| Description | The exhibition class="carousel-control-prev” took place between 4 October 2021 and 16 January 2022 at the Evliyagil Museum Ankara's outpost in Istanbul Evliyagil Dolapdere Gallery. http://www.muzeevliyagil.com/en The larger exhibition is entitled 5 Artists & 5 Videos - An Extensive Video Exhibition, and it is curated by the prominent Turkish curator Beral Madra, who worked as a curator and commissioner of the Turkish Pavilions at the 43rd, 45th, 49th, 50th and 51st Venice Biennials. Five international artists have been invited to stage five solo exhibition projects. The exhibition presents a survey of video art, and its distinct role in the evolvement of the international contemporary art since 1960s. This exhibition is initiated and supported by an established art institution, the Evliyagil Museum Ankara.
“5 Artists, 5 Videos”
04.10.2021-16.01.2022
Evliyagil Dolapdere
Artists: Adrian Paci, Danille Vallet Kleiner, Ergin Çavuşoğlu, Ferhat Özgür, Gülçin Aksoy
Curator: Beral Madra
With the video exhibition "5 Artists, 5 Videos, An extensive video exhibition," Evliyagil Dolapdere Gallery aims to signify that video practice by artists is an effective tool and language within the transformations of art from the early productions in the late 60’s up to today’s Relational Aesthetics.
By remembering Vilém Flusser’s words, one can understand the basic function of the video (*)
"Vielleicht haben wir - malgré nous und ohne daß die Video Leute sich dessen bewusst sind - ein Instrument erfunden, mit dem sich mindestens so gut philosophieren lässt wie mit den 26 Buchstaben.“
"Maybe we have - malgré nous and without the video people being aware of it - invented an instrument with which one can philosophize at least as well as with the 26 letters."
As long as the monopolizing influence of television invades every living room, video production of artists has been a valid practice in order to question the ongoing cultural assumptions and attitudes of the public related to global media and its hegemonic influence. Within today’s post-truth system it seemed essential to accentuate the meaning and value of video medium again as an effective tool to display the truth and its inevitable companion, the memory.
In today’s art, video-art has played a crucial role in closing the gap between the Relational Aesthetics and the viewer, for not only being simply an unusual extension of TV that is an everyday wonder for the society of spectacle but also its flexibility, immediacy, and digital broadcasting facilities. Evidently, during the pandemic, the digital presentation became an essential source for information and cultural feedstuff.
From the beginning, loaded with social and political concerns, the artist's video art is designated to allow the viewer to achieve a certain critical gaze and intellectual resistance. Within the framework of electronic communication culture, the masses are conformed to seek diversion and entertainment more than concentration and determination. In the hands of the artists, video-medium has conducted the needs of the masses to the ultimatums of art such as exploration, inquiry, discovery towards the hard-to-reach truths.
After almost 50 years of development, video art has entered the art scene in Turkey early 90's; the earliest examples were more experimental, perceptual, and documentary than art-theoretical. Later, when shooting and editing techniques become more sophisticated, complex layers of meaning, metaphors of vision, strategies of repetition, and illusionistic concerns have molded an effective language of artistic expression.
In this exhibition, the gallery presents three aspects of today's video works. First, video works underline the fascination and seductiveness of electronic technology and how deeply it affects art production. Subsequently, even if it has paradoxes in its presence and substance, it also accentuates the power of technical image-making in juxtaposition to traditional representations. Finally, the presentation with a selection of videos from the corpus of artists' work aims to invite the viewer to a concentrated retrospective insight into their work.
Beral Madra |
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