Ayşe Erkmen
Kıpraşım Ripple
April 6–May 14, 2017
Opening: April 5–6pm
Dirimart
Irmak Cad. 1-9
Dolapdere, 34 440
Istanbul
Turkey
T +90 212 232 66 66
F +90 212 291 64 00
“Erkmen does not use materials nor a definite, classifiable aesthetic nor a continuous message as regards content. […] Hence, every work becomes a surprise for those who have been keeping track of her activities for years and an experience to share with those encountering Ayşe Erkmen’s art for the first time.”
René Block
Dirimart Dolapdere is pleased to announce Ayşe Erkmen’s exhibition, Kıpraşım Ripple. The artist makes architectural interventions, reorganizing the space; as in many of her works, she thus questions notions of architecture, installation, and organization.
Ayşe Erkmen, whose practice physical environment that she is in as a starting point and by repositioning the existing structure in her particular style, impels viewers to think about space. Her works, which make spaces experienceable, do not exhibit a concern with forming a formal language. The artist invites viewers to engage deeply in dialogue with the physical, visual, social, and psychological dimensions of environments such as museum and in particular, her site-specific works have been etched in memory, takes the social and galleries, gallery windows, exhibition spaces, parks, rivers, and squares. The contemporaneity of Ayşe Erkmen’s works is derived from her pointing to the already-existing in different forms. While she makes “sculptural” propositions in her temporary interventions, taking the space as is, in exhibition spaces, she adds on as few “foreign” elements as possible. By reconfiguring the objects and relationships in the spaces that we encounter daily or at times by getting rid of them, disrupting them, she interweaves art and life, forming singular areas. The artist thus makes visible models of socializing that open up reality; the works are complete only when the viewers are present.
With the exhibition Kıpraşım Ripple, Erkmen analyzes the architectural data, activating the walls that were added at Dirimart Dolapdere to transform the raw space into an art gallery. Referring to the constant change that the gallery undergoes for each exhibition, she takes pieces that she has ripped off of these walls, which at times carry traces of past exhibitions, and makes them volatile, hurled across the space. The gallery is thus reconstructed, becoming a work rather than an exhibition space. This intervention is accompanied by metal sculptures that give clues of the artist’s reinterpretation of the architectural plan of the gallery and her plans to transform it. A sound installation that articulates the main transportation artery through Pangaltı that the gallery is situated on, carrying inside the exhibition space the moments of moving to and from the space physically.
Ayşe Erkmen lives and works in Berlin and Istanbul. Erkmen graduated from Mimar Sinan University’s Department of Sculpture in 1997. In 1993, she participated in the DAAD International Artist Residency Programme (Berliner Künstlerprogramm) in Berlin. From 1998 to 1999 Erkmen worked as the Arnold Bode Professor at Kassel Art Academy, and as lecturer at Frankfurt Staedeschule (2000–07). In 2002, she was awarded the Maria Sibylla Merian prize at Hessen Province Germany.
Among numerous international exhibitions Erkmen has participated in are the 2nd, 3rd and 13th Istanbul Biennial; The Pavilion of Turkey at the 54th Venice Biennale; Manifesta 1, Shanghai, Berlin, Gwangju, Sharjah Limerick and Scape Biennials; the Folkestone and Echigo Tsunami Triennales. The most recent shows she has been on are Pond to Pool to Pond, Saidaji Temple, Nara, Japan (2016); Uncertain States, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (2016); “A” exhibition, Gent SMAK (2016); Strange Pilgrims, Austin Contemporary,Texas (2016); Imaginary Audience Scale, Artspace New Zealand (2015); Fingerspiztgefühl, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (2015); Une Histoire Art, Architecture, Design des Années 1980 à nos Jours, Center Pompidou, Paris (2014); Intervals, The Curve Barbican Centre, London (2015); More than Sound, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (2012). Erkmen will participate in Münster Sculpture Project with her new project, in 2017.
For detailed information please contact the gallery at info [at] dirimart.com or T +90 212 232 66 66. All images are subject to copyright. Gallery approval must be granted prior to reproduction.
