Contemporary Istanbul 21st Edition
Artists: Esra Özdoğan, Gülin Hayat Topdemir, Nazif Topçuoğlu
Curator: Hasan Bülent Kahraman
Weird things are happening...
In the world, and everywhere. Technological development, the transformation of everyday life, dismantles everything familiar, everything known. There is a serious problem of displacement. This ‘displacement’ unsettles the structures of our consciousness and normative memory. We find ourselves deterriteriolized, on the shores of something that can be neither otherwise nor familiar, or perhaps of something entirely unknown, while every single object within it remains familiar.
Freud said that the uncanny derives from what is known and recognizable.
Then, we live in uncany times. We feel the uncanny drifting toward a deep and heavy melancholy, that black water, writhing beneath a dark sun.
And yet, we derive a strange, inexplicable pleasure from all these new buildouts, just as we do from all that is uncanny, frightening, and creepy.
The gothic, too, concerns the unknown face of pleasure.
This exhibition brings together works that, distinct yet composing one another, invite us to dwell on these concepts.
A chilling gaze upon the uncanny, and all that is weird!
Hasan Bülent Kahraman
* Fair tickets can be purchased from biletix website.