18 September 2020 - 8 November 2020, Gate 27
18 March 2022 - 16 April 2022, Galeri Siyah Beyaz
18 March 2022 - 16 April 2022, Galeri Siyah Beyaz
Günnur Özsoy’s latest works are exhibited in the open-air space of Gate 27.
Gate 27, which was able to continue its artist residency programs even under pandemic conditions by organizing a residency in Ayvalık during August, September, and October, will present in October 2020, in its park area, Günnur Özsoy’s most recent three-dimensional works that she had planned to exhibit at PG Art Gallery. These works will be accessible to viewers in the health-safe conditions of the open-air space.
By hosting both an artist and her gallery PG Art with this exhibition, Gate 27 underlines its founding principle, fully aware of the negative impacts of physical conditions on the art environment.
In the 20th century, sculpture underwent many phases — from Rodin to Brancusi, from El Lissitzky to Mark di Suvero, from Henry Moore to Isamu Noguchi — constantly opening new paths, but its fundamental principle did not change: the representation of an idea, a feeling, a concept within a spatial setting. This representation carried the characteristics of expressionism, futurism, cubism, and surrealism. It took on symbolic, geometric, expressionist, and abstract forms. It descended from the pedestals of gallery halls to the floors of spaces. It moved from interiors to exteriors, to nature.
At the very moment when modernist sculpture entered a phase of perfection and began questioning the tension field in which it was suspended, possibilities for breaking free from this tension were also sought. The field had to gain new dimensions; there were countless possibilities for a three-dimensional work to exist in different ways within human living spaces. When it came to practice, artists used the opportunities this expanded field offered in very diverse ways. Postmodern sculpture claimed to exist in a zone of neutrality and impartiality; thus, it freed itself from the historical characteristics of sculpture such as political, social, and cultural references. The liberation of sculpture was an important aesthetic, ontological, and epistemological phase.
Özsoy’s works, produced from industrial materials (polyester) since the 1990s until today, constitute contemporary examples of this development, this aesthetic, and these possibilities of social interaction. The organic nature of her production and the conceptual content, which foresees breaking free from the boundaries of the existing institutional order, almost naturally guide her work toward open-air spaces. Özsoy’s desire to exhibit the white amorphous objects she produced for this exhibition in this ecological park located on the northern hills of the Bosphorus allows the nature-related forms at the core of her work to exist in their original habitat.
At the same time, thanks to the opportunity provided by Gate 27, this production is connected to the way the pandemic conditions have shaped social life on both macro and micro levels since March.
Although the works in Gate 27’s park are formally and aesthetically a continuation of Özsoy’s amorphous figures, this time it could be said that they carry the weight of a zeitgeist (spirit of the time). As the greatest viral pandemic threatening human existence radically transforms all living conditions, the form of the virus infiltrates our imagination; that invisible virus is an organism made up of a nucleic acid covered in proteins, carrying either DNA or RNA at its core. For the virus to survive, it needs a living cell — plant, animal, or bacteria — and replicates by copying itself. The virus’ deadly power can only disappear once it mutates. We could call Özsoy’s white, amorphously shaped multiplied objects the “Healer Mutants” we hope will come into being; in the healing atmosphere of this natural space, the deadly virus image in our minds gives way to Mutants symbolizing salvation.
White underlines this healing quality. White is the purest and most light-reflecting color; it is achromatic, colorless, the color that shows what is natural, the opposite of black, and it contains and reflects all the beams of light that give hope. Throughout history, white has carried religious, political, and cultural meanings; Modernism assigned it qualities of simplicity and reduction to the essential. Özsoy, aware of this symbolism, chooses white as a sign of completeness, competence, perfection, and mastery.
Beral Madra, August 2020
Gate 27, which was able to continue its artist residency programs even under pandemic conditions by organizing a residency in Ayvalık during August, September, and October, will present in October 2020, in its park area, Günnur Özsoy’s most recent three-dimensional works that she had planned to exhibit at PG Art Gallery. These works will be accessible to viewers in the health-safe conditions of the open-air space.
By hosting both an artist and her gallery PG Art with this exhibition, Gate 27 underlines its founding principle, fully aware of the negative impacts of physical conditions on the art environment.
In the 20th century, sculpture underwent many phases — from Rodin to Brancusi, from El Lissitzky to Mark di Suvero, from Henry Moore to Isamu Noguchi — constantly opening new paths, but its fundamental principle did not change: the representation of an idea, a feeling, a concept within a spatial setting. This representation carried the characteristics of expressionism, futurism, cubism, and surrealism. It took on symbolic, geometric, expressionist, and abstract forms. It descended from the pedestals of gallery halls to the floors of spaces. It moved from interiors to exteriors, to nature.
At the very moment when modernist sculpture entered a phase of perfection and began questioning the tension field in which it was suspended, possibilities for breaking free from this tension were also sought. The field had to gain new dimensions; there were countless possibilities for a three-dimensional work to exist in different ways within human living spaces. When it came to practice, artists used the opportunities this expanded field offered in very diverse ways. Postmodern sculpture claimed to exist in a zone of neutrality and impartiality; thus, it freed itself from the historical characteristics of sculpture such as political, social, and cultural references. The liberation of sculpture was an important aesthetic, ontological, and epistemological phase.
Özsoy’s works, produced from industrial materials (polyester) since the 1990s until today, constitute contemporary examples of this development, this aesthetic, and these possibilities of social interaction. The organic nature of her production and the conceptual content, which foresees breaking free from the boundaries of the existing institutional order, almost naturally guide her work toward open-air spaces. Özsoy’s desire to exhibit the white amorphous objects she produced for this exhibition in this ecological park located on the northern hills of the Bosphorus allows the nature-related forms at the core of her work to exist in their original habitat.
At the same time, thanks to the opportunity provided by Gate 27, this production is connected to the way the pandemic conditions have shaped social life on both macro and micro levels since March.
Although the works in Gate 27’s park are formally and aesthetically a continuation of Özsoy’s amorphous figures, this time it could be said that they carry the weight of a zeitgeist (spirit of the time). As the greatest viral pandemic threatening human existence radically transforms all living conditions, the form of the virus infiltrates our imagination; that invisible virus is an organism made up of a nucleic acid covered in proteins, carrying either DNA or RNA at its core. For the virus to survive, it needs a living cell — plant, animal, or bacteria — and replicates by copying itself. The virus’ deadly power can only disappear once it mutates. We could call Özsoy’s white, amorphously shaped multiplied objects the “Healer Mutants” we hope will come into being; in the healing atmosphere of this natural space, the deadly virus image in our minds gives way to Mutants symbolizing salvation.
White underlines this healing quality. White is the purest and most light-reflecting color; it is achromatic, colorless, the color that shows what is natural, the opposite of black, and it contains and reflects all the beams of light that give hope. Throughout history, white has carried religious, political, and cultural meanings; Modernism assigned it qualities of simplicity and reduction to the essential. Özsoy, aware of this symbolism, chooses white as a sign of completeness, competence, perfection, and mastery.
Beral Madra, August 2020