‘Play at home’ selection at Arter

ISTANBUL

Istanbul’s Arter Gallery presents the second edition of #playathome, an online selection of video works which can be accessed on its website.

Selected from the Arter Collection to be played at home, this edition features nine videos, with a particular focus on the act of drawing and painting, even though the contextual frames surrounding each work and the tools they utilize may differ from one another.
Practiced on paper or on the surface of still water, these actions performed with everyday materials and bodily gestures enable diverse artistic genres to disperse into each other through the temporality of video.

The artists and works in the second edition are as follows:

On her video, visual artist Geta Bratescu provides a performative representation of her relation with the line by drawing linear forms on the pages of a large drawing book with a thick black marker.

“Crossing the Yangpu Bridge,” a work by Josef Bares is part of his Movement series where the artist deals with the representation of movement and the perception of urban spaces. His video shows a subject’s perspective from a vehicle while crossing one of the longest bridges in the world, the Yangpu Bridge in Shanghai.

Marie Cool and Fabio Balducci have been working collectively since 1995. Performed in an exhibition space or in the form of video recordings, their works explore the possibilities of building non-hierarchical relationships among humans and material elements. In their video, Cool manipulates and gives form to the string with her hands, creating transient drawings composed of simple lines.

İz Öztat’s video “Constituting an Island” marks the absence of the island through the collective movement of the canoes.

In her video titled “Short Program,” the turning pages of a flip book reveal Kata Tranker’s watercolor drawings of a figure skater, jumping, falling on the ground and getting back up again. The video indirectly unveils Tranker’s reflections on her own artistic practice as well as artists’ position in society and their working conditions.

“Justice of the Landscape” is part of a video series to which Angel Vergara refers as painted films. In this video, Vergara traces over video recordings of the Antwerp Courthouse, which he took with a steadicam from a distance, by using a fine detail paintbrush.

Shot in a staged studio environment with reference to historical still life paintings, Diana Keller and Peter Rizmayer’s “Still Life with Flowers” brings a “nature morte” into life through a subtle digital manipulation and juxtaposition of different artistic genres.

In Sophia Pompery’s “Still Water,” a hand using a paintbrush coats the surface of a black table with water. Certain objects in the room, the window and the views from outside the window not directly presented in the video frame become visible on the reflective surface of water. As the heater placed underneath the table evaporates the water, the images also become increasingly blurred and ultimately disappear.

The videos can be accessed through June 21 at arter.org.tr.