Memory Chamber (Istanbul)

5 December 2019 – 9 February 2020
Memory Chamber
Pilevneli Project, Istanbul

Reminiscence Bump
2019
Installation

Neverthere
2019
Installation
310 x 1000 x 120 cm

Decay
2017
Video, 10′ 18” & Installation

The Angels of Immortality
The Backyard of God Series
2019
Mixed Media
370 x 300 x 25 cm

The Seven Wardens of Heaven
The Backyard of God Series
2019
Mixed Media
290 x 450 x 25 cm

The Legend of Iliad
2013
Oil on Canvas
250 x 480 cm

Key to Troy
The Backyard of God Series
2019
Mixed Media
300 x 330 x 30 cm

Çemberlitaş Hill 1F
Kostantiniyye Series
2016
Mixed Media
150 x 150 x 30 cm

The uses of objects and the memories they evoke differs according to personal experiences and historical contexts. These aspects of evocative objects reveal their power intensely in the installations. Never There is an inner crust confined by space and objects. As Pierre Nora suggests, space and objects turn into lieu de mémoire (a site of memory). Every object here is a material embodiment of a moment of a past. In Reminiscence Bump, the artist leaves the task of tracing past to the audience. Using one of the evocative objects of his childhood, the artist shows the ruin of an atrocity. Nevertheless, the reality is opaque; there are clues and signs, which allow us to decipher it. Yet, all in all, evocative objects are a keen reminder to not forget about the things we think and live with.

Time not only permeates every word spoken; it also robs the historian of the sources with every passing day. In Memory, using archival footage as the sound of memories, the artist unearths his vision of how recorded memories can contribute crucially to the interpretation of histories. He regards language as a view of history, and in Language, he shows how it functions in the delicate area between dominance and oppression as an instrument of power. The video suggests that language is the system within which subjects are constituted as subjects and subjected to ideology and control.

Memory Chamber features the installations of the artist toys with objects. Also exhibited are the patchworks, a new body of polychrome and surreal ceramics, mixed media works that integrate metal convex hemispheres into paintings sculpturally and predominantly large-format oil paintings that disrupt the genre of traditional painting. The exhibition sponsored by Daax Corporation displays the artist’s imaginative use of evocative objects and discloses how the politics of memory works by asking who decides how to recall the past. The exhibition is accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue with an essay by Hans Irrek on the philosophical aspects of the artist’s practice and works.