ARTEXT : La Biennale di Venezia
54 Esposizione Internazionale d'Arte
Arsenale, Tese delle Vergini
PLAN B
Ayse Erkmen
Ayse Erkmen is amongst the distinguished names of the international contemporary art world. Erkmen’s sculptural practice spans mediums such as installation, photography, animation and intervention – where she often manipulates the surface of a space to reveal what is already present, but may be obscured. Her sculptural practice does not invent forms, Erkmen finds and reinterprets, always drawing on the specifics of that locale. Often space or objects are borrowed in order to have them perform as sculptures; almost all of her works are temporary installations that sensitise us to our surroundings and the structures and situations that shape them. At the conclusion of an exhibition all that remains is a trace.
Q: Why Ayşe Erkmen?
A: The Venice Biennale is a microcosm, a criss-cross of diverse systems of global economy, politics and contemporary culture. It is a phenomenon among the biennials with its excessive scale, “grand” style and baroque experience. Therefore, we prefer to work with an experienced international artist, who can understand this peculiar nature of the Biennale and respond to it.
Ayşe Erkmen is an artist who has solid yet playful ideas and extensive experience and in-depth understanding of the international art context. Her projects often create diverse and unexpected layers that can provoke subtle thoughts and experiences for the audience. Additionally, all of her projects respond to the context, site and situation of an exhibition.
The decision of the curator Fulya Erdemci to invite one artist to develop a project stemmed from the specific nature of the Venice Biennale. A subtle and conceptually strong exhibition with the participation of more than one artist necessitates special attention, concentration and time for the visitors to process it: the links between the projects may remain unnoticed. The scale of Venice is too excessive for such a demand from the audience. One strong project works better in such a context.
Q: What is Ayşe Erkmen showing in the Pavilion of Turkey this year?
A: The Pavilion of Turkey is in the main building of the Venice Biennale, the Arsenale. It is a beautiful spacious venue with a window overlooking the canal and access to the promenade outside. This specific room, with the visible traces of machines, shows that historically this is a place of production. The artist and the curator took this quality of the venue literally and Ayşe Erkmen responded to it situation-specifically and context-responsively with a sculptural installation. She converted the space into a working machine: a water purification unit
Q: What does her installation represent?
A: Ayşe Erkmen’s sculptural installation “Plan B” draws on the ineluctable and complex relationship Venice has with water. Her project transforms a room inside the Arsenale into a complex water purification unit where machines perform as sculptures, enveloping the audience inside of the filtration process that eventually provides clean, drinkable water back to the canal.
Each component of the filtration unit has been separated out, disseminating the machinery throughout the room then reconnecting the elements with extended pipes. Erkmen choreographs the elegant industrial forms to draw attention to the process of transformation, at the end of which the purified water is returned to the canal: a futile, yet courageous gesture against the overwhelming scale of the canal and the ocean.
Formally, Erkmen’s practice often comments on minimalism’s relationship between industrial form and the body. Here the installation generates a visceral experience for viewers who are embodied within the mechanism of transformation.
“Plan B” abstractly conveys systems and processes that we are part of daily: blood circulating through the body, Capital flowing through borders, the flow of goods across the oceans, the mechanisms of authority, the supply of natural resources while proffering a poetic reference to the potentiality of change. Simultaneously the work is a subtly humorous critique of the euphoria for unsustainable short-lived solutions and changes within the complex systems and structures that surround us.
Curatori - Fulya Erdemci
Artisti : Ayse Erkmen
Web site: http://www.planb-venicebiennale.com/flash/index.html |
