15 Nov 2011

C.A.M Gallery presents Murat Germen 'Muta-morphosis'

C.A.M Gallery / Akaretler hosts Murat Germen's Muta-morphosis at 17 November – 17 December 2011.

The concept of 'muta-morphosis', a combination of the notions of mutation and metamorphosis, and the connected artwork series was obtained by reducing expansive images on the horizontal axis. This compression points to the dynamics between the various urban components that can persist and the ones that vanish following the urban growth supported by capital and based on profit. The visual urban result obtained after this contraction process points to the much discussed notion of evolution, where stronger components of existence survive the others after a natural selection process and change the course of life.

The lack of a single perspectival structure due to multiplicity of perspectives after panoramic imaging, can be linked to Ottoman miniatures, which in turn, connects the global contemporary representation to its local traditional counterpart.

Murat Germen expresses his approach to photography with these words;
'Photography is an opportunity for me to find things people ignore and bring them forward to make people reconsider their ideas. I am not interested in extraordinary things since they are always covered and receive more attention due to mankind's unending interest in celebrities, fame, sensation... I try to concentrate more on ordinary things and catch possible latent extraordinariness in regularity. It is easy to take ordinary photos of extraordinary things but more challenging to take extraordinary photos of ordinary things. It is possible to say I tend to concentrate on extracting beauty out of ordinary. I attempt to defamiliarize ordinariness, render it ambiguous by alienating it from its familiar context and finally make people to 'see it afresh.'

Photography records the surface information, where one can only depict the exterior features of objects (color, texture, shape, etc.) and the resulting visual representation cannot incorporate the internal condition / content / soul. I also aim to make photos that carry the many traces of time, multiple dimensions of space and finally create photos usually invisible to the naked eye. The basic idea is to form a personal visual accumulation through time and space that supposedly give us more insight / clues than a single photograph. I see multi-layered photography / chronophotography as gates to augmented perception, surreal encounters, creation of new worlds and self appropriation; since I do not believe in ultimate objectivity in photography and 'Truth' with the capital T. Personal delineations of temporary yet experienced smaller realities are truer than imposed institutional 'realities.' The key is reflecting the inner world with a genuine, idiosyncratic way: Do not follow the suggested agenda / trend, do your own thing... '