“Image Things”
Artist: Tommy Hartung
Curator: Hasan Bülent Kahraman
The image is not real. It is a reflection. What is real are objects. Without objects, there would be no image. But there is a reality composed and woven by images. This is realised by not resorting to return to nature. Merely looking at nature is enough to compose the object. Yet images are not just a projection of the object and nature but also of the mind and memory. Thus, images are realised not as reflections, but as projections.
Images are specific realities. Tommy Hartung’s work endeavours to transcend the ontic structure of the object. He is concerned with elevating its natural position to a meta-natural and mental level. He designs a new level and a new plane of the real in its relationship severed from nature. This also involves envisaging a new plane for the human being. The human being exists with words and with language. The human being is a narrator. And it is not that important whether this is fiction or not. The important thing is the narrative itself. The narrative is always beyond the real. Every narrative is a narrative beyond/a meta-narrative. Through visualising language, rendering the narrative into an image, Hartung drives the human being to question its own existence once again. This time, the human being is in the images and the narratives in Hartung’s work, but remains invisible. For if there is an image and a narrative, and if that image and that narrative are reconstructed, then the human being is there and present. This is the first phase of the human being existing as itself as an extra-natural being. There are things no more, only image things, and now they contrive the human being. Besides, the image is not singular, it is plural. We are at a cross section and at a layer where images produce more images and where images are produced through images. Hartung is the founder of this new universe.
Fair tickets are on sale from Mobilet.
You can visit the video works of Tommy Hartung at Istanbul Convention Exhibition Center - Rumeli Hall, Akbank Sanat booth. A1 – 100
Photo Credit:
TOMMY HARTUNG
Imitating Nature Without Pity, 2018
360 degree spherical video collage, touch screen
Touch screen: 27", Video: 360 degrees
Ed 1/7