Deniz Üster and Mehmet Dere at
Rampa, Istanbul
Deniz Üster
Invited and Volunteered
Mehmet Dere
Quid rides? De te fibula narratur.
10 June–16 July 2011
Rampa
Şair Nedim Caddesi No: 21a
Akaretler 34357 Beşiktaş
Istanbul, Turkey
T +90 212 327 0800
E info [at] rampaistanbul.com
Rampa hosts two exhibitions between June 10 and July 16, 2011. The first of the shows is by Deniz Üster entitled “Invited and Volunteered” in the project room of Rampa and the second one, “Quid rides? De te fibula narratur.” by Mehmet Dere in the main gallery space.
Invited and Volunteered
Invited and Volunteered is concerned with the ideas of the ‘absurd’ and ‘futile’ in relation to the quest for meaning and unity as well as eternal truth and values. Appealing to flaws, mistakes and disappointments, it draws from the language of folk tales and eastern and western mythologies that have become intertwined through ages of transmission.
Invited and volunteered, which is going to be exhibited for the first time at Rampa, is inspired by Firdevsi’s Davetname, and later Naranath Bhranthan, a central character in Malayalam folklore. According to the stories, Branthan is a divine person who pretends to be mad. His main undertaking consists of rolling a big stone up to the top of a hill and letting it roll back down, so that he can carry it up again. Unlike the eminent Greek mythological figure Sisyphus, it is not due to a curse that he assumes this burden, but through his own volition.
Quid rides? De te fibula narratur.
The exhibition Quid rides? De te fibula narratur references to the vague nature of concepts that comprise the multipartite, multilayered structures, such as Turkish history, memory and identity. This in-betweenness which is conceptually situated somewhere between crying and laughter, strives to construct an impartial fictitious language and a transparent context in this geography where everything is interconnected within everything.
Deriving from Turkey’s cultural history, the exhibition consists of a series of ironic and upfront constructions, focusing on a research of local and social memory. While the artist builds his work with the retrieved images of the cultural memory, he poetically includes his own subjectivity to all these captivities. Issues of social injustice, resistance and politics of survival are raised not through the artist’s observation as an outsider, but from close range; a perspective precisely constructed by the practices of life. This stance, at times tragicomic, and at times built upon the relationship of patience and suffering, is tackled to be presented to the audience time and again, uninterrupted, and almost prayer like.
In this respect, Dere’s works recall a black box. A series of cultural and historical images retrieved by the artist are combined in the light of polyphonic references, to either be eventually monumentalized, or to evoke lost and found museums as a catalogued construct. This holistic structure in which each object is conceptualized as a question mark, transforming into collective memory, constitutes the visual anthology of the artist.
