terms of scale. The indistinct, small human silhouettes that emerge as a conscious choice of scaling remind us of the landscapes of the Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich. The color palette, revealed by the reinterpretation of old techniques, also accompanies this non-linear historic rupture. Deconstructed images of cathedrals, pixelated shrines, temples and the color fields of all these images...Large-scale images of nature, which we can describe as mathematical sublime, continue in the columns of the space. With the effect of both scaling and the angle taken, trees, branches and stones cause changes in the viewer’s vision. This change is related to the fact that non-human forms become increasingly embodied. These images make the viewer feel the presence of human in an unmanned nature.The addition of the non-representational gaze and theory in the process depends on the expansion and/or visibility of what makes photography an art object (layers of matter). With In/Through the Belly of the Sky, Kaan Kemal Öner presents a trace of the conceptual process that involves the restructuring of photography today.Uras KızılTranslation: Zeynep Nur Ayanoğlu

Kaan Kemal Öner's first solo exhibition titled In/Through the Belly of the Sky takes place at Quick Art Space between 11 May-28 June, curated by Uras Kızıl.

In/Through the Belly of the Sky

The Balance of WisdomThe balance of wisdom, which I first encountered at the Sharjah Museum of Islamic Civilisations, is one of the most complex hydrostatic balances ever designed and manufactured in the medieval Islamic world. The balance, a detailed description of which was provided by Abdurrahman Al-Khazini (11th-12th century) in his book Kitâbü Mîzâni’’l-hikme [“The Book of the Balance of Wisdom”], was used to determine the value of precious metals and gems. Al-Khazini’s balance was not only capable of making different types of measurements, but also vastly superior to all other balances of its period in terms of precision. According to contemporary sources, the accuracy of the balance of wisdom was remarkable. As Al-Khazini suggested, repetition is essential to obtain better results.For me, the balance of wisdom serves as a metaphor for the “wisdom” and balance we apply to our judgement in various situations. This metaphor symbolises our ability to balance our evaluations and decisions based on knowledge, experience, intuition and ethical values. The Balance of Wisdomexhibition focuses on the balancing processes that involve hesitation, repetition, questioning and weighing. It questions the ties, relations, boundaries and balancing processes between domestic and professional life. The exhibition focuses on issues such as the often invisible nature of domestic labour, caring for oneself and others, balancing between giving and receiving, and the reciprocity.One of the inspirations for the exhibition is Mierle Laderman Ukeles’ Manifesto For Maintenance Art 1969!Ukeles typed this three-and-a-half-page manifesto in 1969, at the peak of second wave feminism. At the time she wrote this manifesto, which was actually an exhibition proposal, Ukeles, who was, in her own words, a “full-time mother”, dedicating all her time and energy to motherhood, was thinking of transforming the tension between her identity as an artist and her identity as a mother into an art performance. “I am an artist. I am a woman. I am a wife. I am a mother (random order). I do a lot of washing, cleaning, cooking, renewing, supporting, preserving, etc. Also, (up to now separately) I ‘do’ art. Now I will simply do these maintenance everyday things, and flush them up to consciousness, exhibit them, as Art.”Ukeles discusses a dual system, which she calls “development” and “maintenance.” For Ukeles, “development” symbolises a pure individual creation, the new, the change, and the struggle, which are usually identified with the avant-garde and the masculine. Maintenance, on the other hand, refers to “dusting off” pure individual creation, protecting the new, perpetuating change - roles mostly attributed to women within intimate spaces: Clean your desk - Wash the dishes - Clean the floor - Wash your clothes - Wash your toes - Change the baby’s diaper - Finish the report - Correct the typos - Mend the fence - Keep the customer happy - Throw out the stinky rubbish - Watch out don’t put things in your nose - What shall I wear? - I have no socks - Pay your bills - Don’t litter - Save string - Wash your hair - Change the sheets - Go to the store - I’m out of perfume - Say it again—He doesn’t understand - Seal it again—it leaks - Go to work - This art is dusty - Clear the table - Call him again - Flush the toilet - Stay young By “pure individual creation”, Ukeles is clearly referring to the artistic genius, a notion that has historically been attributed to men. The artist’s exhibition proposal, titled “Care,” consists of three phases: Personal care, general care, and care for the earth. In the personal care section, Ukeles proposes to move into the museum and do the daily chores she used to do at home, this time as “public art activities.” These daily chores include sweeping and polishing the floor, dusting, wiping the walls, cooking and entertaining guests.Ukeles’ intention is to draw attention to the processes of care, to give them the value they deserve; to make unpaid, invisible labour visible; and even to elevate these processes to the status of art. The most pivotal part of her manifesto is the statement “everything I do as art is art, everything I say is art is art.” The second phase of the exhibition consists of interviews with labourers from various fields of work (cleaning worker, garbage collector, construction worker, librarian, physician, museum manager, bank manager, etc.) about their relations with care. Finally, in the section devoted to the care for the earth, Ukeles plans to bring waste to the museum and repurpose it by processing it. The artist will produce all her future works under the guidance of this manifesto.As Ukeles draws attention with her iconic work, we live in a world where care and care work - especially in the context of domestic labour - have been devalued for centuries. During the pandemic, we faced a very serious care crisis. The Care Collective , in their book titled Bakım Manifestosu: Karşılıklı Bağımlılık Politikası[“The Care Manifesto: The Politics of Interdependence”] illuminates the dilemmas of this crisis. By exposing the inequality-producing care policies that became evident during the pandemic, they envisage a care policy by which people can access care more fairly. Underlining that invisible, devalued and exploited care labour is everywhere, they argue that care must be reclassified out of the category of non-productive labour. They draw attention to neoliberalism’s insistence on prioritizing care solely for oneself and immediate family. For a more just world, it is essential to re-imagine the limits of family care, to include wider and multiple kinship models, and to call for a collective and communal life.Above are the sources of inspiration, the points of departure, and thought bubbles of The Balance of Wisdomexhibition. I invited artists whose work I believe resonates with the concept of care. The works of Alp İşmen, Başak Kaptan, Beyza Boynudelik, Çiğdem Menteşoğlu, Damla Sari, Merve Zeybek, Selin Göksel, Züleyha Altıntaş establish a dialogue with different aspects of the exhibition.Alp İşmen’s charcoal work on paper, titled Şükran [“Blessing”], centers around an object left to him by his mother. İşmen, who sleeps on the pillow once used by his mother, with whom he internalised the same air, water and life for years in the same house, transforms into an artwork, in his own words, “that pillow, which witnessed her journey to the beyond, where her final years were sealed with a last breath, where he felt the dream of her head flying on her pillow, the memory of her dream, the affection he remembered and her absence in the palm of his hand.” The painting brings to mind the circularity of caring processes, the shifting of the child-parent and parent-child relationship over time, and reminds us that being able to say goodbye to life on one’s own bed and pillow is not a privilege but a right to life/death that every human being deserves.The works of Başak Kaptan, whose object-oriented practice is evident in her works constructed between digital and analogue media, can be seen as the outputs of her co-production processes with her daughter Adel. In the video installation titled Elleri Bulut [ “Her Hands are Clouds ], a bicoloured Sümerbank sheet, which Kaptan remembers from her childhood, referring to a specific period and holding a place in the collective memory, flutters. We see Adel, a six-year-old child, playing with this sheet, unfamiliar to her, falling down and getting up again. Another work is based on Adel's process of learning to read and write during the pandemic. Kaptan traces and reproduces one of Adel's first attempts at writing the letter A, which she wrote by projecting it on the screen during the distance education process, and prints its colourless relief on engraving paper. By including photocopies of both the original and the projected version of the photograph of Adel’s right hand, which she used while writing, into the composition, she emphasises the letter A, whose shape remains intact through the projection technique used in calligraphy.Çiğdem Menteşoğlu’s paintings, based on her personal experiences, deal with emotions and concepts such as body, fertility, waiting, alienation, love, care, protection. Menteşoğlu’s series Pregnant Paus e, a title derived from the English phrase for the state of being pregnant, refers to a productive pause and silence that heralds the arrival of something new, surprising and exciting. Believing that pregnancy is not solely a biological process, the artist alludes to the pregnancy-like processes that must be experienced before the artwork emerges. Menteşoğlu’s series, which evokes dreams in various states and contains surreal elements, focuses on the process, the inner, and the new being/existence that grows and develops within. It opens up for discussion the connection between the female experience of pregnancy and the creative processes attributed to artists.Beyza Boynudelik's work titled İç Ses/Fasulye[“Inner Voice/Bean”] is a video about the domestic life of a professional artist, a woman who lives her life as an artist. As she goes about her daily household chores, the long-held sentences that the artist has been mulling over and over in her head, about the art scene and her future in particular, are transformed into this video work. During the filming, she improvises an internal conversation without preparing any text. While shelling beans in the video, she also questions the systems that produce inequality through examples such as Guerilla Girls from art history. Throughout the work, issues such as the unquestioned acceptance of the freedom granted to men and the challenge of women trying to produce art along with other tasks attributed to them, come to the fore. In the video, only the artist’s hands, busy shelling beans, are visible. Here, the “artist's hand” is not a metaphor for genius and talent, but a tool that handles vital and everyday tasks.Damla Sari participated in the exhibition as an artist who cares for outdated objects. Her kinetic installation titled Havadan Sudan[“The Trivial”]is made with the velvet used in the photographic work Hediye Paketi Olsun mu? [“Giftwrapping?”]. It resembles a living landscape, but it is actually lifeless. The image of water piled on it in an immortalised moment of death, halts the time and movement of the artist. When she thinks about the stopping of time, the artist asks herself:(How could the time of water stop?) and thinks that time cannot dominate water. She gathers the links between water, time and death in a single spot, and piles on.Merve Zeybek’s work titled Bilgelik Terazisi [“The Balance of Wisdom”] was specially produced for the exhibition. According to Merve Zeybek, all universal acts, whether artistic or not, are positioned in a place beyond representation. Because none of them represent anything, they all embody the repetition of the universe. The aim is not to represent something but to reach into its knowledge. Since everything comes into being from nothingness and the absence of nothingness, or because being emerges in nothingness, this knowledge leads to a high vibration as soon as it is attained, and this vibration is realised precisely thanks to nothingness/voidness/voidness/adam/ghayb. The rectangular areas in Bilgelik Terazisi representing the beginning, the development and the end in the work are an adventure, and at the same time a return to the essence in time, a form of disappearance and meeting the eye alongside a return to the essence. In being, there are possibilities utilized by non-being. This is an opportunity to find oneself on the path to nothingness on the balance of science.At first glance, Selin Göksel’s work titledÇocuk da Yaparım Kariyer de[“I Make a Child and a Career”]depicts a female figure who is ironing while taking care of the baby in her arms. When viewed more carefully, the figure is actually ironing herself. The mother, who goes back and forth between her home life, baby care and career, while not neglecting her child, tries to conform to the criteria of society. As the wrinkles are flattened by ironing, the figure sometimes hides who she really is, her tastes and dreams. Apart from the act of ironing, the iron in this installation represents the artist’s father, who spent years in the production of ironing thermostats for years. Göksel, who has always felt protected and cared for by her father and learned how to produce solutions to technical matters from him, symbolises through the iron that her father, who is no longer in the world, continues to silently accompany her .Züleyha Altıntaş’s work titled Görünmeyen Emek [“Invisible Labour”], produced exclusively for the exhibition, is a transparent, complex and nebulous “form.” Görünmeyen Emek establishes a therapeutic analogy between the state of being alone with oneself that provided by handcraft, its healing, restorative effect, and melancholy. Coming from the sculpture tradition, the artist uses crochet with rhythmic and repetitive movements to present both mental and bodily experience as a gigantic form. In the triptych accompanying this “sculptural” form, which looks transparent, delicate and fragile rather than sculpture in the classical sense, and which is exhibited together with the embroidery frame, the artist has a non-artist man dictate the now-iconic questions of feminist art: “Why are there no great women artists? Do women have to undress to enter the Metropolitan Museum? What if women ruled the world?” With Altıntaş’s work, the discipline of classical sculpture, traditionally representing permanence and immortality in the history of art, and often associated with a “masculine” obsession with bodily power, turns into a field of questioning.&nbsp;Nergis AbıyevaTranslation: Oğuz Karayemiş

The second group exhibition of Quick Art Space, curated by Nergis Abıyeva, will take place between September 14 and November 15. 

The Balance of Wisdom

You can download the press kit of the exhibition from here.

Exhibition

<h2>Vague Voids and Vortexes Within Us</h2>I started to engage with Bahadır’s works in the summer of 2020. At the time, I was preparing the monography titled Murat Sinkil: Dervish of Contemporary Painting. While researching Murat Sinkil, who passed away in 2016, the artist’s family and friends referred me to Bahadır for an interview. It was around this time that Bahadır had decided to move his studio and home out of Istanbul and first settled in Sapanca. When we visited the artist’s studio in Sapanca as a team of five composed of writers, curators and collectors from Istanbul, we found ourselves in a kind of &#39;land of strange wastes&#39;. I was stunned by how Bahadır’s production was in constant movement, how he used a variety of materials, the way he transformed other people’s waste like an alchemist, as well as the companionship he had with Kangu, his dog. Since that day, I have had the urge in me to share with the audience the transformation of Y. Bahadır Yıldız’s works after Galeri Apel.<h3>Waste Plastic and Carrion Aesthetics</h3>When we first started to sow the seeds of Quick Art Space, I invited Bahadır to Quick Tower. He warmed up to the idea of &#39;taking over&#39; the lobby starting from the square of the building, which was not built as an exhibition space in the first place and naturally does not stand out as a classical exhibition space, but has great interaction all around. (I think that in addition to our dialogue, the cat and dog stakeholders of Quick Tower also influenced Bahadır’s decision!) While thinking about the framework of the exhibition, we focused on the concept of &#39;carrion aesthetics&#39; that Bahadır himself came up with. Referring to the repulsive visuality of waste plastic, carrion aesthetics takes a unique place in terms of defining both the artist’s production and thinking practice. Bahadır, who takes over the Quick Tower’s square with sculptures, has created gigantic works from waste materials fit for open air and changing weather conditions.The artist made these anthropomorphic sculptures in 2015 using molten raw materials and discharge out of waste in the plastic factory production areas in the industrial zone. He transforms waste raw materials into hybrid figures during the production process in the zone. The works he produces by utilizing a gap of mass production in the factory production area are also subject to a performative process.These interactive sculptures, created by using treated fossils as plastic raw materials, are like the above-ground representations of fossils from the underground. This installation, which at first glance appears as a kind of playground for adults, children, and animals, also showcases the artist’s skill in applying large-scale sculptures outdoors.<h3>Conceptualizing the Material</h3>The artist, whose materials range from plants, shells, residues and natural dyes to industrial wastes, has also realized his works in places such as mountains and forests at different periods of his life. Focusing on human beings, their habitat and their relationship with other species in his works in the last decade, especially on the axis of nature-urban duality, the artist works on the similarities of human neurons in nature with materials such as root paint obtained from natural remains. The "Dendrite" series, which he started in 2014 as well, are made with paints produced from the remains of nature, roots and plants collected from the forest. The dendrite, which acts as a receiver in neurons, takes its name from dendron, which means tree trunk, because it resembles a tree in terms of form. While roots ensure the survival of a tree by collecting nutrient particles accumulated by nature, dendrites act as the source of life by transmitting all kinds of information from the environment to the brain. As such, information from a single source multiplies and gains completely different meanings. It creates an integrity of meaning like the nitrogen extracted from the soil by the roots becoming complexed in the tree turning into an apple.<h3>Sandpaper</h3>Becoming interested in sandpaper in 2007 when he made sand sculptures, Yıldız collects and transforms pieces from the waste containers of a sandpaper factory after various experiments. According to the artist, the spiral forms, which grow and move by overlapping with the reiterated act of wrapping , try to establish an imaginary affinity with the defence mechanisms of a person, with the structure that he weaves and grows as a shell. Perceiving the sandpaper as a shell and attempting to conceptualize the material itself, Bahadır treats the material as a structure that he constructs for himself and weaves between himself and the outside.The artist explains as follows the sculpture titled "Ouroboros", which he started to make using sandpaper again when he stayed at home during the pandemic in 2020.<blockquote>Setting off from a point and continuing in circular movements, the form merges and integrates with its own end. The resulting spiral form is Ouroboros, which symbolizes the cycle of life, devouring and rebirthing itself, and which also means integrity. The sculpture symbolizes the moment when the snake, swallowing its own tail, moves towards/against itself. The power, rhythmic movement and energy required for the beginning are present in Ouroboros. As the sandpaper is an abrasive product as a material and factory waste, a form-content unity is established, while the cyclical forms that grow by adding to each other create a duality through abrasion and renewal. The waste material, which stands against life, transforms and circulates in time.</blockquote>In the sculpture titled "Cyclic Strategies" (2021), which occupies a different place among the sculptures he made using sandpaper in his series "Psychic Defence Strategies", the irritating particles change their shells and multiply in a soft flow. The spiral forms that grow and transform by adding to each other remind of a woven cocoon that symbolizes new possibilities and transformation with the associations and encounters they create.<h3>Domestic Transformation</h3>Bahadır uses materials such as onion peel, henna, hibiscus, wallpaper, old household items and the like in order to establish an organic connection with the home and he works on the memory of space. Since 2014, he has been transforming household items with waste plastic, emphasizing consumption and habits in his works. For the artist, the idea of turning household items into skeletons, watching their transformation phases as well as getting rid of things is exciting. He takes everyday materials such as graters, pots, fryers and many household items such as bed springs to the factory and uses them in the skeleton of the sculptures or pours 250 degrees of waste plastic on them. By using the materials of everyday life in this way, he rectifies his home and the safe space ‘Household&#39;.Interested in issues such as power, the institution of family, identity and belonging, and influenced by the movements of displacement/migration, Y. Bahadır Yıldız&#39;s exhibition “Vague Voids and Vortexes Within Us” can also be seen as an extension of the artist’s desire to play in unexpected places.Nergis AbıyevaJanuary 2024, Erenköy.Translated by Zeynep Nur Ayanoğlu.

Bahadır Yıldız's 7th solo exhibition titled "Vague Voids and Vortices Within Us" is curated by Nergis Abıyeva and will take place at Quick Art Space between January 13 and February 29.

Vague Voids and Vortices Within Us

<h2>Benal Dikmen’s Women of Troy</h2>Benal Dikmen’s Women of Troy is a site-specific exhibition reimagining her previous solo shows in Çanakkale in 2023. The first at the Troy Museum on March 8, 2023 and the second at the Manfred Osman Library in September 2023, the series in Çanakkale is both the beginning and the result of a long journey. Dikmen has been working as an artist and academic since the mid-2000s and is fond of both painting and writing. For her, image and writing have at times become interchangeable. Dikmen, whose fields of study include mythology, archaeology and history, and who teaches courses such as "Mythology and Contemporary Art" and "History of Civilization" at various universities, especially MSGSU, began to research the places where the narratives that interested her took place. For this purpose, after the pandemic, he spent time in Çanakkale, a city he had long been curious about, and conducted fieldwork. Dikmen teaches courses such as “Mythology and Contemporary Art” and “History of Civilization” at MSGSU as well as various other universities and she researches specific locations where the narratives that interest her take place. For this purpose, after the pandemic, she sets off for Çanakkale, a place she has long been curious about.Much has been said and written on the Trojan War, which has been the subject of visual arts many times. During our first conversation over the phone with Benal Dikmen, talking about her project, I remember the question popping into my mind if it is actually possible to say something new about Troy in a city overflowing with Trojan legends and to create an original visualization of Troy. During our face-to-face meeting, though, having looked at the artist’s works that she had been working on for two years, this question posed by my skeptical mind disappeared and was instead replaced by an infectious excitement.In his tragedy The Trojan Women, Euripides (480-406 BC) depicts the fate of Trojan women who are left behind after their cities are sacked, husbands killed, and the surviving members of families taken away as slaves during and after the war. In other words, the Trojan war is told from the perspective of women. Drawing on both primary narratives and critical readings thereof enriched with feminist perspectives, Benal Dikmen takes a contemporary look at the situation of women in wars of all times: “It can be claimed that women’s work and warriors’ struggle are necessarily opposed to each other. The former is creative, meant to turn disorder into order while spinning wool into yarn. At the same time, the women who sustain life, feed and care for children, are engaged in textile production and child-rearing, performing the work necessary for the well-being and survival of their community. The warriors’ work in Troy, by contrast, is destructive. The death of the warriors in battle removes the care that women took to give birth to these men and to raise them from infancy,” she explains, bringing Trojan women into contemporary art.<h3>Helen’s Double Life: What can we learn from Helen, reputedly the first woman to wear pants,1 about “living a feminist life”?</h3>Helen of Troy is one of the most complex and mysterious characters in Greek mythology. For nearly two millennia, her story has been retold, reformatted and reinterpreted in different contexts for different audiences. Her character has been interpreted in contradictory ways by thinkers, poets, playwrights, novelists, musicians, directors and artists, and changed accordingly. Helen has become one of the most controversial figures of Greek mythology.In the general narrative, Helen is known in popular culture as the woman who started the Trojan War, the woman to blame for everything,2 but in fact there is some ambiguity regarding Helen’s “position” in the Trojan War. According to the narration of Greek poet Stesichorus (630-555 BC), Helen never set foot on Troy. In his poem, he writes that Helen was actually taken to Egypt and the woman Paris is said to have smuggled to Troy was only an illusion, “an image mistaken for reality”. Euripides also bases his drama, Helen, on the fact that she never set foot on Troy, but did live in Egypt.3Against the backdrop of third wave feminism, Helen has been reinterpreted by feminist writers and thinkers within the frames of beauty, responsibility and guilt. In her poem “Helen in Egypt”, written in the 1950s and first published in 1961, Hilda Doolittle explores Helen’s existence from a feminist perspective. She reworks the ancient story of Helen in a way that contrasts with the male-dominated stories of the western world and chooses Egypt as the setting of the poem in order to attribute the character a new female identity, experience and discourse, a new view of womanhood and a new quest for self-discovery. Doolittle’s Helen does not come across as a passive character whose story is told by others; she is rather an agent who can speak for herself.4According to Benal Dikmen, Helen, as the paradigm of absolute beauty, constantly evades anyone who ventures to depict her, thus denies anyone from doing so. Within these limits, Helen becomes an object of the male gaze, which leaves her open to slander and accusation as well as sexualization and fetishization. Thus, in the world of the visual arts as in the world of literature, Helen emerges as both the essence of feminine beauty and a powerful symbol of the destruction that irresistible beauty can wield.The two different Helens in Egypt and Troy, who both conflicted and reconciled with each other, have transformed into a duality that constitutes Dikmen’s work. Does this divergence emerge from Helen’s contradictions in the face of Paris’ love? Dikmen states that whereas one part of Helen wants to go with Paris, the other part prevents her from doing so, and that this divergence is the duality that separates war from love, and the external and power-driven from the internal and psychological: “The masculinity and war narrated by the Greek tradition is marginalized; in its place there appears a story of womanhood and love found in the older, less knowable civilization of Egypt.”The initial divergence between these two Helens gives us a space where the figure of Helen can be depicted outside the boundaries of the epic tradition. The artist, who understands that Helen is humiliated and misunderstood in the Greek tradition, describes her as follows: “When she is considered a victim of fate, she is seen as the silent pawn of masculine ambition and desire and, paradoxically, interpreted as sexually deviant and destructive. For the Egyptian Helen, however, there is no such accusation or questioning. The Egyptian Helen proposes a formulation of woman and her freedom, a representation of femininity that transcends the opposition between unity and division.”In Helen’s Double Life, Benal Dikmen interprets Helen not as a source of inspiration or a point of departure, but as a character to be rewritten and rethought. She repositions the female figure at the center of the epic. The artist does not prefer to put forward a fictive and didactic narrative. On the contrary, she leaves Helen open-ended, contradictory and undecided. “As a matter of fact, Helen seems to evade us as we try to understand her,” she says.As with both exhibitions in Çanakkale, collages remain at the heart of this exhibition. The artist created the works that make up the exhibition by clipping anonymous 19th century photographs. While studying textile design at the State School of Applied Fine Arts, the artist made frequent use of collage, and after graduating from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University Department of Painting, she occasionally made collages and participated in various group exhibitions with such works. Dikmen thinks that the surface of the canvas is sometimes insufficient to reflect all thoughts, and that the collage technique gives her more opportunity and convenience in expressing her thoughts and solves the problem of space more easily. Moreover, she believes that when making a collage, the unconscious —the uncanny— emerges from the unconscious, deepening the work.Consciously resorting to anachronism in all of her works in this show, Dikmen sometimes borrows clothes, objects and mythological figures from ancient Greek vases, but she has created eclectic and hybrid figures by adding elements that are not found in that period and region. Dikmen, who creates figures by clipping pieces from figures of various periods, prefers to show the figures with a blurred face, remaining faithful to the “unpresentable” Hellenic figure. Through her conscious use of anachronism, she has expanded Helen’s identity to include women from various periods and cultures who have commonly experienced the problems of patriarchy.The artist collaborates with the artist duo Ahmet Rüstem Ekici and Hakan Sorar to transform the collages into videos. The collages, consisting of anonymous female figures and various objects containing symbolism, have been printed on large fabrics upon coming together on a horizontal plane in the digital environment. The choice of fabric coincides with Dikmen’s involvement with the Carpet Workshop at Mimar Sinan, where she is a regular, and with the fact that she is a textile graduate. In addition to the video and framed collages, we have installed the six works in the space with a light panel.Benal Dikmen believes that mythological narratives demand to be conveyed to our age and should be reinterpreted according to today’s ideas, new art fields and techniques. She continues to act as a kind of “mediator” between mythology and contemporary art with this exhibition. While bringing mythological narratives back to the agenda in Women of Troy, she invites the viewer to examine the time we live in from a gender perspective.Nergis Abıyeva, March 2024, Erenköy.Translation: Zeynep Nur Ayanoğlu.1I learned that Helen was known to be the first woman to wear pants during a visit to the library in March 2023 when we had a conversation with archaeologist and librarian Gül Yurun Mavinil.2Is it a coincidence that the Adam and Eve story in the holy books adopts the same approach?3Karen Bassi, Helen and the Discourse of Denial in Stesichorus' Palinode, Winter 1993, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Winter 1993), pp. 51-75.4Nisa H. Güzel Köşker, “<a href=https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/780031 rel="noopener noreferrer" target=_blank style='text-decoration: underline'>Revision of Helen’s Myth and a New Female Discourse in Hilda Doolittle’s Helen in Egypt</a>”, Dil Dergisi, Ocak-Haziran 2016

Benal Dikmen's 7th solo exhibition titled "Trojan Women" is curated by Nergis Abıyeva and will take place at Quick Art Space between March 8 and April 28.

Benal Dikmen’s Women of Troy

Quick Art Space's mission is to support emerging artists and will collaborate with internationally acclaimed and established artists. Curatorial coherence and innovation will gain importance in the institution, which adopts an attitude away from hierarchies between disciplines and artists.

Program

The workshops I programmed under the roof of Quick Art Space continue in the new season. On September 29, Friday, 4 to 7 pm, we held a Carbon Paper Drawing Workshop in the lobby of Quick Tower, led by artist and instructor Eylül Ceren Ersöz.

Carbon Paper Drawing Workshop with Eylül Ceren Ersöz

The third of the summer workshops programmed by Nergis Abıyeva under the roof of Quick Art Space took place in Quick Tower’s lobby, led by artist and instructor Muaz Özden.

Collective Painting Workshop with Muaz Özden

Constructed Nature Exhibition

Quick Art Space, which started its activities as a non-profit culture and art center in the summer of 2023, set out to be a dynamic and sustainable platform.

Quick Art Space: A New Living Space

Led by artist and trainer Selin Göksel, Talking Hands workshop, the second of the summer events, took place in Quick Tower’s lobby. In the workshop, participants took a mould of their hands with alginate material. Some chose to take a mould from the world of sign language or emojis.

Talking Hands Workshop with Selin Göksel

Vague Voids and Vortexes Within Us

The first event programmed by Nergis Abıyeva under the roof of Quick Art Space took place on June 22, Thursday, 4 to 6 pm in the lobby of Quick Tower, led by artist and instructor Desen Halıçınarlı.

Wood Engraving Workshop with Desen Halıçınarlı

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The curatorial text of Quick Art Space's first exhibition "Constructed Nature" is in the Argonotlar library.

The Curatorial Text of Constructed Nature is at Argonotlar Library

Quick Art Space aims to be a resource for art lovers and we are here to inform you about the latest art events

Constructed Nature was discussed at Aposto

Gathering Everyone Together: Constructed Nature

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Quick Tower, uluslararası alanda tanınmış mimar Gerhard G. Feldmeyer tarafından tasarlanmıştır. Sürdürülebilirlik ilkesi göz önünde bulundurularak mekânsal kalite en üst düzeyde tutulan Quick Tower, estetik ve işlevselliği bir araya getiren benzersiz bir yapı olarak öne çıkmaktadır

Quick Tower's Story

Canan Cürgen Gültaş

Museologist, curator and writer

Emre Erbirer

Cultural manager, program curator and writer

Kültigin Kağan Akbulut

Publisher and writer

Nergis Abıyeva

Founding Director

Seza Sinanlar Uslu

Art historian, academic and writer

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Quick Tower is located right next to the D-100 highway and on the M4 Kadıköy-Kartal metro line. It is 5 minutes walking distance to M4 Kozyatağı metro stop (exit 3).

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Quick Tower is a 5-minute walk from Kozyatağı Station of the M4 metro line.

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Thanks to the transferring feature of carbon paper, we had the chance to improve our drawing skills by transferring the images we are interested in from magazines and newspapers on paper or wooden surfaces. Using carbon paper in different colors such as black, yellow and navy blue, we first practiced on paper surfaces, and then our instructor Eylül encouraged us to experiment on wooden surfaces.Thirty five people attended the three-hour workshop. The materials for the workshop, which was open to everyone and free of charge, were provided by Quick Sigorta as usual.An abstract from Abıyeva’s article on QMAG’s August issue.

The Collective Painting workshop takes its inspiration from the Exquisite Corpse game that Dadaist-Surrealist artists of the 20th century played.“Each player to participate in the game writes/draws a word/image on a piece of paper and gives it to the next person. The result is a paper composed of shapes and writings. These random works immediately bring to mind the Dadaist technique of writing poetry. Dadaists wrote down on paper the first word that comes to mind, collected them in a box and created poems by drawing lots. They left poetry entirely up to chance. The game “Delicious Corpse” (Figure 33) is like another variation to this. In this game, imagery also came into play.“Participants drew on paper or pasted cut-outs from magazines or encyclopedias. They folded them and gave them to another participant without showing. Thus, amorphous figures and surreal compositions emerged. Some of the participants who mentioned before they did not know how to paint at all enjoyed it thank to the collage technique. As a result of the workshop, rich and of random collective paintings were produced. Once again, children and the childlike enjoyed the Collective Painting workshop the most! 😊“In addition to Maher Group employees and Quick Tower tenants, Quick Art Space’s Instagram followers also participated in the workshop. The collective painting workshop was a public program, free of charge, in accordance with the principles of Quick Art Space.”An abstract from Abıyeva’s article on QMAG’s August issue.

Join Quick Art Space's workshops and embark on a new journey in the magical world of art. Join our workshop programs to explore your creativity, learn new skills and experience the power of art. An experience full of art awaits you!

Photos from the Workshop

The second event of the summer workshops programmed by Nergis Abıyeva at Quick Art Space was held with artist and trainer Selin Göksel. The demand was so high for the first Talking Hands workshop which took place on July 26, Wednesday, 3 to 6 pm, in the lobby of Quick Tower that a second round of it was organized on July 28, Friday.“We held the second of the summer workshops I programmed at Quick Art Space with artist and instructor Selin Göksel, whereas we continue to work on our corporate identity. The participation to the Talking Hands workshop on July 26, Wednesday 3 to 6 pm in Quick Tower’s lobby was incredible. Unable to withstand the high interest in the workshop, Selin agreed to repeat the workshop on July 28, Friday :) In addition to Maher Group employees and Quick Tower tenants, Quick Art Space’s instagram followers also attended the workshop. The Talking Hands workshop, which we organized as a free public event in accordance with the principles of Quick Art Space, which aims to be a non-profit culture and art institution, was sponsored by Quick Sigorta.“The main material of the workshop, alginate, is used to take detailed mouth impressions in dentistry. Dentists use alginate to replicate the teeth and jaw structure. Dental prostheses, mouthguards and other dental applications are designed accurately. Alginate is a 100% non-toxic and hypo-allergenic material; in other words, it is harmless for living and environmental health. When Selin mixed alginate and plaster to obtain a purple mortar, the participants dipped their hands into the material and were fascinated to see that it first turned pink and then froze white.[9] Since the most important time for the material to start freezing is the first 5-10 seconds, Selin was supported by her artist friend Mihriban Mirap as a volunteer. 28 moulded sculptures emerged in more than three hours.“For the alginate moulding workshop, we chose the image of the hand, which attract our attention in artworks from cave paintings to contemporary art. The plaster moulds made by Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) between the late 19th and early 20th centuries, which are now in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, inspired the participants. Selin placed a file of signs and emojis on the table to help those who failed to decide what hand shape to do.“As a curator who thinks that museums, arts and culture institutions and galleries should develop policies that do not exclude children, I aim to organize “child-friendly” workshops instead of separating children and adults. Artist Ercan Vural came with his daughter and they took moulds of their hands together. There were also mothers and daughters who took moulds of their hands, stating that they were looking forward to the next workshop. All these beautiful moments were photographed by Murat Bakmaz.”An abstract from Abıyeva’s article on QMAG’s August issue.

Workshop

“Desen Halıçınarlı, who lives in Istanbul and realizes international projects across different countries, especially in Denmark, was inspired by the trees around the building when she visited Quick Tower in May and designed a unique tree of life. On the branches of the tree of life, Desen placed tiny human beings that appear in her paintings which attentive eyes would notice. The artist also made reference to the inevitable cycles and flow of life with the text Change, Transformation, Interaction, in which she manifested her typographic aesthetics. Change, transformation, interaction is of Maher Holding’s motto for 2023 and heralds its future plans.“The free workshop, open to everyone with no quota limit, was attended by Maher Holding’s employees working at Quick Tower, as well as people from the art scene. In the “child-friendly” workshop, children were welcome to participate with their parents, and it was them who made the most creative prints.“Materials were provided by the workshop, some of the participants printed on tote bags as well which they brought with. At the end of the printing process, the participants took home an original print designed by Desen Halıçınarlı. Some of the participants acted creatively in the process of printing the mould carved by Desen on paper, which resulted in interesting prints.”An abstract from Abıyeva’s article on QMAG’s August issue.

The first event programmed by Nergis Abıyeva under the roof of Quick Art Space took place on June 22, Thursday, 4 to 6 pm in the lobby of Quick Tower, led by artist and instructor Desen Halıçınarlı. Inspired by the sustainability, livability and functionality principles of the LEED Platinum certified Quick Tower, water-based paints and wooden moulds designed by Desen were used to print on A4 sized ecological papers in the workshop.

THE BALANCE OF WISDOM

IN/THROUGH THE BELLY OF THE SKY

BENAL DIKMEN’S WOMEN OF TROY

VAGUE VOIDS AND VORTEXES WITHIN US

CONSTRUCTED NATURE EXHIBITION

CARBON PAPER DRAWING WORKSHOP WITH EYLÜL CEREN ERSÖZ

COLLECTIVE PAINTING WORKSHOP WITH MUAZ ÖZDEN

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