03 Sep 2011

'be mobile in immobility' at DEPO, Istanbul

This series of exhibitions 'be mobile in immobility' is executed by a collaborating group of artists from different regions and cultures, who together present a diverse range of perspectives. During the development of each rendition of the project additional artists, curators and writers are introduced into the group to reflect the location of the coming exhibition. First presented at TOTAL Museum, Seoul in spring 2011, the exhibition now opens in Istanbul before moving on to Amsterdam.

'We capture sources and experience, creating thoughts and forms, within the relational field of The Materialized Memory, to store and transfer it from one place and one person to another.'

At Depo in Istanbul a range of multi-media works including video, drawings, installations and photos are presented. The artworks are all produced respecting the notions of the title and subtitle; 'be mobile in immobility (creative politics)'. The notion of Mobility is taken as a thriving energy and Memory as a materialized shape, and both can be read as a description of the practice of making art.

At the core of the exhibition is the second manifestation of Patin Zyro. This fictive artistic position is in fact a collaborative production by the artists participating in the collective 'be mobile in immobility'. At Depo, found furniture that used to be owned by the Turkish politician Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu (1889-1974) is installed by Patin Zyro, who here takes on the role of the figure who shapes the image of the creator and politician. It is around this central combined position and voice, and reference to a shared memory, that the artists' individual installations orbit and find their connections.

'At a certain moment, we realized that the most important issue is memory itself, a memory of origins, of changing environments that form a backdrop to any story recounted; of a constant impact that we acknowledge on our perspective towards reality. Our realities are 'instable, shifting' and we can refer to these 'new realities' as an outcome of a flow of life, of a process resulting from shifting perspectives. Each artist will be induced with 'a processed opportunity' to compare a remembered 'old environment' in relation to the current one: a mnemonic reality of the past, evolving into the present.'

Each exhibition allows a new context in which the artists find themselves re-acquainted; where they do not collect indirect or mediated information through others, but exist in the same social and physical realm, sharing a moment together that results in a combined vision. In this way the project is envisioned as a process that develops by means of an oriented method, through the participation of people who share the same reality, of building, convening and creating.

With diversity, their own sensibility and reflecting their own particular and distinctive process the artists in the show react with their work to the present, to the social and political moment we are living in today. The motto seems to be one which states that 'either you deal with what is the reality, or you can be sure that the reality is going to deal with you' (Alex Haley).

With the support of Consulate General of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Istanbul and Mondriaan Foundation.

Artists: Caner Aslan, Sebastian Diaz Morales, Yang Ah Ham, Leonard Retel Helmrich, Boukje B. Janssen, Rob Johannesma, Jean Bernard Koeman, Sefer Memişoğlu, Fahrettin Gürkan Örenli, Jooyeon Park, November Paynter Dick Verdult, Arief S. Wiranatakusumah, Patin Zyro, Shin Kyu Moon & Joon Eui Noh