28/05/2024 | Writer: Kaos GL
The exhibition will take place between May 18 and August 2 at Zilberman Gallery’s main space in Beyoğlu, Mısır Apartment.
Photograph: Kayhan Kaygusuz
Erinç Seymen’s exhibition Kīpuka opened at Zilberman on May 18. On view until August 2, the exhibition is introduced in the press release as follows:
“The exhibition, which gives place to artists’ recent works, creates a compelling dialogue between disaster, temporality and control.
The exhibition titled ‘Kīpuka’ derives its name from the Hawaiian word for an island formed by surrounding lava flows—a land that survives and is preserved amid chaos and disaster. This physical separation serves as a metaphor for a state of isolation or detachment from the external world. Throughout the exhibition, Seymen highlights the distinct discrepancy between the borders of knowledge and unawareness. The exhibition explores the temporality of disaster; knitting a trajectory of timelessness of tragedy by highlighting instances of mythology and history. While the artist has previously delved into social relations and class in his exhibitions, he now examines the other side of the coin, weaving a biopolitical nexus between class dynamics, control and its temporality.
Kīpuka intersects with the concept of disaster in complex ways, reflecting upon broader societal power dynamics and responses to crises, it ponders upon the temporality of disaster and its unifying power amidst society. In works such as Jugendglück, Untitled and Kīpuka the artist delves into governance of disasters whereas in works titled Gods and Disasters, Arms of Tantalus, MisPrintce and PlanC, the artist focuses on governance of power. Seymen delves into the relationship between control and temporality in his videoworks, Alle gegen alle, Troubadours and Insured. Drawing a line on how time changes the effects of disasters and control in the society.
The work that gives the exhibition its name, Kīpuka, showcases a drawing of a sleeping child amidst a volcanic eruption. Influenced by the word itself, Seymen points out the silent moment before a disaster; forming a land of peace along with unawareness. The artist uses time as a messenger of disaster, time emphasizes the forthcoming disasteral power amidst silence, thus time becomes the perpetuity and the transience at the same time. Seymen continues pondering on disaster and knowledge with two artworks; Jugendglück and Untitled. The artist creates a parallel with two artworks by questioning the notion of disaster; how the public decides to name a situation as disaster and disaster’s interchanging role on shaping the society.
Seymen creates a discourse within works by delving into different instances from mythology and history and their exchange with control and disasters. The exhibition starts with the artwork titled MisPrintce, a familiar work that draws the viewers in. The work that consists of 21 stamps with one errored stamp, reiterates the interchanging capital of a disaster. This woven relationship shows the ever growing rhizomatic expansion of capital, profitizing an error or disaster. MisPrintce portrays Prince Albert II of Belgium’s photo with diamonds emphasizing the pioneer role Belgium plays in the diamond market without harboring mines. Seymen carries this relationship between control and profitizing to the Gods and Disasters series. The series showcases two different drawings of proletariat workers shaped around the illustrations of 18th century publisher Pieter van der Aa. The drawings highlight a class difference between the workers and monsters nuancing to the controlling elite.Seymen broadens this relationship of power in his artwork Arms of Tantalus through the story of Tantalus. Tantalus, a powerful king in Greek mythology, is often associated with the notion of control. After trying to deceive gods to learn if they have the knowledge they portray to have, Tantalus was condemned to Tartarus, the deepest part of the underworld, where he stood in a pool of water beneath a fruit tree. However, whenever he reached for the fruit or tried to drink the water, they would recede from his grasp, just out of reach. This eternal punishment is seen as a symbol of the futility of grasping for control over one's desires and circumstances. Seymen again creates a parallel between disaster and temporality within Tantalus’s story, highlighting the unending power of time, displaying the controlling effects of its continuality.
Kīpuka unveils the interwoven relationship of class, temporality and disaster; unearthing the ancient story of power and control over societies through his artworks. Erinç Seymen’s Kīpuka is on view at the gallery’s main space located at the Mısır Apartment in Beyoğlu between May 18, 2024 - and August 2, 2024.
About Erinç Seymen
Erinç Seymen (b. 1980, Istanbul, Turkey) focuses on critiquing class differences, society, gender, identity, family, and nationalism. The artist works in various disciplines, including painting, sculpture, video, and installation. They transform the concept of power, a central theme in her artistic production, by confronting it through the actions depicted in their works.
Erinç Seymen graduated from Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts, Painting Department in 2006 and received his MA from Yıldız Teknik University Art and Design Faculty, with a thesis about Bob Flanagan. He participated in conferences and his articles have been published in various magazines on topics such as militarism, nationalism and gender issues. Since 2002, he has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in İstanbul, Ankara, Berlin, Vienna, Paris, London, Helsinki, Eindhoven and Lisbon. Some of his solo exhibitions are Kīpuka (Zilberman Istanbul, 2024), Homo Fragilis (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2017), Go Back To The Very Beginning (Galata Greek Primary School, Istanbul, 2017); The Seed and The Bullet (Rampa, Istanbul, 2012), Persuasion Room (Galerist, Istanbul, 2009), Man Jam curated by Aura Seikkula (Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki, 2007); Selected group exhibitions he participated in are: Suppose You Are Not, a selection from the Ömer Koç Collection (Arter, Istanbul, 2024), Everything will be just like now – just a little different (Künstlerhaus Palais Thurn und Taxis, Bregenz, 2023), Look Up, Starry Horizons of the Limited Geography Exhibition (Pancar Deposu, Bursa, 2022), Your Body is a Battleground, selection from the Agah Uğur Collection (Union Francaise Building, Istanbul, 2022), Locus Solus (Arter, Istanbul, 2021), 7th Çanakkale Biennial (Troya Müzesi, Çanakkale, 2020), The Child Within Me: A Selection from the Ömer Koç Collection (Abdülmecid Efendi Köşkü, Istanbul, 2019), A Day at Hotel (Zilberman Istanbul, 2018), Appropriation? Case? (Yapı Kredi Kültür Sanat, Istanbul, 2018), ğ – the soft g (Schwules Museum, Berlin, 2017), OHNE (Mekan68, Vienna, 2016), Every Inclusion is an Exclusion of Other Possibilities II (SALT Beyoglu, Istanbul, 2015), VIVO with Ahmet Dogu Ipek, Kerem Ozan Bayraktar (Kasa Gallery Sabanci University, İstanbul, 2015), Plurivocality, Visual Arts and Music in Turkey (Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul, 2014), Between The Lines, All Visual Arts (London, 2013), Panorama. Landscapes 2013-1969 (Museo del Palacio de Bellas Artes, Mexico City 2013), Berliner Herbstsalon (Maxim Gorki Theater, Berlin, 2013), Moods: A Generation that Goes off the Rails (Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris, 2010), İstanbul, traversée (Palais des Beaux Arts de Lille, Lille, 2009), I Myself am War! (Open Space, Vienna, 2008), An Atlas of Events (Foundation Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2007); Along the Gates of Urban (K&S Galerie, Berlin, 2004).
Tags: arts and culture
