Art Agenda » Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre

Ali Cabbar’s RED PASSAGE at Yapi Kredi Cultural Center

Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre — Tue, 13 Mar 2012 04:00:21 +0000

Ali Cabbar, Icon No.15, 2012. UV Print on Board.

Ali Cabbar’s RED PASSAGE at Yapi Kredi Cultural Center

Ali Cabbar’s RED PASSAGE

curated by Basak Senova

10 March–15 April 2012

161 Beyoğlu, Istanbul
Monday–Saturday 10.30–19.30
Sunday 13–19.30
Free Admission

T + 90 212 252 47 00 (pbx)

www.ykykultur.com.tr

Ali Cabbar is an Istanbul born artist whose work reflects different aspects of personal freedom, military control, political suppression, identity, and exile. Cabbar left Turkey after being jailed for three years for publishing a newspaper—a consequence of the military coup d’etat of 1980. He first immigrated to Australia for six years, and then to Belgium where he still resides. Even so, his works—including paintings, drawings, installations, and video—have always been closely linked with Turkey. Cabbar’s works address political, psychological, and existential dimensions of an individual, processed from a highly politically engaged life. He utilizes black humour as a way of undertaking the cruelty, injustice, and emergency of his experiences in life. This manifests a connection between aesthetics and politics in his works.

Narration is a precept for Cabbar’s works. His narrations always develop as a personal inquiry toward certain issues that he has been confronted with as an individual; they are mostly fragmentary, as if to be moments and motions extracted from either anonymous anecdotes or personal reminiscences with incomplete tenses. Cabbar’s drawing style follows Ligne Claire, and therefore is quite distinctive in terms of clarity and simplicity. In this simplicity, he exploits details as partitions to develop fragmented narrations.

In 2010, Yapi Kredi Cultural Center hosted the first major retrospective exhibition of the artist: Disquiet Shadow. Curated by Basak Senova, the exhibition displayed a wide range of his works, which carried a sense of disquiet and loneliness. In the same vein, the book accompanied the exhibition which rendered ideas from The Book of Disquiet by Fernando Pessoa, featured with a text by Başak Şenova, her interview with the artist, and a piece written for this catalogue by Belgian art critic Roger Pierre Turine. The book was edited by Mine Haydaroğlu. Two years later, Yapi Kredi Cultural Center re-invited Ali Cabbar and Basak Senova—the curator of Disquiet Shadow—to host Cabbar’s latest project Red Passage, which raises important issues from the current socio-political situations in Turkey.

Red Passage is a project that assimilates a critical approach to the power politics, values, hopes, sanctions, restrictions, and beliefs that surround us. In this project, Ali Cabbar has produced faceless icons based on the acquiescing of these values.

In Red Passage, Cabbar graphically renders the relationship between life and death. He links the acceptance and legitimization of death to the exploitation of these values. The artist’s symbolically embellished icons are put into words sometimes through blood, through a flag, at times with a border, and sometimes with conviction. The passage, located in the gallery, lined up with the works salutes the viewer as if in a procession. While the spatial design of the exhibition guides the viewer to be an active participant of the project, it also underlines the architectural changes within Yapi Kredi Cultural Center.

For further information, please contact:
Yapi Kredi Cultural Center, 161 Beyoğlu, Istanbul
T + 90 212 252 47 00 (pbx)
veysel.ugurlu@ykykultur.com.tr

Yapı Kredi Cultural Center’s facade as a work of art

Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 04:00:43 +0000

View from the performance: “Augmented Structures v1.1: Acoustic Formation/Istiklal Street.”*

Yapı Kredi Cultural Center’s facade as a work of art

Augmented Structures v1.1:
Acoustic Formation/Istiklal Street

A video/audio performance

17 September–13 November 2011

Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre
Istiklal Street, 161
Beyoğlu, Istanbul

Visiting hours:
Mon–Fri 10 a.m.–7 p.m.
Sat. 10 a.m.–6 p.m.
Sun. 1 p.m.–6 p.m.

T +90 212 252 4700 (pbx)

www.ykykultur.com.tr

Yapı Kredi Cultural Centre (YKKSY), located right at the heart of Istanbul, presents on its 400 sqm facade, an installation which was created through the use of innovative parametric architecture and audiovisual techniques.

Beyond being an artwork, the installation is an urban experience, combining science and art and making the city’s acoustic memory visible and tangible through architecture. It is an experiment with new techniques in the old part of the city.

Organized by YKKSY, the exhibition and the installation have been realized by Refik Anadol who works in the fields of live video/audio performance and architectural photography, and Alper Derinboğaz who is an architect specialized in digital design as well as fabrication techniques.

The installation process started with the field sound recordings of Istiklal Street (arguably the most crowded street in Europe), which were then digitally processed and transformed into a parametric architectural structure. Recordings from three different time slices were superimposed and the frequency / decibel data translated into spreadsheets and then into a 3D surface in a coordinate system. The location data applied to X, the decibel became the Z and the frequency value turned into Y value to achieve a complete 3D picture of the recorded sound. A visual performance was projected on the structure, accompanied by a generatively designed contemporary aesthetic visuals consisting of input data from particularly chosen sounds synchronized to the movement of graphics re-shaping and transforming the structure’s perception on which they were projected. The structure in turn influenced and transformed the projections as well.

Coinciding with the opening of the 12th Istanbul Biennial, the performance was realized consecutively for two evenings, drawings hundreds of spectators who happened to walk by the YKKSY building in the hub of the city. As an example of a work of art in public space, this installation is a testament to the collective memory of the people who experience Istanbul and a contemporary twist on the historic public space that has been the grounds of many cultures, ranging from the Byzantine, Ottoman civilizations to contemporary Turkey. Though the recording is of the current Istiklal Street, the sounds carry among many the people’s voices, the church bells, the call to prayer of the mosques, the street musicians, the chimes of the popular tram on this otherwise pedestrian walkway; hence these sounds reflect the past as well as the present time. The final sounds of the city may not allow clear deciphering of the exact time of the day or the particulars of life and heritage on this street, but it allows a spatial and audiovisual experience. It provides a new perspective, a new understanding and a new challenge to viewers.

The historic building which houses the Yapı Kredi Cultural Center (which is itself a part of the collective memory of the Turkish people), is viewed as a vibrant and augmented structure boding well for the changing dynamics of the city as well as the institution itself.

The experimentation and processing phases of the installation are displayed in the exhibition hall in the first floor of the YKKSY building. The exhibition focuses on interactions between space, sound, video and light by asking the question of how to translate the logic of media into architecture. Along with discussions on the subject, an answer to the question is presented with three new augmented structures. And in the room built in the center of the exhibition hall, the video of the performance is presented in loop. Visitors are welcome to experience it until November 30, 2011.

Audio/visual display:
www.augmentedstructures.com

Further information:
www.ykykultur.com.tr/sergi/?yer=Yapi-Kredi-Kultur-Merkezi

*Image above:
Artist-Architect: Refik Anadol-Alper Derinboğaz
Yapı Kredi Cultural Center, Istiklal Cad. No. 161
Beyoglu, Istanbul, Turkey
Photographed by/ date: Refik Anadol, 20 Sept. 2011