[spectre] WHITE, curated by Basak Senova

[Basak Senova]

WHITE
curated by Basak Senova

6–28 January 2012

CDA-Projects
Istanbul
http://basaksenova.com/ex_25.html

Deriving from the perceptual response to drawing as a conceptual language.
The title “White” is substituted in Turkish as “Siyah”, which means ‘black’.
This word game with the translation of the title implies the uncertainty and
the complexity beneath the ‘coded’ oppositions. While the application of
black and white could directly refer a perceptual opposition, both of these
colours have their own physical and rhetorical characteristics and are
simply different by definition. In the same line of thought, each artist in
this exhibition responds to complicated and conflicting strategies and
languages, thus allowing the exhibition to cast a light on what is
neglected, missing, abstracted, but nonetheless intoxicating and destructive
in the practice of ‘drawing’. This examination appears as a direct reaction
to developing a conceptual language that is at once a destructive, menacing
and impossible system of forms. While each work is distinct in terms of
visuality and concept, they share interest in researching the potential of
drawing as critical practice unbound by rules and methods.

“White” is also an attempt to look closer into the drawings of artists Alban
Muja, Aya Ben Ron, Ceren Oykut, Luchezar Boyadjiev, Gözde İlkin, Erik
Göngrich, İlgen Arzik, Maria Loizidou, and Yane Calovski. The relationship
between the works are analyzed not so much through a potential conceptual
methodology or a shared thematic imposition, but rather through specific
reasons in applying a direct constrain—using only the colours black and
white.

Most of the works are processes of repetitive acts trapped within
conflicting and unresolved situations. The act of looping repetitive
gestures and lines accumulates the sense of being trapped in a vicious
circle. In order to address the idiosyncratic nature of the selected works,
the spatial design of the exhibition is based on a horizontal linear setting
that challenges the verticality of the gallery walls.  All of the works in
the exhibition are presented on a table that spreads through every room of
the gallery. While navigating through the exhibition, due to the positioning
of this long table, visitors are challenged to draw circles and re-visit
parts of the table in order to reach every available work in the exhibition.

“White” is supplemented by a book edited by curator Basak Senova which
presents the works and the process of arriving at the concept and design of
the exhibition. The book is available through CDA-Projects, Istanbul.

*”Siyah” in Turkish.