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5/6/2008

Ergin Cavusoglu

Kunstverein, Freiburg

Ergin Çavuşoğlu's video installations reflect the complex and constantly changing migration of people between places and countries. Often filmed in ports, airports or markets, his videos treat the themes of travel and the process of transition that determines our reality. In this way they construct a lyrical narrative about the personal experiences of individuals within a broader collective history.

At the centre of the exhibition is the video installation Point of Departure, 2006 that was filmed in two airports, Stansted in southern England and Trabzon in the Turkish Black Sea region. Facing each other from the opposite ends of the European landmass, these two locations are subtly separated and recombined. Point of Departure explores the airport both as architectural structure, a machine for processing travellers and their belongings, but also as a space that lends itself to a certain poetic treatment.

Midnight Express, 2008 is a single channel video work that explores ideas on transience and mobility. The work was filmed on the Asian side of Istanbul on the main train line, which connects the Western part of the country to the East. The footage was filmed at night when the city space becomes liminal, showing the trains carving their ways in both directions at irregular intervals with only their lit windows visible. The work interprets the passage of the trains as a poetic representation exposing the boundaries of economic and personal motivations for movement.

The new two channel video installation Silent Glide, 2008 presents a 'point of departure', from a cut 'different' multitude of perspectives. The work is presented across two screens, which respectively show scenes from the downward spiral of a couple's relationship, and their surroundings. The setting is the dim industrial town of Hereke, Turkey. Once famous for the production of the finest silk carpets, nowadays the landscape is dominated by the largest cement factory in Europe. The mixture of and the striking contrast between history and modernity in Hereke, the aesthetic and the obtrusive and their coexistence in an absurd harmony further highlight the themes explored in the video.

Ergin Çavuşoğlu's new sculpture, Place after Place, 2008, made of variously coloured Perspex and a fluorescent tube is presented alongside his video installation Point of Departure. Consisting of four boxes, placed one within the other, the outer box measuring 100 x 56 x 56cm refers to the cinematic 16 x 9 ratio. The work reflects the architecture and spatiality of Çavuşoğlu's video installations.

The eight large-scale, framed drawings are a selection from Ergin Çavuşoğlu's on-going work in this medium, which he refers to as cinematographic drawings. Each one is indirectly related to themes explored in his video installations, in particular our relationship to the spaces we inhabit, the borders we live with and how we create them.

Ergin Çavuşoğlu was born in Bulgaria in 1968 as part of the Turkish minority. He studied fine arts at The National School of Fine Arts 'Iliya Petrov', Sofia in the early 1980s and subsequently received a BA in mural painting from the University of Marmara, Istanbul and, in 1995, an MA from Goldsmiths, London, where he has been living and working since.

In 2003 Ergin Çavuşoğlu represented Turkey at the 50th Venice Biennale and was included in the 8th Istanbul Biennial; in 2004 he took part in the 3rd Berlin Biennial and received widespread public attention the same year when he was short-listed for the Beck's Futures Prize. In 2005 he took part in the British Art Show 6. His first major UK solo exhibitions were in 2006 at the John Hansard Gallery, Southampton and Northern Gallery for Contemporary Art, Sunderland.

Kunstverein Freiburg
Dreisamstr. 21 79089 Freiburg
Open
Tuesday till Sunday 12 p.m. – 6 p.m.
Wednesday 12 p.m. – 9 p.m.

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