Dirimart Dolapdere will host the solo exhibition “MIRROR” of artist Sarkis, co-curated by Ceren Erdem, from Wednesday 18 January through Sunday 19 February. Opening night takes place on Tuesday 17 January, starting at 18:00.
From the organizer:
Dirimart is pleased to announce MIRROR, an exhibition by Sarkis conceived together by Ceren Erdem. In MIRROR, a space for refractions, proliferations, screams, and silence open as the artist’s timeless works from different periods that mark the time encounter the new works for this exhibition.
Placing the theory of memory at the core of his practice, Sarkis is introducing a layered critical view to today’s social and political issues by inviting various witnesses from the history to the exhibition. The works transform the art’s faculty of bringing the traces of the past to the present into the competence in conjuring up the future through artistic production. A battle scene from the 15th century and the responding lightning provoke the gallery as they transmute into neon installations. In this space, golden rainbows, images of which histories are touched by Kintsugi technique, moments captured and enlightened by stained glasses, spoils of war coated with lipstick convene and live in a mirror. And many photographs witnessing this confrontation integrate with the faces staring at them and reflect our world like a giant mirror.
What is the MIRROR going to tell us? What pains were the spears emerging from the battle of San Romano, Bismarck sailing into the gallery, a record heralding violence bearing? Why is the crash of the bombardment of the Holland-Hause Library in London in 1940 still echoing today? Is it these agonies or the hope that we believe the future promises that warp a rainbow? Sarkis’ works reflected from the traces the years left on the walls of his studio and surrounding us are inviting us to remember, to contemplate, and to dream.
Within this structure, The Treasure Chests of Mnemosyne, compiled by Sarkis and the art historian Uwe Fleckner and published in Turkish for the first time for this exhibition, constitutes one of its cornerstones. Photographs of Sarkis’ studio in Paris, Villejuif accompany the texts on the theory of memory that vary from Plato to Nietzsche, from Warburg to Derrida. In the previous French, German, and English editions, photographs from the artist’s home-studio, which he moved out in 2016 after forty-five years, were the complements. The Treasure Chests of Mnemosyne and Memory and Infinity: On Sarkis’ Corpus (in Turkish) with its recently published extended second edition meet the audience in the reading room within the exhibition. The images of these two studios spilling out of the pages of the book and spreading on the walls of the gallery meet with the works that they were breathing together in Paris, this time in Istanbul. Mnemosyne is still on duty.
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For more information, visit the official exhibition page.
Tuesday – Saturday: 10:00 – 19:00 / Sunday: 12:00 – 19:00
+90 212 232 66 66
Image courtesy of the organizer: Sarkis I N°1 Vitraux Atelier, 2016, © Sarkis
Irmak Cad. 1-9, Dolapdere, 34440
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