Venue:
Arsenale, Artiglierie
Plan B
4 June - 27 November 2011
Press preview: 1 - 3 June, 2011
Opening ceremony: 3 June, at 12:00
Artist:
Ayşe Erkmen
* 1949 Istanbul, Turkey. Lives there and in Berlin, Germany.
more info & photos
Curator: Fulya Erdemci
Curatorial Collaborator: Danae Mossman
Commissioner: Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts
Project Coordinator: Deniz Ova
Ayşe Erkmen’s sculptural installation "Plan B" draws on the ineluctable and complex relationship Venice has with water. Her project transforms a room inside the Arsenale into a complex water purification unit where machines perform as sculptures, encompassing the audience inside of the filtration process which eventually provides clean, drinkable water back to the canal.
Each component of the filtration unit has been separated out, humorously disseminating the machinery throughout the room then reconnecting the elements with extended pipes. Erkmen choreographs the elegant industrial forms to draw attention to the process of transformation, at the end of which, the purified water is returned to the canal: a futile, yet courageous gesture against the overwhelming scale of the canal and the ocean.
Formally, Erkmen’s practice often comments on minimalism’s relationship between the industrial form and the body. Here the installation generates a visceral experience for viewers who are embodied within the mechanism of transformation.
"Plan B" abstractly conveys systems and processes that we are part of daily: blood circulating through the body, Capital flowing through borders, the mechanisms of authority, the supply of natural resources. While proffering a poetic reference to the potentiality of change, the work is simultaneously a subtle, humorous critique of the euphoria for unsustainable short-lived solutions within the complex systems and structures that surround us.
From a Press release
More information, contacts:
www.planb-venicebiennale.com
See also on this website:
Turkey in Nafas
Articles on the contemporary arts of Turkey in the Nafas Art Magazine, including exhibitions, artists & artwork, galleries, institutions, etc.
Turkey - artist's index
Artists from Turkey in Universes in Universe and Nafas.
Turkey - Curators
Curators with exhibitions and projects included in Universes in Universe and Nafas.
Istanbul Biennial
Information, photo tours of several editions, history of the Biennale.
