Banu Cennetoğlu

Bonner Kunstverein announces an exhibition of new work by Banu Cennetoğlu. The exhibition launches the programme developed by the Kunstverein’s new Director, Michelle Cotton. It will be Cennetoğlu’s first solo exhibition in Germany and the largest presentation of her work in four years.

Born in Ankara in 1970 and currently based in Istanbul, Cennetoğlu will present a series of works that reflect her interest in information and how the significance of current affairs and contemporary culture shift over time. The exhibition will include a major new work entitled, 11.08.15, which represents every national, regional and local newspaper published in Germany on August 11, 2015. Over 1,000 newspapers have been collected, indexed and bound in order to make what Cennetoğlu has described as “both a unique reference library and an art object in which a day’s news is the material and the subject.” The installation can be seen as a portrait of a society and a celebration of the printed newspaper, a tradition that in Germany dates from the 17th century and is now threatened by a consumer preference for digital formats. 

Other new works explore the subject of language and involve Cennetoğlu working across the institution to develop her exhibition. These include an expansive text work on the subject of denial composed entirely of gradually deflating helium balloons. Cennetoğlu will also make an intervention within the building’s external lighting and a new work that engages with the Kunstverein’s Artothek—a lending collection offering over 2,000 artworks to local members. 

Banu Cennetoğlu (b. 1970, Ankara) studied in Istanbul, Paris and New York before she was awarded a place at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam in 2002. Her work has been presented at the 3rd and 5th Berlin Biennales (2004 and 2008), 10th Istanbul Biennial and 1st Athens Biennale (both 2007), Manifesta 8 in Murcia (2010), 10th Gwanju Biennale (2014). She was one of two artists who represented Turkey at the 53rd Venice Biennale (2009) and has been selected for the 2016 DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Program. She lives and works in Istanbul where, for the past nine years, she has also run BAS, a non-profit project space in the city centre dedicated to collecting, archiving, exhibiting and publishing limited edition artists’ books.

The exhibition has been generously supported by Stiftung Kunst, Kultur und Soziales der Sparda-Bank West and SAHA Association – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

Press: Isabel Hufschmidt, Assistant Curator
T+49 228 693936 / i.hufschmidt [​at​] bonner-kunstverein.de