Summer was a Beautiful Day
February 9–April 14, 2018
“…Some said the wall was built by Bulgarians, some said it was the work of those ‘certain powers’…There was a wall in the city. What was going on on the other side? Everybody was confused and curious…”
Zilberman Gallery–Berlin is pleased to present Istanbul-based artist Antonio Cosentino’s show Summer was a Beautiful Day. The exhibition opening will take place on February 8, 2018 at 6pm and the press preview at 11am.
Since the 1990s, Istanbul based artist Antonio Cosentino has been interested in the subculture and architectural developments; the uncanny destructions and the metamorphosis of the city of Istanbul. Many of Cosentino’s works look at historical events from a humorous perspective to create fictitious arrangements that fold different stories back on one another. Dazzling arrays of techniques contain larger political, historical and philosophical questions.
Influenced by the history of Berlin as a divided city, the artist imagines a wall erected in one night in the city of Istanbul—or is it somewhere else? In his speculative fiction story Summer Was a Beautiful Day, not only words but also objects, installations, drawings, paintings and a map merge to tell the narrative in chapters. Maps, urban models and small objects such as tin toys, soda bottle caps, albums that Cosentino collected during his residency at Zilberman Gallery–Berlin’s artist-in-residence program in the summer of 2017, become the tools of storytelling for the narrator-protagonist. The collected material, with the influence of the story, turned into artworks such as the tin 3D model Salt (2017) or the charcoal drawing Hero (2017).
Summer was a Beautiful Day is accompanied by a catalogue, with an introduction by Lotte Laub and texts by the former curator of Istanbul Museum of Modern Art Çelenk Bafra and Antonio Cosentino.
For more inquiries, please contact goksu [at] zilbermangallery.com.
Antonio Cosentino graduated from the Department of Painting, Faculty of Fine Arts at Mimar Sinan University in 1994. He founded the art initiative Hafriyat with Hakan Gürsoytrak and Mustafa Pancar in 1996. His recent exhibitions include HARBOR (Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, 2017); boxes of cigarettes and whisky all over the sea, ferâre, my love (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, 2016); Istanbul, Passion, Joy, Fury (curators: Hou Hanru, Ceren Erdem, Elena Motisi and Donatella Saroli, MAXXI National 21st Century Arts Museum, Italy, 2015); Mom I’m Going Out to Pour Some Concrete (with Extra-struggle, Studio-X, Istanbul, 2015); Escape from Marmara Sea: The Stelyanos Hrisopu-los (Salt Ulus, Ankara, 2015); Departure Marmara Sea (Bergsen & Bergsen, Istanbul, 2013) and Tin City (Külah, Istanbul, 2013). Having participated in numerous exhibitions both in Turkey and abroad, Cosentino contributed works to Spare Time, Great Work (Platform 3, Munich, 2011), and Tactics of Invisibility (Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Tanas, Berlin; ARTER, Istanbul, 2010-2011) with the collective Hafriyat. The artist lives and works in Istanbul.
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