Ayşe Erkmen
(b. 1949, İstanbul, lives and works in Berlin and İstanbul)
“Working with the space, I like to make do with what is already in the space, without bringing in something new, something from the outside.” Ayşe Erkmen (2008)
Ayşe Erkmen’s practice is a critique of the autonomous and monumental objects and habitual categories of classical sculpture. She often makes works that temporarily transform existing spatial, architectural, institutional and social conditions and contexts. They can be displacements, relocations, motions, and obstacles, both playful and disarming, and invariably specific to their location. While her proposals are extremely prudent and have little bearing on their actualization, the resulting work could be a minimal, nearly imperceptible intervention, or a project as complex as transporting three ships to a river with their crew from different parts of the world.
Uyumlu Çizgiler [Imitating Lines] was originally produced for the 5. Sanatta Yeni Eğilimler Sergisi [5th Exhibition of New Trends in Art] in 1985 that took place at Mimar Sinan University where Erkmen studied sculpture. Knowing well the exhibition space and its interior furnishing she produced extremely simple green metal structures that looked by themselves like awkward, indeterminate modern sculptures. What they really did was to heighten the visitors’ awareness of the space, particularly its details such as corners and steps. At once unimposing, but clearly visible, the lines mingle with both the space and works. In this exhibition İstanbul Eindhoven-SALTVanAbbe: 68-89, Uyumlu Çizgiler adopts to the architecture and circulation patterns of the gallery space at SALT Beyoğlu.
“Working with the space, I like to make do with what is already in the space, without bringing in something new, something from the outside.” Ayşe Erkmen (2008)
Ayşe Erkmen’s practice is a critique of the autonomous and monumental objects and habitual categories of classical sculpture. She often makes works that temporarily transform existing spatial, architectural, institutional and social conditions and contexts. They can be displacements, relocations, motions, and obstacles, both playful and disarming, and invariably specific to their location. While her proposals are extremely prudent and have little bearing on their actualization, the resulting work could be a minimal, nearly imperceptible intervention, or a project as complex as transporting three ships to a river with their crew from different parts of the world.
Uyumlu Çizgiler [Imitating Lines] was originally produced for the 5. Sanatta Yeni Eğilimler Sergisi [5th Exhibition of New Trends in Art] in 1985 that took place at Mimar Sinan University where Erkmen studied sculpture. Knowing well the exhibition space and its interior furnishing she produced extremely simple green metal structures that looked by themselves like awkward, indeterminate modern sculptures. What they really did was to heighten the visitors’ awareness of the space, particularly its details such as corners and steps. At once unimposing, but clearly visible, the lines mingle with both the space and works. In this exhibition İstanbul Eindhoven-SALTVanAbbe: 68-89, Uyumlu Çizgiler adopts to the architecture and circulation patterns of the gallery space at SALT Beyoğlu.
