Ahmet Elhan
Ground Glass
January 9–March 19, 2016
Opening: Friday, January 8, 6:30pm
Galeri Zilberman
İstiklal Cad. Mısır Apt. No:163
Beyoğlu, İstanbul
Galeri Zilberman is pleased to announce the opening of the exhibition by Ahmet Elhan, titled Ground Glass, along with the book launch of the project.
In Ground Glass, the artist focuses on photography’s own tradition and the notion of mastery. Creating this new exhibition with an artistic sensitivity towards visual exuberance in today’s world, he proposes an alternative perspective against the manipulation of the hastily produced and consumed digital photography, and how it conceals the truth photographically.
In his previous works, Elhan used to break down the exhibition space into its time-intervals, leading to a novel perception and experience of the space. Switching his focus from the space to the figure during the process, Elhan also pointed his camera to nature and pursues the plain one, the one that’s there, giving references to the craft and history of photography.
The works at the exhibition show resistance to today’s reflex of creating hastily with digital photography, by using landscape and nature photography’s characteristic of producing images in a long period of time as a call to reflect on photography. Elhan ensures that his nature photographs are evaluated analytically by adding lines on their ground glasses, thus drawing attention to the subject of composition. In this way, he also underlines the issue of photography being the proof or reflection of truth, advising the audience not to believe what they see with their eyes and invites them to spend time in front of the Ground Glass and think about what photography could offer as a material.
Ground Glass exhibition by Ahmet Elhan is accompanied by a book, which discusses ontological, historical, and philosophical dimensions of photographic images and their current status as art works. Edited by Basak Senova, the book focuses on Elhan‘s photographic practice, artistic research and methodology as guidance to explore questions concerning photography at large. The writers of the book are Maria Lantz (artist, curator, lecturer, and the Vice Chancellor at Konstfack, University College of Arts, Crafts and Design, in Stockholm, Sweden), Bassam El Baroni (curator and lecturer in theory at the Dutch Art Institute, Arnhem) and Basak Senova (curator, designer, and lecturer at the Department of Communication Design, Bilkent University).
Ahmet Elhan (b. 1959, İzmir): After completing his undergraduate degree at Marmara University’s Graphic Design Department, he went on to graduate from the Cinema-TV Department at Dokuz Eylül University. As well as participating in many national and international group exhibitions, he has opened 14 solo exhibitions to date. His works are part of many important corporate and private collections both in Turkey and abroad. He lives and works in Istanbul.
The Ground Glass book was designed by Erhan Muratoglu and Basak Senova, and published by Galeri Zilberman, Istanbul.
Ground Glass by Ahmet Elhan can be visited at the gallery’s main exhibition space on the third floor of Mısır Apartmanı until March 5. For more information, please contact Zeynep Temiz at zeynep [at] galerizilberman.com.