Aslı Seven on Risk of Rain, 2024 [EN]
Entitled Risk of Rain, the exhibition explores intertwined materialities of water, desire, heartbreak and material production processes through a series of works-as-bodies, which appear as at once organic and artificial, spanning sculpture, drawing, assemblage, text and sound.
A meteorological possibility underlies the exhibition. As desire, heartbreak and trauma manifest themselves through bodily fluids; atmospheric transformations, biological bodies, industrial processes and optical devices become affective subjects on the verge of making it rain. Or, on the verge of creating a momentary focus in our distracted, dopamine-addicted present. Arising from the global urge and desire to find what and who you love under these circumstances, the sculptures in the exhibition each elaborate on a selected moment of focus under conditions of distraction, around the possibility of romantic love, affective states in an everyday family gathering, the softness of a wound or around moments of epiphany in the artistic process.
A relatively small and seemingly simple steel sculpture is placed at the center of the exhibition. Its shape is reminiscent of a designer chair but obfuscates any compatibility with the sitting human form. The function is dislocated yet the metaphor is active, as in mounting a horse: it is titled Horses. When seen from the perspective of the small piece of Tyvek paper hanging on it, displaying a hand made copy of the Faber Castell logo, it becomes a frame. Breaking the horse, training living matter, taming your own body: an archeology of making and of industrial production capitalizing on material, emotional, organic and cultural resources across centuries can begin here. Friction and adaptation are central in this and many other works on display: the drawing was made using the transfer technique, applying pressure between two surfaces and pushing a color pencil across the paper. Friction creates the trace, as much as it provokes erasure. Same can be said of Breakfast with Family, one of the larger installation pieces, where erosion becomes central, as a metaphor for memory embodied by the material, in this case, wood: painted, perforated, scraped, carved out, filled up and varnished. Much like the artist’s intentionally amateur sewing and clumsy stitches that cover the surfaces of bags and of the silicone suture kits reaching out from the mechanical body of Open Surgery: An inventory of different shapes of wounds on soft tissue, fillings and stitches over scar tissue. In Cem’s works matter and material processes stand for layers of collective and individual trauma, sediment after sediment. Can love and contingency ever be compatible? He mentions in passing “the truth that when love is conditional, our hearts will be unconditionally broken”. Am I In Love features twin little monsters, fire, danger and deflection as much as it conveys warmth and light, millions of little suns our iphones are. Love remains a question, never becomes a statement. Its simple possibility, as in real life intimacy, is quickly overturned by defensive tactics, scary posturing and irony, all characteristic features of online and parasocial relationships.
There are attempts to collect a momentary focus and form, often through the presence of a liquid process. In Breakfast with Family this comes in the form of acrylic water lenses through which a series of five photographic prints come to view. The water lens creates an interplay of scale within the photographic image, reliant on the viewer’s movements and animates the image through this central tension: its focus keeps changing as you shift your position, and so does its relationship to the rest of the exhibition space, momentarily reflecting through the body of water encapsulated within the acrylic porthole. In another instance, Open Surgery is half surrounded by a glass structure carrying its own evaporation metaphor, much like in a condensation cube or a heated aquarium, the glass surface is obscured by an accumulation of matter. While the fluid in Breakfast with Family serves as an optical device, here its shading effect comes as a protective layer in support of the mechanical body it shelters. Occultation might be a necessity when it comes to focus. The barely discernible magnetic drawing in Omnipotent is an underwater self portrait trickstering through the conductivity of water and lightning to describe a moment of artistic epiphany, on the verge of drowning.
[TR]
Serginin temelinde meteorolojik bir olasılık yatıyor. Arzu, kalp kırıklığı ve travma bedensel sıvılar aracılığıyla kendini gösterirken; atmosferik dönüşümler, biyolojik bedenler, endüstriyel süreçler ve optik cihazlar yağmur yağdırmanın, ya da dikkati dağılmış, dopamin bağımlısı bir ortamda anlık bir odak yaratmanın eşiğinde duran duyarlı özneler haline geliyor. Bu koşullar altında neyi ve kimi sevdiğini bulmaya yönelik küresel dürtü ve arzudan doğan sergideki heykellerin her biri, sürekli dikkat dağınıklığı koşulları altında, romantik aşk olasılığı, gündelik bir aile toplantısındaki duygusal durumlar, bir yaranın yumuşaklığı veya sanatsal süreçteki aydınlanma anları etrafında seçilmiş odak anlarını ele alıyor.
Nispeten küçük ve basit görünen çelik bir heykel serginin merkezinde yer alıyor. Biçimi bir tasarım sandalyesini andırıyor ancak oturan insan formuyla herhangi bir uyumluluğun inkarında. İşlev kaybolmuş ancak metafor ata binme eyleminde olduğu gibi aktif: İş “Atlar” başlığını taşıyor. Üzerinde Faber Castell logosunun elle yapılmış bir kopyasını sergileyen küçük Tyvek kağıt parçasının perspektifinden bakıldığında, bir çerçeveye dönüşüyor. Atı dizginlemek, canlı maddeyi eğitmek, kendi bedenini evcilleştirmek: yüzyıllar boyunca maddi, duygusal, organik ve kültürel kaynaklardan yararlanan bir yapım ve endüstriyel üretim arkeolojisi burada başlayabilir. Sürtünme ve uyumlanma bu ve sergilenen diğer birçok çalışmanın merkezinde yer alıyor: çizim, iki yüzey arasında basınç uygulayarak, renkli bir kalemi kağıt üzerinde iterek elde edilen transfer tekniği kullanılarak üretilmiş. Sürtünme, silmeye neden olduğu kadar izi de yaratır. Aynı şey, malzemenin, bu durumda ahşabın, boyanmış, delinmiş, kazınmış, oyulmuş, doldurulmuş ve cilalanmış haliyle somutlaşan hafızanın bir metaforu olarak erozyonun merkeze yerleştiği büyük enstalasyon parçalarından biri olan “Aileyle Kahvaltı” için de söylenebilir. Tıpkı sanatçının “Açık Ameliyat “ın mekanik gövdesinden uzanan silikon dikiş takımlarının ve çantaların yüzeylerini kaplayan kasten amatörce attığı dikişler gibi: Yumuşak doku üzerinde farklı biçimlerde yaralar, yara dokusu üzerinde dolgular ve dikişlerden oluşan bir envanter. Cem’in işlerinde madde ve maddi süreçler, kolektif ve bireysel travma katmanlarını temsil ediyor. Sevgi ve olasılık hesapları birbiriyle bağdaşabilir mi? “ Sevgi koşullu olduğunda, kalplerimizin koşulsuz olarak kırılacağı gerçeğinden” bahsediyor. “Yoksa aşık mıyım?” ikiz küçük canavarları, ateşi, tehlikeyi ve yön saptırmayı içerdiği kadar sıcaklık ve ışığı, telefonlarımızın milyonlarca küçük güneşini de içeriyor. Aşk bir soru olarak kalır, asla bir beyana dönüşmez. Salt olasılığı bile, tıpkı gerçek hayattaki yakınlıkta olduğu gibi, çevrimiçi ve parasosyal ilişkilerin karakteristik özellikleri olan savunma taktikleri, korkutucu duruş ve ironi tarafından hızla altüst edilir.
Çoğunlukla maddenin halleri arasında gezinen bir sürecin üzerinden anlık odak ve biçim toplama girişimleriyle karşı karşıyayız. “Aile ile Kahvaltı” adlı iş, akrilik su mercekleri aracılığıyla görüntülenen beş fotoğraf baskısından oluşuyor. Su merceği, izleyicinin hareketlerine bağlı olarak fotografik görüntü içinde bir ölçek etkileşimi yaratıyor ve görüntüyü bu merkezi gerilim aracılığıyla canlandırıyor: izleyen konumunu değiştirdikçe görüntünün odağı da değişiyor ve sergi alanının geri kalanıyla ilişkisi de dalgalanıyor, anlık olarak akrilik lombozun içine hapsedilmiş su kütlesinden serginin bütünü yansıyor. Bir başka örnekte, “Açık Ameliyat”, kendi buharlaşma metaforunu taşıyan cam bir yapıyla yarı yarıya çevrili; tıpkı bir yoğuşma küpünde veya ısıtılmış bir akvaryumda olduğu gibi, cam yüzey bir madde birikimi tarafından örtülüyor. “Aile ile Kahvaltı “daki sıvı optik bir aygıt işlevi görürken, buradaki buğulandırma etkisi, barındırdığı mekanik bedeni destekleyen koruyucu bir katman olarak ortaya çıkıyor. Odaklanma söz konusu olduğunda gizlilik bir gereklilik olabilir. “Omnipotent”’teki zar zor fark edilen manyetik çizim, su ve şimşeğin iletkenliğiyle sihir yapan bir sualtı otoportresidir, boğulmanın eşiğindeki bir sanatsal aydınlanma anını betimler.
Ayşe Ertung on No Entry, 2022 [EN]
No Entry, contradicting its semantic nature, welcomes you with open arms via wiggly stainless pipes, crystal beads, snot, wigs and all sorts of accidental visual stimuli. Having the impenetrable in mind, Can Küçük and Cem Örgen penetrate hermetic areas of the mental abyss and the physical realm. With altered warning signs, obstacles, and even totems, they provide concrete and sincere narratives for taboo phenomena and situations. Following the natural flow of an intimate yet mundane conversation between friends, No Entry, dives deep into the personal but due to its wary disposition, chooses to re-emerge halfway, and floats instead. The conversation spreads out to the exhibition space as fragments of intimacy appear in various forms and conditions.
For each work by Can Küçük, there is a work by Cem Örgen complementing it, and vice versa. Objects remain loyal to their assigned tasks while refusing prohibitions of the status quo and lifting the boundaries of intimacy. Küçük and Örgen orchestrate subtle acts of trespass and disregard for the audience to undermine their rigid title, No Entry. By climbing up the artwork to see a two channel video, by lighting a wish candle or by accessing the gallery's storage space, the audience yield to this rupture. This way, not only the artists gain accomplices throughout the exhibition, but also, they discern and re-outline the eroded margins of impact of the warning sign “No Entry”.
Matt Hanson on You Can’t Hide in the Sky, 2021 [EN]
Downwind from the Aqueduct of Valens, built in the fourth century of the common era, there is a complex of breezy, multistory storefronts that make up one of the first experiments in strip mall architecture in Istanbul. Now flanked by swirling freeways, the capitalist optimism that ended 20th-century globalization with Americanized free market rule has been reduced to a whimper, as so many glass storefronts at the “Istanbul Drapers Market” (IMÇ) are blank with the smudge of tape detailing their abrupt closure, or slow reopening.
At the fifth block of IMÇ, a trio of young artists is sitting in conversation. Among them is Can Küçük, who is tasked with overseeing operations at 5533 for the first half of the year. Titled after the block number of the shop room where it is based, 5533 has the ambiance of a warehouse factory. Cem Örgen, who studied industrial product design, produced a diverse and ultramodern installation, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” incorporating computer games, camouflage painting and sculptural elements.
Küçük, whose works play on the histories and manufacturing of readymade art and decorative furniture, examines elements of the industrial environment in his practice. As a point of site-specific consciousness, he made a door ringer out of a hard-coiled metal spring which hangs from the ceiling behind the door to 5533, as it swings open to the sound of a spoon clanking out of an empty rectangle. The cold, metallic assemblage is prefatory to the works of “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” which includes window blinds that resemble flat, model swords.
For the piece, “Weapon for Ephemeral Eyes,” Örgen laser-cut stainless steel into the shape of a body-length medieval saber, which inconspicuously functions as vertical blinds and stands in direct, visual dialogue with a variegated work, “Case, Keyboard, Winter,” in which a single-channel video plays on loop from a computer monitor, projecting the artist’s character from the gameplay “Demon’s Souls.” Örgen, born in 1996, is a gothic postmodernist with a weakness for good graphics.
As a designer, Örgen has a distant appreciation of objects, as the media through which styles and usages are pronounced, exchanged and transformed. As part of the art world and its interdisciplinary inclusivity, his installation for 5533 quietly pulses with the aesthetic and conceptual fascinations of the cultural moment, considering such concurrent shows like “Elektroizolasyon” at Arter. But Örgen does not seem to be trying to fit in, quite the opposite, his individuality is as genuine and eccentric as his reasons for doing what he does.
Internal dynamics
There’s a whole and complete contiguity of ideas that run through Örgen's installation, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” which speaks to the contrasts between movement and stillness. The use of camouflage paint, in particular, is associated with that middle ground of rest potent with a sense of anticipated compulsion. It is a fixture, and settlement, in all of its modes and expressions which defines domestic life. Yet, spun within the frame of a mind that is unable to stop floating and spinning, in search of action, Örgen’s is the voice of youth, self-objectified.
One aspect of “Case, Keyboard, Winter” is a central processing unit (CPU) mainframe with mountain climbing handles affixed to the end of its legs. Every unit of the piece is handmade. The bench and table on which the monitor rests are jigsaw cut spruce, and topped with a sponge cushion, the work has an unfinished look. Room 5533 is essentially a white cube. In the center of his installation, Örgen manufactured a table out of aerated concrete. It is sculpted with a depression into the core of its surface, which makes for a medievalist, ceremonial air.
Functionality is turned on its head throughout, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” such as where Örgen sliced an Adidas tracksuit and represented its vintage color and form in the keys of a piano. The conversion of materials into likenesses other than that normally ascribed to their original contexts is an apt motif in Örgen’s installation from the beginning. Over the door, Örgen cut out a car cover, and fitted it with transport wheels. The paper-thin resemblance of the piece, “Folded Skin” requires a stretch of the mechanical imagination.
Across the selling floor of the compact shop room, Örgen applied silicone to the construction of a cable management spine so as to convey the shape of a backbone connecting the wall to the tiles. The work, titled, “Sweaty Bone,” has unassuming visibility, yet holds to the vision of its idea with certain confidence. And wrapping the ceiling lamps in medical gauze, softening their illumination, "You Can't Hide in the Sky” encompasses the commercial interior with the double-sided, mutual nature of concealment and exposure.
Örgen littered texts around his installation, which winds down a hallway under a course of polypropylene plastic sheets for the piece, “Water and Bad,” set within an aluminum profile and pockmarked with screw nuts. At the very farthest corner from the entrance to 5533, there is a stack of pages. On it, Örgen has divulged some of the psychological genesis of his artwork as an artificial, environmental metaphor for his dark relationship to the source of natural light, as reflected in how conscious he had become of the narrowness of sight, as limited by the eye.
Yağmurun Riski, 2024 [TR]
Tutku erozyona uğradı çünkü daha çok hissetmek için kaynağa inmek yapmayı adilleştirmeye başladı.
Bu aralar telefonuma gelen tek bildirim Apple’ın kulak sağlığım için müziğin sesini kısma önerisi, kalbimin kırık olduğunu anlaması beni rahatsız ediyor. Aslında başka bir organıma hüznümün geçmemesi için beni uyarıyor. Neyse ki sevdiğim şeyi yapıyorum, oldukça nadir ve şanslı bir durum gibi bir şey yani birçok kişi benzerini söylüyor ya da sevilen şeyi bulmak gibi küresel bir motivasyon var. Boşlukla bu kadar stimüle olan bir jenerasyon için bul demek yeterince erotik değil. Klavyemdeki tuşlar plastik enjeksiyon metoduyla üretildikten sonra üzerine uv baskı yapılmış, bir süredir silip tekrar yazdığım için üzeri biraz nemli ve terlemiş. Dünyadaki endüstriyel üretimin en erişilebilir ve ucuz malzemesi zararlı güneş ışınlarıyla işaretlenmiş ve ben de bütün bunların üzerine terliyorum. Çalışan terler, güneş hayatın kaynağıdır, plastik sınırsızdır. Terlememin sebebi epik değil, ne bir buluş, ne bir fikir ya da teknikten oluşuyor, sadece dokunduğum yerin şehvetinden türeyen dikkatsizliğimin bir araya gelerek bir anlık dikkat oluşturmak istemesi. Bu haliyle hislerime dahil olması yeterli, zaten aşkın ne olduğuna dair bir fikrim yok.
Dikkatsizliğim dikkatimin ortak ve eş olarak çevreye dağılması aslında, bu güncel bir travma, dikkat toplayamamak. Bir şeyi düşünülmeye değer bulmanın kişisel motivasyonunu nedense kolayca titreştirebiliyor yanıbaşımızdaki şeyler. Bu, dikkat dağıtan şeyleri de kişisel yapar, verilen sevgi koşullu olduğunda kalbimizin koşulsuz kırılacağı gerçeğine benzer.
Risk of Rain, 2024 [EN]
Passion was eroded because reinforcing emotions to get to its roots has turned “making” into a fair thing.
The only notification I get on my phone these days is Apple’s suggestion to turn down the music for my ear health, it bothers me that it understands that my heart is broken. Actually, it’s warning me not to pass my sadness to another organ. Fortunately I’m doing what I love, it’s a rare and lucky situation, so many people talk about this, or there is a global motivation to find what is loved. For a generation so stimulated by emptiness, the prompt to “find it” is not erotic enough. The keys on my keyboard are produced with the method of plastic injection molding and then UV printed. Since I have been typing, erasing and typing again for a while, they are a bit damp and sweaty. The most accessible and cheapest material of industrial production in the world is carved with harmful sun rays and I am sweating on all this. The laborer sweats, the sun is the source of life, plastic is unlimited. The causality of my sweating is not epic, it is not an invention, an idea or a technique. It is just that my lack of attention, derived from the lust of where I touch, wants to collect itself together to create a momentary focus. Its inclusion in my emotions is enough as it is, I have no idea what love is anyway. My distraction is in fact the dispersal of my focus to the environment as a collaborator and partner. This is a contemporary trauma, not being able to gather attention. For some reason, the things right beside us can easily arouse our personal motivation to find something worthy to think about. This makes distracting things highly personal, and resembles the truth that when love is conditional, our hearts will be unconditionally broken.
Translated by Aslı Seven
Pop lyrics. Single-channel music video (3’01’’), 2024 [EN]
My heart pumps blood that my veins can’t reach, so I write out of my body and reality to feel a reach. Let me use these walls to heal my speech.
When I sweat, this is a new era we bet, these works push my body to sunset, forget. Rushing to the ground to find the truth in debt. No tracks for me, only for you to comfortably penetrate. I’m stepping into my crisis to only renovate, never found my issues in climax to emulate. I don’t regulate, I fluctuate.
Cause I’m moodier than your mood boards, erected to the main course, time teaches me to love lost, daily hits me like a racehorse. Just rented the studio to cry in a grace source.
I use these tools most lately, heartbroken enough to add more tools maybe. I don’t use, I misuse, abuse then introduce greatly, no time for love mainly, spiraling in my desk unshapely. Thinking about her, and how this affected my work fully, love it. You’re still in the process, lock it. Is this calm and collected? Fuck it. Bolted, jolted, welded, melted, molded, note it.
Now I brush my teeth for so-called connections, no tension, just installed corrections. My energy covers all up your mentions. This industry does the beef under the surface through sessions, friends reached me with new lessons. Never learned art from an art scene like a contestant. Born in a white room, serving the white cube full of assessments, my discoveries belong to my disconnect like I need my refreshments.
This is for whom mix time investment with gatekeeping. Contemporary creeping to them with truth-seeking. One TikTok gave people more power than their 10 years of critiquing. Now stop acting like a dog, pre-manhood in a fog, lack of emotional clock, only feels like a TED talk. I mostly do red talk, have a lot of bust with fact talk. I don’t find my courage in a ref source.
I just wanna grow into a tree, mixed with the blue of the sea. When I expose my roots, I don’t feel free. Let people taste my roots in my fruits like it’s supposed to be. Wanna stretch my branches to loved ones and friends, then we grow to be. Already broke my wisdom tooth in this industry. Doing this full-time cause I rule time when they give me my artist fee.
Çim Biçme, Garp Sessions: Belgeleme ve Yeni Üretim 2019-2022 s. 50-54, 1.Baskı 2023 [TR]
Kurak bitki örtüsünde büyüyen canlıların sıklıkları azdır. Birbirine yakınlıkları kullandıkları kaynakların yeterliliğine göre değişebilir. Ben genellikle yalnız büyüdüm, sıkı sıkıya yanımda tuttuğum şeylerin yeterli olduğunu düşünerek. Rüzgar kurak coğrafyalara eşlik eder, sürekli sirküle olan hava nemlenecek zamanı bulamaz. Neden sıkılmadığımı çok düşünmedim. Rüzgarı ne kadar çok teninde hissedersen o kadar çevrenin kocaman bir hacimle dolduğunu düşünürsün. Dolayısıyla ağaçlar ve çalı kümelerinin arasındaki mesafeler gittikçe artar, sanki her birinin anlaştığı ve bağlı olduğu toprakta sınırları vardır. Onlara yaklaştığında birlikte hissedersin çünkü beslendiği boşluğa girmiş olursun, çok yakınında büyümeye çalışırsan büyük ihtimalle birlikte ölürsünüz. Babakale biraz böyle, her bitki tane tane, eğer su seviyesinden yukarıdaysan aralarındaki mesafe daha çok açılıyor ve bazı anlarda dağlarla sarılmış biricik yerlerde sıklaşan bitki örtüsüne rastlıyorsun. Fanatik bir his, boşlukla çevrildiğinde onu dolduracak hisleri durduracak dirençle karşılaşmazsın. Denize yakın evde buluşuyorduk, benim genellikle akşamüstü çimlerin üzerine uzandığım ve gökyüzünü izlediğim yerin altında mezar varmış. Bunu sonra öğrendim, oraya yeniden geldiğimde vücudumun izi görünür olduğu için aynı yere yatmaya çalıştım. Nedense disiplinli olmam gerekiyormuş gibi hissetmiştim. Köyde savaş gururunu ve tarihini taşıyan ipuçları görebiliyorsunuz. Stratejik bir avantaj, coğrafyanın ve toprağın kullanıldığı bir zaferi herkes biliyor ama artık güncel değil dolayısıyla bunu yaşatmak için köyün merkezinde bıçak üreten bir zanaatkar var. Bıçakları öldürme özelliklerine göre tasarlamayacağına artık yemin etmiş ve biz de ordaki günlerimiz boyunca meyve ve sebze kesiyorduk. Kurak yerler sulu meyve verir. Ben 15 yaşımda bile bazen yatağa işiyordum, utandığım için arkadaşımda kaldığım zamanlarda uyumadan önce hiç su içmezdim. Su içeren besinlerin her zaman şehvetli bir eşiği vardır, belki de çevrelerinin kuraklığıyla birlikte onlar için biricik olan topladıkları suyun bir anda dışarı çıkmasıyla katlanır. Bütünüyle erotik ve muhafaza temelli bir an, sıkı sıkıya saklanılan değerler dürtüldüğünde dışarıya sakince çıkmazlar. Su buranın geçim kaynağı, balıkçılık Babakale’de olmasaydı burası kendini sürdüremezdi. Dolayısıyla herkes suyun değerinin farkında. Hayatım boyunca deniz yerine ormana yakın yaşadım, bu beni daha dolaylı düşünen biri yaptı. Ormanda çizgiler gökyüzünden toprağa inerken sürekli bozulur ama denizde çok temel çizgisel bir denge vardır ve süreklidir. Yaz aşklarının masum ve doğrudan olması belki de bu yüzdendir. Liman buranın en yapılaşmış yeri, kaynak olduğu için oraya odaklanılan kararlar köyün diğer kısımlarını daha sakin ve sosyal yapmış. Denizle karanın birleştiği yerler liman kadar evcil değil, çoğunlukla taşlık ve deniz kestaneleriyle kaplanmış. Yüzmek isteyen birinin karadan suya geçerken sadece ısı ve yoğunluk değişkeni dışında odağını suyun altına vermesi gereken bir an. Basılan yer, yüzmeye başladığımız ve bitirdiğimiz anda önemlidir. Ne kadar yazı sevmediğimi söylesem de suyun altında dolaşırken elim tanınmayacak kadar cildimin kırıştığı anları çok severim. Aşınım katı maddelere özeldir, mecazda zaman için kullanılır. Yazdığım zamanla Babakale’de olduğum zamanın arasından yaklaşık 3 yıl geçmiş olabilir. Hafızamın neleri taşıdığını yeni öğreniyorum. Deniz kestaneleri suya doydukları için içlerinde protein taşırlar çünkü güneş onlara ancak kırılarak ulaşabilir.
Grass Cutting, Garp Sessions: Documentation and Commissioned Works 2019-2022 pg. 50-54, 1. Edition 2023 [EN]
The density of beings growing on acrid vegetation is low. Their distance from one another may change according to the sufficiency of the resources they use. I basically grew up alone, thinking that the things I hold onto dearly are enough. The wind accompanies arid landscapes, and the constantly circulating air does not have time to moisturize. I didn’t question why I wasn’t bored, the more you feel the wind on your skin the more you think your surroundings are filled with an immense volume. So the distances between the clusters of trees and plants become greater and greater as if each of them has its boundaries in the soil that they agreed on. When you get close to them you feel together because you enter the space where they feed, if you try to grow too close you will probably die together. Babakale is a bit like that, each plant is piece by piece, if you are above sea level, the distance between them gets bigger and sometimes you encounter more dense vegetation in rare patches cuddled in mountains. It feels fanatic because when you're surrounded by emptiness, there's no resistance to stop the sensations to fill it. We used to meet at the house near the sea, and I found out later that there was a grave under the place where I usually lay on the grass in the afternoon and watched the sky, and when I came back there again, I tried to lie on the same place because the trace of my body was visible. For some reason, I felt like I had to be disciplined. In the village, you can see hints of war pride and history. Everyone knows the strategic advantage, a victory using geography and land, but it's no longer relevant, so to keep it alive there is an artisan in the center of the village who makes knives. He has sworn that he will no longer craft knives for killing properties and we were cutting fruits and vegetables during our days in Babakale. Dry places produce juicy fruit. Even when I was 15, I sometimes peed in bed, and when I was staying at my friend's houses, I never drank water before going to sleep because I was embarrassed. Watery foods always have a lustful threshold, perhaps because in the aridity of their environment they endure the sudden release of the water they have collected, which is unique to them. It's a moment of total eroticism and preservation, of tightly held values that don't come out quietly when prodded. Water is the source of livelihood here, without fishing in Babakale this place would not be able to sustain itself, so everyone is aware of the value of water. All my life I have lived closer to the forest than the sea, and this has made me a more indirect thinker, in the forest, the lines are constantly distorted as they descend from the sky to the underground, but in the sea, there is a very basic linear balance and it is continuous. Perhaps this is why summer loves are innocent and direct. The harbor is the most developed part of the village, since it is the source, the decisions concentrated there have made the other parts of the village more calm and social. Where the land meets the sea is not as tame as the harbor, mostly stony and covered with sea urchins. It is a moment when swimmers focus not only on the temperature and density variables but also on the water underneath when moving from land to water. Where we step is important at the moment we start and end the swim. No matter how much I say I don't like summer, I love the moment when my skin wrinkles so much that I don't recognize my hand while wandering underwater. Erosion is specific to solids, used metaphorically for time. About 3 years may have passed between the time I am writing and the time I was in Babakale. I'm just learning which memories I carry. Sea urchins carry protein inside them because they are saturated with water and the sun can only reach them through refraction.
Translated by Deniz Kırkalı
Gökyüzünde Saklanamazsın, Kılıç, 2021 [TR]
Göz evreninden kurtulma çabam güneşten nefret ederek başladı. İçeriye güneş girmesini engellemek için perdeler, cildimin üzerine geçirdiğim kıyafetler, güneşi kontrol etmenin yollarından bazılarıydı. Zamanla içerinin ve dışarının sınırlarını güneşin kontrolü altında olan ve olmayan alanlara benzetiyordum. Bu sınırlar, ışığın içeri sızdığı ve odamı boydan boya böldüğü anlar kadar grafikti. Bazen hırsıma yenik düşüp güneşe çıplak gözle bakmaya çalışırdım ve hızlıca yaşlanan gözlerimle yenilgimi kabul ederdim. Bu bütünüyle bir yenilgiydi, bakışmamız süresince güneş gücünü yitirmemişti ve gözlerimin görmeyi yitirebileceği anın korkusunda gözümü kapatmıştım.
Eldiven, 2021
Oturduğumda yüzümden ve parmaklarımın ucundan damlayan terleri görüyorum. Vücudumu terk ediyorlar. Yoğun bir çalışmadan sonraki memnuniyetimle vücudumun kuruması neredeyse eş zamanlı. Derim kuruyup çekiliyor, kas ve kemiklerime yaklaşıyor. Ter, yerdeki girintiler ve çıkıntılarda yeni biçimini alıyor. Vücudumun tekrar suya ihtiyaç duyduğunu önce kuruyan dudaklarımdan ve sonra boğazımdan anlayabiliyorum.
Memnuniyetim genellikle bundan sonra azalır, yerini daha buruk bir his alır. Çalışmam bittikten sonra hissettiğim boşlukla - sanki o ana kadar körü körüne yapmaya inanmam gerekiyormuş. Kendi gözümden kaçmanın yolu buydu, düşündüğümde ve kurduğumda, her yapma çabamda, görmemek.
You Can’t Hide in the Sky, Sword, 2021 [EN]
My effort to get rid of the eye universe started by hating the sun. The curtains to prevent the light from coming inside and the clothes I wore on my skin were some of the ways to control the sun. Over time, I counterpoise the boundaries of the interior and exterior areas were and were not under the control of the sun. These boundaries were as graphic as the moments when light infiltrate in and cut across my room. Sometimes I would succumb to my ambition and try to look at the sun with naked eye and quickly admit the defeat with tears in them. It was a complete defeat; the sun had not lost its power during our gaze and I was blinded in the fear of my eyes might lose sight.
Gauntlet, 2021
When I sit down, I see the sweat dripping from my face and my fingertips. They are leaving my body. The satisfaction I feel after hard work and the drying of my body are almost simultaneous. My skin runs dry and shrinks, drawing near to my muscles and bones. Sweat re-forms itself in recesses and protrusions on the floor. I see that my body needs water again; I can tell it from my dry lips first, and then from my throat.
The satisfaction I feel usually decreases afterward; it gets replaced by somewhat an acrid feeling. With the sense of emptiness, I feel after my work is done – I had to have blind confidence in doing it. It was the way to avoid my own eyes; unseeing while I think, while I set up, and in every effort of doing.
Translated by Ekin Tümer
Zaman Paktı, 2020 [TR]
Bulanık ve parlak manzaraya nefessiz bir biçimde bakıyorum. Bu şaşkınlıkla oluşan bir nefessizlik değil sadece nefes almayı öğrenmediğim bir andayım. Doktorlar bu sürenin çok uzun sürmeyeceğinin farkındalar. Göbek bağı kesildikten sonra bebeklerin vücutlarında dolaşan kanı kendi akciğerlerinde temizlemesi gereken an bu. Çoğu bebek gibi ters çevriliyor ve hızlıca kuyruk sokumumdan vücuduma taşan bir acıyla ağlamaya başlıyorum. Gözlerim ters dönmüş dünya manzarasına tanıklık ederken, göz yaşlarım bana eşlik ediyor. Annemin karnında vücudumu saran su kümesinden sonra dünyayı su ile doldurmaya çalıştığım bir çaba gibi ağlamak. Bu çabam sonsuza kadar sürse belki başarıya ulaşırdı. Ama şimdilik ters düz olmuş dünyayı izleyerek ağlamayı öğrenmiştim.
Time Pact, 2020 [EN]
I’m looking at the blurry and radiant landscape breathlessly. This stance does not consist astonishment, I’m merely in a moment in which I haven’t learned how to breathe yet. Doctors know that this moment is not going to last long. This is the time when babies should clear the circulating blood in their lungs right after the umbilical cord is cut. I have been turned upside down like some babies with the pain acidly overflowing from my tail end to my whole body, I start crying. As my eyes witness the upturned view, my tears accompany me. Crying is like an effort to fill the world with water after being wrapped by a cluster of water in my mother’s womb. Maybe this effort of mine would pan out if it lasted forever. But for now, I’ve learned to cry by seeing the inverted world.
Aslı Seven on Risk of Rain, 2024 [EN]
Entitled Risk of Rain, the exhibition explores intertwined materialities of water, desire, heartbreak and material production processes through a series of works-as-bodies, which appear as at once organic and artificial, spanning sculpture, drawing, assemblage, text and sound.
A meteorological possibility underlies the exhibition. As desire, heartbreak and trauma manifest themselves through bodily fluids; atmospheric transformations, biological bodies, industrial processes and optical devices become affective subjects on the verge of making it rain. Or, on the verge of creating a momentary focus in our distracted, dopamine-addicted present. Arising from the global urge and desire to find what and who you love under these circumstances, the sculptures in the exhibition each elaborate on a selected moment of focus under conditions of distraction, around the possibility of romantic love, affective states in an everyday family gathering, the softness of a wound or around moments of epiphany in the artistic process.
A relatively small and seemingly simple steel sculpture is placed at the center of the exhibition. Its shape is reminiscent of a designer chair but obfuscates any compatibility with the sitting human form. The function is dislocated yet the metaphor is active, as in mounting a horse: it is titled Horses. When seen from the perspective of the small piece of Tyvek paper hanging on it, displaying a hand made copy of the Faber Castell logo, it becomes a frame. Breaking the horse, training living matter, taming your own body: an archeology of making and of industrial production capitalizing on material, emotional, organic and cultural resources across centuries can begin here. Friction and adaptation are central in this and many other works on display: the drawing was made using the transfer technique, applying pressure between two surfaces and pushing a color pencil across the paper. Friction creates the trace, as much as it provokes erasure. Same can be said of Breakfast with Family, one of the larger installation pieces, where erosion becomes central, as a metaphor for memory embodied by the material, in this case, wood: painted, perforated, scraped, carved out, filled up and varnished. Much like the artist’s intentionally amateur sewing and clumsy stitches that cover the surfaces of bags and of the silicone suture kits reaching out from the mechanical body of Open Surgery: An inventory of different shapes of wounds on soft tissue, fillings and stitches over scar tissue. In Cem’s works matter and material processes stand for layers of collective and individual trauma, sediment after sediment. Can love and contingency ever be compatible? He mentions in passing “the truth that when love is conditional, our hearts will be unconditionally broken”. Am I In Love features twin little monsters, fire, danger and deflection as much as it conveys warmth and light, millions of little suns our iphones are. Love remains a question, never becomes a statement. Its simple possibility, as in real life intimacy, is quickly overturned by defensive tactics, scary posturing and irony, all characteristic features of online and parasocial relationships.
There are attempts to collect a momentary focus and form, often through the presence of a liquid process. In Breakfast with Family this comes in the form of acrylic water lenses through which a series of five photographic prints come to view. The water lens creates an interplay of scale within the photographic image, reliant on the viewer’s movements and animates the image through this central tension: its focus keeps changing as you shift your position, and so does its relationship to the rest of the exhibition space, momentarily reflecting through the body of water encapsulated within the acrylic porthole. In another instance, Open Surgery is half surrounded by a glass structure carrying its own evaporation metaphor, much like in a condensation cube or a heated aquarium, the glass surface is obscured by an accumulation of matter. While the fluid in Breakfast with Family serves as an optical device, here its shading effect comes as a protective layer in support of the mechanical body it shelters. Occultation might be a necessity when it comes to focus. The barely discernible magnetic drawing in Omnipotent is an underwater self portrait trickstering through the conductivity of water and lightning to describe a moment of artistic epiphany, on the verge of drowning.
[TR]
Serginin temelinde meteorolojik bir olasılık yatıyor. Arzu, kalp kırıklığı ve travma bedensel sıvılar aracılığıyla kendini gösterirken; atmosferik dönüşümler, biyolojik bedenler, endüstriyel süreçler ve optik cihazlar yağmur yağdırmanın, ya da dikkati dağılmış, dopamin bağımlısı bir ortamda anlık bir odak yaratmanın eşiğinde duran duyarlı özneler haline geliyor. Bu koşullar altında neyi ve kimi sevdiğini bulmaya yönelik küresel dürtü ve arzudan doğan sergideki heykellerin her biri, sürekli dikkat dağınıklığı koşulları altında, romantik aşk olasılığı, gündelik bir aile toplantısındaki duygusal durumlar, bir yaranın yumuşaklığı veya sanatsal süreçteki aydınlanma anları etrafında seçilmiş odak anlarını ele alıyor.
Nispeten küçük ve basit görünen çelik bir heykel serginin merkezinde yer alıyor. Biçimi bir tasarım sandalyesini andırıyor ancak oturan insan formuyla herhangi bir uyumluluğun inkarında. İşlev kaybolmuş ancak metafor ata binme eyleminde olduğu gibi aktif: İş “Atlar” başlığını taşıyor. Üzerinde Faber Castell logosunun elle yapılmış bir kopyasını sergileyen küçük Tyvek kağıt parçasının perspektifinden bakıldığında, bir çerçeveye dönüşüyor. Atı dizginlemek, canlı maddeyi eğitmek, kendi bedenini evcilleştirmek: yüzyıllar boyunca maddi, duygusal, organik ve kültürel kaynaklardan yararlanan bir yapım ve endüstriyel üretim arkeolojisi burada başlayabilir. Sürtünme ve uyumlanma bu ve sergilenen diğer birçok çalışmanın merkezinde yer alıyor: çizim, iki yüzey arasında basınç uygulayarak, renkli bir kalemi kağıt üzerinde iterek elde edilen transfer tekniği kullanılarak üretilmiş. Sürtünme, silmeye neden olduğu kadar izi de yaratır. Aynı şey, malzemenin, bu durumda ahşabın, boyanmış, delinmiş, kazınmış, oyulmuş, doldurulmuş ve cilalanmış haliyle somutlaşan hafızanın bir metaforu olarak erozyonun merkeze yerleştiği büyük enstalasyon parçalarından biri olan “Aileyle Kahvaltı” için de söylenebilir. Tıpkı sanatçının “Açık Ameliyat “ın mekanik gövdesinden uzanan silikon dikiş takımlarının ve çantaların yüzeylerini kaplayan kasten amatörce attığı dikişler gibi: Yumuşak doku üzerinde farklı biçimlerde yaralar, yara dokusu üzerinde dolgular ve dikişlerden oluşan bir envanter. Cem’in işlerinde madde ve maddi süreçler, kolektif ve bireysel travma katmanlarını temsil ediyor. Sevgi ve olasılık hesapları birbiriyle bağdaşabilir mi? “ Sevgi koşullu olduğunda, kalplerimizin koşulsuz olarak kırılacağı gerçeğinden” bahsediyor. “Yoksa aşık mıyım?” ikiz küçük canavarları, ateşi, tehlikeyi ve yön saptırmayı içerdiği kadar sıcaklık ve ışığı, telefonlarımızın milyonlarca küçük güneşini de içeriyor. Aşk bir soru olarak kalır, asla bir beyana dönüşmez. Salt olasılığı bile, tıpkı gerçek hayattaki yakınlıkta olduğu gibi, çevrimiçi ve parasosyal ilişkilerin karakteristik özellikleri olan savunma taktikleri, korkutucu duruş ve ironi tarafından hızla altüst edilir.
Çoğunlukla maddenin halleri arasında gezinen bir sürecin üzerinden anlık odak ve biçim toplama girişimleriyle karşı karşıyayız. “Aile ile Kahvaltı” adlı iş, akrilik su mercekleri aracılığıyla görüntülenen beş fotoğraf baskısından oluşuyor. Su merceği, izleyicinin hareketlerine bağlı olarak fotografik görüntü içinde bir ölçek etkileşimi yaratıyor ve görüntüyü bu merkezi gerilim aracılığıyla canlandırıyor: izleyen konumunu değiştirdikçe görüntünün odağı da değişiyor ve sergi alanının geri kalanıyla ilişkisi de dalgalanıyor, anlık olarak akrilik lombozun içine hapsedilmiş su kütlesinden serginin bütünü yansıyor. Bir başka örnekte, “Açık Ameliyat”, kendi buharlaşma metaforunu taşıyan cam bir yapıyla yarı yarıya çevrili; tıpkı bir yoğuşma küpünde veya ısıtılmış bir akvaryumda olduğu gibi, cam yüzey bir madde birikimi tarafından örtülüyor. “Aile ile Kahvaltı “daki sıvı optik bir aygıt işlevi görürken, buradaki buğulandırma etkisi, barındırdığı mekanik bedeni destekleyen koruyucu bir katman olarak ortaya çıkıyor. Odaklanma söz konusu olduğunda gizlilik bir gereklilik olabilir. “Omnipotent”’teki zar zor fark edilen manyetik çizim, su ve şimşeğin iletkenliğiyle sihir yapan bir sualtı otoportresidir, boğulmanın eşiğindeki bir sanatsal aydınlanma anını betimler.
Ayşe Ertung on No Entry, 2022 [EN]
No Entry, contradicting its semantic nature, welcomes you with open arms via wiggly stainless pipes, crystal beads, snot, wigs and all sorts of accidental visual stimuli. Having the impenetrable in mind, Can Küçük and Cem Örgen penetrate hermetic areas of the mental abyss and the physical realm. With altered warning signs, obstacles, and even totems, they provide concrete and sincere narratives for taboo phenomena and situations. Following the natural flow of an intimate yet mundane conversation between friends, No Entry, dives deep into the personal but due to its wary disposition, chooses to re-emerge halfway, and floats instead. The conversation spreads out to the exhibition space as fragments of intimacy appear in various forms and conditions.
For each work by Can Küçük, there is a work by Cem Örgen complementing it, and vice versa. Objects remain loyal to their assigned tasks while refusing prohibitions of the status quo and lifting the boundaries of intimacy. Küçük and Örgen orchestrate subtle acts of trespass and disregard for the audience to undermine their rigid title, No Entry. By climbing up the artwork to see a two channel video, by lighting a wish candle or by accessing the gallery's storage space, the audience yield to this rupture. This way, not only the artists gain accomplices throughout the exhibition, but also, they discern and re-outline the eroded margins of impact of the warning sign “No Entry”.
Matt Hanson on You Can’t Hide in the Sky, 2021 [EN]
Downwind from the Aqueduct of Valens, built in the fourth century of the common era, there is a complex of breezy, multistory storefronts that make up one of the first experiments in strip mall architecture in Istanbul. Now flanked by swirling freeways, the capitalist optimism that ended 20th-century globalization with Americanized free market rule has been reduced to a whimper, as so many glass storefronts at the “Istanbul Drapers Market” (IMÇ) are blank with the smudge of tape detailing their abrupt closure, or slow reopening.
At the fifth block of IMÇ, a trio of young artists is sitting in conversation. Among them is Can Küçük, who is tasked with overseeing operations at 5533 for the first half of the year. Titled after the block number of the shop room where it is based, 5533 has the ambiance of a warehouse factory. Cem Örgen, who studied industrial product design, produced a diverse and ultramodern installation, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” incorporating computer games, camouflage painting and sculptural elements.
Küçük, whose works play on the histories and manufacturing of readymade art and decorative furniture, examines elements of the industrial environment in his practice. As a point of site-specific consciousness, he made a door ringer out of a hard-coiled metal spring which hangs from the ceiling behind the door to 5533, as it swings open to the sound of a spoon clanking out of an empty rectangle. The cold, metallic assemblage is prefatory to the works of “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” which includes window blinds that resemble flat, model swords.
For the piece, “Weapon for Ephemeral Eyes,” Örgen laser-cut stainless steel into the shape of a body-length medieval saber, which inconspicuously functions as vertical blinds and stands in direct, visual dialogue with a variegated work, “Case, Keyboard, Winter,” in which a single-channel video plays on loop from a computer monitor, projecting the artist’s character from the gameplay “Demon’s Souls.” Örgen, born in 1996, is a gothic postmodernist with a weakness for good graphics.
As a designer, Örgen has a distant appreciation of objects, as the media through which styles and usages are pronounced, exchanged and transformed. As part of the art world and its interdisciplinary inclusivity, his installation for 5533 quietly pulses with the aesthetic and conceptual fascinations of the cultural moment, considering such concurrent shows like “Elektroizolasyon” at Arter. But Örgen does not seem to be trying to fit in, quite the opposite, his individuality is as genuine and eccentric as his reasons for doing what he does.
Internal dynamics
There’s a whole and complete contiguity of ideas that run through Örgen's installation, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” which speaks to the contrasts between movement and stillness. The use of camouflage paint, in particular, is associated with that middle ground of rest potent with a sense of anticipated compulsion. It is a fixture, and settlement, in all of its modes and expressions which defines domestic life. Yet, spun within the frame of a mind that is unable to stop floating and spinning, in search of action, Örgen’s is the voice of youth, self-objectified.
One aspect of “Case, Keyboard, Winter” is a central processing unit (CPU) mainframe with mountain climbing handles affixed to the end of its legs. Every unit of the piece is handmade. The bench and table on which the monitor rests are jigsaw cut spruce, and topped with a sponge cushion, the work has an unfinished look. Room 5533 is essentially a white cube. In the center of his installation, Örgen manufactured a table out of aerated concrete. It is sculpted with a depression into the core of its surface, which makes for a medievalist, ceremonial air.
Functionality is turned on its head throughout, “You Can’t Hide in the Sky,” such as where Örgen sliced an Adidas tracksuit and represented its vintage color and form in the keys of a piano. The conversion of materials into likenesses other than that normally ascribed to their original contexts is an apt motif in Örgen’s installation from the beginning. Over the door, Örgen cut out a car cover, and fitted it with transport wheels. The paper-thin resemblance of the piece, “Folded Skin” requires a stretch of the mechanical imagination.
Across the selling floor of the compact shop room, Örgen applied silicone to the construction of a cable management spine so as to convey the shape of a backbone connecting the wall to the tiles. The work, titled, “Sweaty Bone,” has unassuming visibility, yet holds to the vision of its idea with certain confidence. And wrapping the ceiling lamps in medical gauze, softening their illumination, "You Can't Hide in the Sky” encompasses the commercial interior with the double-sided, mutual nature of concealment and exposure.
Örgen littered texts around his installation, which winds down a hallway under a course of polypropylene plastic sheets for the piece, “Water and Bad,” set within an aluminum profile and pockmarked with screw nuts. At the very farthest corner from the entrance to 5533, there is a stack of pages. On it, Örgen has divulged some of the psychological genesis of his artwork as an artificial, environmental metaphor for his dark relationship to the source of natural light, as reflected in how conscious he had become of the narrowness of sight, as limited by the eye.