Auditions for An Unwritten Opera

Artists: Mutlu Çerkez with Antonia Baehr, Juliet Carpenter, Jesse Darling, Julian Dashper, Egemen Demirci, Pedro Gómez-Egaña, Léuli Eshrāghi, Marco Fusinato, Delia Gonzalez, Özlem Günyol & Mustafa Kunt, On Kawara, Hanne Lippard, Callum Morton, Serkan Özkaya, Ruth Wolf-Rehfeldt, Jeff Wall Production, and Felix Gonzalez-Torres

Curated by Misal Adnan Yıldız.

For the first time in two decades, from July 14 to October 8, 2023, Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden reintroduces the multi-layered oeuvre of the artist Mutlu Çerkez (1964–2005) to a larger audience. Presenting an experimental exhibition format, Auditions for an Unwritten Opera unfolds a solo presentation into a constellation of installations and exhibits. Selected works by Çerkez are shown in dialogue with contemporary practices alongside relevant historical positions.

Borrowing its title from a key piece by the British-born, Australian-Turkish Cypriot artist, this exhibition is inspired by the uniqueness of his approach to titling. Often giving his works not a standard title, but one based on a future date upon which they would be remade, he proposed for them a new form of life, veering conceptually from their momentary narration, production, or materiality.

Works by Mutlu Çerkez are recalled to investigate the ways in which the life of an artist reflects on the exhibition history of an institution; the development of a work and how it is made interacts with future generations; and the currency of conceptual thinking is still valid. These forms, research materials, and artistic productions are brought together in compositions that invite the participants and visitors to shape, share, and reclaim future scenarios together.

As a conversation piece, the leading work A Design for the Overture Curtain of an Unwritten Opera, Untitled: 15 January 2028 (1999)—also shown as part of the  6th Istanbul Biennial, Turkey (1999)—is positioned as a key reference for the dramaturgy and choreography of the exhibition considering the narrative politics and gestures of movement and direction in the show.

Çerkez’s oeuvre has been guiding the research and the exhibition process, appearing alongside works from a new wave of queer, critical, and radical practices that pose questions about the acts of rehearsal, the state of work in progress, and an artist’s life as a biography of transition. The exhibition subtitle proposes “around” instead of an expression such as “about.” “Around” refers to circling, gathering, and staying together.

The assembly of these unique works is possible through generous loans of Monash University Museum of Art | MUMA, Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, Griffith University Art Museum, Anna Schwartz Gallery, Melbourne (Australia), PALAS (Australia), Michael Lett Gallery in Auckland (NZ), Sultana Gallery of Paris, Zilberman Gallery and ChertLüdde in Berlin, and Hot Wheels Athens.

Auditions for an Unwritten Opera: Around the works by Mutlu Çerkez is made possible by the generous support of Land Baden-Württemberg. 

We acknowledge the financial support for Serkan Özkaya’s new production and travels by the Canada Council for the Arts.

See the full program here.

Also on view:

SYNCH05: Recording_1989 by Marysia Lewandowska
As part of the SYNCH series, Polish-born, London based artist Marysia Lewandowska continues her interest in archives, museums and exhibitions investigating the mechanisms which contribute to creating discursive social structures of public exchange.

For the past two years her critical engagement with Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden focused on conversations regarding governance, public participation and collective authorship. These have now resulted in a new installation taking as its point of reference the history of the institution through the 1989 Donald Judd exhibition. 

Having encountered an audio tape with Judd’s interview recorded at the time, and which has recently been released into the public domain, Lewandowska has created, both materially and conceptually, a new context for the recording. By inquiring on questions regarding the construction of the artist’s voice, the political circumstances surrounding the recording itself, and the implications of voice and voicing for the future history of the institution, she turns the archival gesture into a contested terrain of authority.

Curated by Misal Adnan Yıldız and Dominik Busch. Architecture in collaboration with Mooradian Studio. Sound design by Robert Jack.