INtheVISIBLE. His new photographic works explores the conventions of the modern white cube as both an architectural context and as a content subject in and of itself. This exhibition enhances the confrontation between visibility and invisibility in social and phenomenological terms.
“It is an attempt to visualise the invisible things in our life. The idea is not just simply shifting the visual
field from context to content but also bringing them side by side like a physical and mental image
inside each other at the same time.”
Arslan Sukan
Galerist is pleased to present Arslan Sukan’s second solo exhibition ‘INtheVISIBLE’ from September
11th to October 12nd, 2013. Sukan’s new photographic works explores the conventions of the modern
white cube as both an architectural context and as a content subject in and of itself. By addressing the
notions of spatial memory, presentation and representation, this exhibition enhances the confrontation
between visibility and invisibility in social and phenomenological terms.
Arslan Sukan appropriates images from the internet of ‘installation shots’, white cube spaces within
museums, galleries and art institutions around the world. His first step is returning them to their original
state by digitally removing the artworks inside. He then manipulates the remaining image, 'the original
condition of the gallery', by digitally painting some of the parts, like walls, ceilings or floors. Sukan's
layered approach embraces the disputed characteristics of the white cube 'as a sacred space
undisturbed by time'; at the same time it expands the potential of artistic intervention in a gallery by
transforming the space itself on a plane surface. The artist’s reconceived images of uninterrupted
spaces, composed of heightened geometrical shapes, touch base with the minimalist aesthetic and its
emphasis on the viewer’s perception, while the flatness of the picture calls to mind the infinite
possibilities in abstract paintings.
By means of deconstruction, intervention and reconstruction of the white cube, Sukan brings
complicity between opposites and creates dualism between recognition and non-recognition, visibility
and invisibility, abstraction and concrete concepts. The result is an entirely new space, an architecture
of past and future, with a continuously shifting viewpoint. Sukan proposes a phenomenal situation,
challenging the viewer on the realism of the photograph and the memory of a space, while also
opening up the horizons of the viewer’s interpretation of the exhibition’s and their own immediate
setting.
Some of the works of the ‘INtheVISIBLE’ series will continue to be displayed at the Museum Haus
Konstruktiv (Zurich) until the end of September, with the complete series to be exhibited for the first
time at Galerist.
About Arslan Sukan: Arslan Sukan was born in 1973 in Ankara. He graduated from Bilkent
University's Interior Architecture and Environmental Design department and received his photography
training at New York's School of Visual Arts. He continued to work as an architect in New York until
2008. He received the contemporary photography award at the New York Photography Festival in
2009. His works have been exhibited at the Maxxi Museum (Rome), Museum Haus Konstruktiv
(Zurich), Maison des Metallos (Paris), Kappatos Gallery (Athens), Batagianni Gallery, NYPH New
Visionaires Tobacco Factory (New York), Galerist (Istanbul) and Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art.
Sükan lives in New York and Istanbul.
Galerist Tepebaşı
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