Candeğer Furtun

Arter has embarked on the new season with the retrospective exhibition of Candeğer Furtun.

From the 1960s onwards, Candeğer Furtun (born 1936) has produced ceramic works concerned with existence and informed by problematics relating to philosophy, history, society and politics, featuring a wholly original approach in terms of both form and material. This first retrospective exhibition of the artist brings together more than a hundred works reflecting her rich world of forms and textures, along with archival materials that closely document her research and production processes. Embodying Furtun’s innovative approach to ceramics, the exhibited works manifest her contributions to the artistic turning point that has revolutionised the traditional conception of ceramics during the 1960s. Fuelled by the emancipative legacy of artistic movements such as Bauhaus, Constructivism, Abstract Expressionism and Zen philosophy, Furtun engages with raw materials by involving natural processes in her work and liberating the soil.

Curated by Selen Ansen, the exhibition is conceived around the notion of the “shell” that the artist often references both in relation to ceramics and to her own practice. The notion of the “shell” functions as a threshold between two main themes that hold both formal and conceptual importance in Furtun’s oeuvre: the human body and nature. It underscores the relations between these themes, and the possibilities of transitioning between them, enabled by the artist who proclaimed that she “sees human figures in each shell, seed and rock, even when observing nature”. The concept of the “shell” also points to the dynamic interactions between interiority/exteriority, emptiness/fullness, abstraction/figuration, part/whole and singularity/plurality that are embodied in the forms the artist creates.

Arter will continue to present a programme of exhibitions from but not limited to its collection, as well as supporting new productions in 2022.

In February 2022, a group exhibition entitled ThisPlay curated by Emre Baykal from the Arter Collection and based around the concept of childhood will explore the liberating aspect of play, its defiant capacity to suspend and reconstruct reality, and the ways it transcends the humdrum of daily life to create unique systems and structures of meaning. Approaching art both as a maker and breaker of play through concepts such as competition, tension, chance, imitation, ritual, magic, trance and pleasure, the exhibition will open up space for play for both adults and children where there is no winner or everyone wins.

The world premiere of a sound/video installation commissioned by Arter from Bill Fontana will be presented in March 2022 as the fifth edition of “Sound Art Projects” series under the curation of Arter’s Founding Director Melih Fereli. Based on research surveys conducted by Fontana with a portable recording studio consisting of an 8-channel digital recorder, acoustic microphones, hydrophones and accelerometers, whereby the artist made video and sound recordings, some underwater, at numerous locations along the Bosphorus, as well as in two Byzantine cisterns, namely the Theodosius “Şerefiye” (built by Emperor Theodosius II between 428 and 443) and the Basilica “Yerebatan” (built by Emperor Justinian I between 527 and 565), the installation was produced as an addition to the artist’s ongoing series titled Acoustical Visions. Taking full advantage of the advanced technical features of Arter’s Karbon, the multi-screen and multi-channel work will create a sensual and dynamic world where visitors are invited to participate in an immersive experience through audio-visual compositions.

The spring season will also feature the group exhibition Locus Solus which brings together a selection of works from the Arter Collection with site-specific new productions and existing works. Devised around the concept of nature, the exhibition will invite the audience on a journey through subterranean, heavenly and terrestrial realms, subconscious territories, past and lost or fantasised and never-existed places and various landscapes. Curated by Selen Ansen, Locus Solus will aim at rethinking the relationships between the mineral, vegetal, animal and human lives, and the ways in which nature and culture permeate each other. The works on display, each forming a world in its own right, will propose reflecting upon nature as a cultural and historical construction nourished and shaped by mythologies, collective beliefs and rituals, individual stories and experiences, social fears, and desires.

Arter will welcome the summer of 2022 with two new exhibitions. Ahmet Doğu İpek’s solo exhibition, curated by Selen Ansen, will gather the artist’s drawings, paintings and the installations he produced with various materials for the exhibition space at Arter. The works that took shape during the past two years will reflect this period’s climate resulting from macro and micro phenomena by abstracting it.

A group exhibition curated by Eda Berkmen on the theme of sleep—a large and indispensable part of the lives of all living beings—will also welcome visitors in May 2022. The exhibition will present various perspectives to this seemingly static, mysterious state characterised by reduced cognitive and physical activity.

Click here for Arter’s current and upcoming exhibition programme.

Press contact
Firdevs Ev Şimşek: firdevse [​at​] arter.org.tr / T +90 212 708 58 08