Venue: Westdeutsche Landesbank, Istanbul
Curator: Beral Madra

Artists: Bernd Glaser, Gonca Sezer, Antje Menikheim, Günnur Özsoy, Kruno Stipesevic, Bettina Meyer, Memed Erdener, Marcus Kaiser

First of all this exhibition, which is realized in two parts (1) attempts to show a selection of relatively young generation of artists from Istanbul and NRW with their current art production. A further aim is to contribute to the ongoing cultural exchange between Turkey and Germany.

The second part presents a group of artists from NRW, who call themselves "Saldo" (2) (Bernd Glaser, Marcus Kaiser, Antje Menikheim, Bettina Meyer, Kruno Stipesevic) and three artists from Istanbul, Memed Erdener, Günnur Özsoy, Gonca Sezer.

Saldo is a work concept for artists in various disciplines (music, performance, sculptors, painters and DJs) who prefer to work together, who would like to promote the cooperation of arts and who question and challenge exhibition activities. Below you will find the manifesto of Saldo.

The concept of these two exhibitions was born out of my observation when I started to work as the curator of the exhibitions in the WestLB, Istanbul building. For the first time I had the opportunity to make an in-depth examination of the office life. Situated on a hill in the recently developed district, the building is far away from the heterogeneous centers of the city overlooking to the main highway and the ultra-modern business center with its multiplying skyscrapers. Inside it is an isolated and strictly professional environment.

When one enters the building and the electronic doors are closed, one feels isolated from the outside world and even from one's own daily realities. The minimalist interior decoration accentuates the serenity. There is an inevitable division of inside/outside. Inside, there is the "concrete reality" of the business world with its detailed systems and strategies. Outside there is the so-called "real world" with its numerous differences and ambiguities related to the city and to the private lives. All day long and every day the people work and live in this excessively self-confident building and leave their all day/everyday existence, responsibilities and tasks behind.

If one of the objectives of this exhibition is to fuse this outside/inside dichotomy, the other is to survey this division. Here, artworks will serve as mediums shifting from one side to the other, in order to signify the infinite details of human factor/existence within the man-made systems.

Since prehistoric times art has embraced everyday realities and reflected it as representations with different styles, forms and aesthetics. Landscapes, still life, interior paintings display all kinds of daily life tasks, functions and objects, which also indicate geographical, cultural and individual differences. At all times the artist was a keen and sensitive observer of the daily life with particular interest in objects and habitudes, which signify political and cultural facts and transformations.

All day everyday issues were not only the subject of the art of the 20th century, but gradually it became the substance and the process to be articulated within. The pioneers were Picasso and Braque. Around 1912 Braque invented the papier collé technique in his search for freeing the color of its traditional function of representing reality. Picasso founded the technique of collage by pasting different materials on the surface of the canvas and also invented Cubist sculpture, which was an assemblage of everyday materials. At the same time in New York Marcel Duchamp was introducing his ready-mades, which have widened the traditional canon of sculptural materials to various new materials from the everyday repertory. The Dadaist from Hannover, Kurt Schwitters, produced environmental collages with the waste materials of daily life and consumption, which became the basis of the installations in the 80's and 90's. In the 50's and 60's, Neo-Dada movement provided important resources for fusing art and everyday life under the titles Nouveaux Réalism and Fluxus. In the late 1960's the formalism of modern art was dissolved within the context of radical transformations in economy, politics and social life. The art had to reflect the transformation in everyday life, which was inevitably being conducted, influenced and manipulated by new communication technologies and consumerism. In Germany, with his expanded art concept Joseph Beuys actually achieved the unity of art with traditional and practical issues of life. In England, Richard Hamilton's collage Just what is it that makes today's homes so different, so appealing? has summed up the iconographic material of Pop Art by depicting the everyday life of the consumer. In the USA, the trivial culture became the mythical environment of Pop Art in the works of Rauschenberg, Warhol, Rosenquist, Lichtenstein and others. Minimal Art production in the 70's seems to oppose the everyday turmoil with Donald Judd's iron cupboards and Dan Flavin's neon tubes, which are proposals for a new order in daily life. Throughout 80's and 90's all this accumulation opened the way to a new inquiry in defining the borders between art and life and built a substructure for new forms of production. On the other hand, even this kind of art was confined to the limits of the museums, art galleries and other institutions. Although individuality guides their form, content and aesthetics, the sublime painting and sculptures have not been the immediate products of this freedom; once they were in the museums they were distanced from the viewer and his/her everyday realities. The culture industry always regulates the conditions of encounter between the artwork and the public. Therefore, in the 90's the artists, confronting these regulations and confinements produced works that are not dependent on a given space, but mobile, rootless and multi-disciplinary. These works embraced all sections of life; explicitly all the things that were considered as insignificant, common and manifold within the modernist criterion. At a crucial moment, the limitless desire and obsession of the artist to investigate and question coupled with the post-modern deconstructionism and shifted the infinitesimal details of everyday life into focus. Yet, as much as the everyday life of the individual may seem common, it is meaningful as his/her private sphere. It is this "private sphere" that appears in today's artworks, more often-due to the ever present anarchy in the nature of creativity -in the form of transgressed images, performances and momentum.

In Post-modernism modernist individuality, seriousness and devotion left their places to a new playfulness, elitism and impartiality. Moreover, postmodern art enjoyed life as it is and welcomed heterogeneous styles and saluted the simulation of everyday life.

...

Günnur Özsoy's sculptures are independent, mobile, and mutable; they accommodate to the dimensions, volumes, light, and other qualities of the space. They can be placed on the floor, on pedestals, or they can be made to swing. In this way their weight is perceived differently. With their organic shapes they take the viewer back to the well-known story of sculpture in the 20th century. And, with their flawless shiny surfaces and attractive colors, they imitate consumer goods. Two essential aspects of the artwork -the aesthetic value and the market value- are unpretentiously presented. These pieces, in groups or solitary, fulfill their functions as objects of communication between the artists and the public. This is exactly what the artist intends to do; she approaches the viewer with good spirits and invites him/her to enjoy the freedom of thinking through art. She also approaches the paradoxical nodes of presentation and consumption of the artwork. What she produces is abstract and beautiful; it suits the desire of the consumer. What she intends is the expansion of thinking and interpreting; is the viewer ready to follow this path?

...

- Beral Madra, September 2001

(1) All Day / Everyday 1, February-August 2001 (Özgül Arslan, Inken Boje, Esra Ersen, Tatjana Doll, Saskia Niehaus, Martina Kissenbeck, Mürüvvet Türkyılmaz, Jost Wischnewski), WestLB, Istanbul
(2) www.heimat.de/saldo