Mixer Sessions continue in their support of young curators and artists with the group exhibition “Blackbox” on display from Friday 16 June through Saturday 29 July.
From the organizer:
Mixer made an open call for young curators this year as a part of Mixer Session project that started last year. This year’s project selected from various applications under an Open Call will be exhibited in Mixer between the dates June 16 – July 29!
With the second edition of Session, Mixer aimed to encourage students to study in departments such as Art Management, Cultural Management, Art History, and give them an opportunity to advance through the education they have received.
The selected project for Sessions II is Karakutu / Blackbox, which was curated by Burcu Bilir, the senior student at YıldızTechnical University Art Management Department.
Blackbox
Artists: Murat Han Er, Haydar Akdag, Burcu Pek, Berka Beste Kopuz, Volkan Parlak
In each period of our lives we are under control of different authorities and various governing models. We are forced to choose among the options presented to us. When we want to create our own way, usually we face challenges. Today fundamental rule of being human is to offer a space for every single option.
Blackbox appeals to bodies that are used to the extraordinary while keeping a record for everything happening between boundaries. All lives that are forced to be in a certain shape with commonly acceptable principles, end up becoming intimidated disasters. However, all experiences shelter in Blackbox with their purity and everyone tries to uncover that box. Blackbox keeps the facts that everybody is looking for. Things mentioned in Blackbox are those that everybody knows about, which they can’t dare to interfere with the pressure of the collective reality.
This project brings together artists who create new artistic practices by using diverse mediums. Each artwork within the project aims to make the unseen or the ignored one visible, while creating esthetic spaces without borders and pointing out the truth. Concentrating on current social problems, Blackbox project deals with urbanization, identity and power concepts in the light of universal values.
Each piece in Blackbox holds realities of irresistible annihilation. While each piece represents a blackbox that offers a record of the artist’s inner world, they also appear as spaces that will survive despite the devouring effects surrounding them.
In this exhibition, distinctive mid-generation artists such as Murat Han Er, Zehra Doğan and Haydar Akdağ who appear with their personal products and characteristic postures meet with young artists Burcu Pek, Beste Kopuz and Volkan Parlak.
We witness a change in terms of the image of the city through the bases that Murat Han Er’s digital photos produced with alternative print techniques. Zehra Doğan examines the conventional urban image with an interdisciplinary approach. In his “Centre/Periphery” series, Haydar Akdağ observes 9 different strategic spots by using sewing and collage techniques and studies the strategically drawn borders.
Questioning the borders we are covered with, Burcu Pek destroys those borders with her collages and leads us to reconsider the term “From There” through the concept of identity. In her “For A Handful of Earth” installation, the ones who control and make use of the universal resources are exposed through the actual bills swinging on earth. Beste Kopuz, scrutinizes ordinary transformation motives with a different angle, not from outside but from inside and studies the compression between spaces. Thus, explains on abstract bases, the ordinary transformations in our lives. Volkan Parlak with his “Closure” series, using various communication objects tells us how we are secretly kept under control and shaped according to common principles by an invisible control mechanism.
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For more information, visit the official exhibition page.
Tuesday – Saturday: 11:00 – 19:00
Image sourced via Mixer.
Cihangir Mahallesi, Sıraselviler Cd. 35/2, 34433 Beyoğlu
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