Emre Hüner: Neochronophobiq

“There is no longer any real world, no world, no human world, I am outside time, I no longer have any past or future, I have no more sadness, plans, nostalgia, loss, or hope…The space is coming, it approaches and seeks to devour me.”
–Houellebecq, The Possibility of an Island, p. 296.

In this MOVING IMAGE EXPO, STUK is delighted to present the work of visual artist Emre Hüner. In his drawings, sculptures, installations and video works, Hüner explores the subjects of utopia and archaeology, post-humanism and object-oriented ontology, and ideas of time and materiality. He is inspired by and draws upon references from the world of modern architecture, speculative literature, science and new technologies.

The exhibition in STUK focuses on the impressive 3-channel video piece Neochronophobiq with the contributing actor Tómas Lemarquis. Shown for the first time in Europe after its premiere in the Istanbul Biennale in 2015, Neochronophobiq—an invented word, conjunction of neo, chronophobia (fear of time), and ubiquitous—creates a fictional realm, almost an extra dimension, governed by the quest for new resources and habitable planets alluding to isolation chamber experiments, volcanic islands, neolithic ruins and robotics. Artefacts and rituals, architectural entities, unidentifiable topographies and the materiality of geological temporality play the lead roles in this peculiar work.

“In Neochronophobiq these objects and landscapes are (…) alive—like extreme metaphors of a petrified language, they have the sound of cracking glass, moving and transforming slowly, a tactile knowledge, objects of ritual, thought–forms or neohuman hallucinations or dreams, fired and glazed clay pieces, forms of nonlinear storytelling.”
–Emre Hüner in conversation with Pelin Tan, “The Forms of Non-Belonging,” 2015

In Hüner’s practice works often interrelate: drawings will inform sculptures or sculptural installations, which in turn play key roles in video works. For instance, a research trip to Fordlandia—Henry Ford’s factory town and plantation in the Amazon jungle—informed the sculptures in Quixotic (2011), which in turn lead to the clay artefacts populating the videoworks Aeolian Processes #1 and #2 (2012). This is also the case in Neochronophobiq. The video work is therefore presented alongside a number of sculptures and a drawing. While the drawing INIMIC depicts a bunker like building with a mask in front as an instance from the same universe, the “Perpetual Island Infinite Vehicle” sculpture series can be understood as an accumulation of ideas and forms, of materials of organic or unknown qualities. They are the artefacts through which ideas of time and materiality are channelled.

The exhibition Neochronophobiq is part of the exhibition series MOVING IMAGE EXPO—a series in STUK focusing on multiple-screen audiovisual works. Previous exhibitions in this series include John Akomfrah: Auto Da Fé; and Bjørn Melhus: The Theory of Freedom.

Curator: Karen Verschooren

Emre Hüner
(b. 1977, Istanbul, Turkey)

Emre Hüner is a visual artist, living and working in Istanbul. His work has been the subject of solo exhibitions in SALT Ulus, Ankara (2016); CCA Kitakyushu, Japan (2015); Rodeo, Istanbul (2013); and Extra City, Antwerp (2010); and was included a.o. in group exhibitions at Istanbul Biennale (2015), the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, USA (2014); and Manifesta 9, Belgium (2011). Hüner attended the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. He held artist residencies at a.o., ISCP, SAHA Studio, NY (2014); Shangri La, Doris Duke Foundation, Hawaii (2011); Princeton University (2010); the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam (2010), the apexart Inbound Residency Program, NY (2009); and at Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul (2009). He is represented by Rodeo Gallery.

Neochronophobiq is coproduced by Platform 0090 and Mathaf: Arab Museum of Modern Art and SAHA – Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.

Courtesy Emre Hüner & Rodeo Gallery