Boyadjiev interprets Alptekin’s artworks

ISTANBUL

The selection of Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin’s belongings and documents is divided into three conceptual parts by artist Luchezar Boyadjiev.

Artist Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin’s works are reflected in Luchezar Boyadjiev’s new selection at SALT Galata.

SALT opened its doors in 2011 with “I am not a studio artist,” the most comprehensive exhibition to date of Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin’s (1957-2007) art. Since then, objects and documents from the artist’s collection have been presented at different times at SALT Galata, with three selections having been prepared by Alptekin’s spouse Camila Rocha and his intimate friends Ahmet Şenkart and Özgür Uçkan.

The fourth selection is composed by Luchezar Boyadjiev, a colleague of Alptekin’s who shared many experiences and exhibition collaborations with him.

Opening at SALT Galata on March 26, the selection is divided into three conceptual parts by Boyadjiev.

The first comprises objects (badges, matchboxes) and personal correspondence (letters, postcards), the second is made up of ephemera from exhibitions and conferences, the third comprises documents, caviar boxes and labels in Bulgarian, Russian and Ukrainian, written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Boyadjiev’s selection creates a narrative through Alptekin’s objects and ephemera to express complementary and contradictory ideas. Boyadjiev engages in a dialogue with these materials to suggest the reasons why Alptekin chose and collected them, while also detecting traces of his own professional past, thanks to the projects the two artists worked on together. There are also some objects that Boyadjiev includes in his selection purely for their design or aura.

Alptekin collection at Salt

In the Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin Collection at SALT Galata, a book on the simplest of cars, the infamous yet iconic Trabant – that plastic glory of socialist East German industry from before 1989 – can be found alongside a volume of the most heavy-duty theory – Derrida’s “Of Grammatology,” a book that was instrumental in the revolution of 1968, a mere 10 years before Alptekin went to study in Paris.

Boyadjiev will talk about his research in the Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin Archive and the process of making his selection at SALT Galata on the day of the exhibition’s opening on March 26.