Exhibit brings murder stories into art domain
ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News
The victims of third page stories are also featured in a fictional newspaper prepared for the exhibition.
Sticking the very mundane right into the glamour of the art scene, a new solo exhibition from artist Eşref Yıldırım is problematizing the sanctity of artistic creation by juxtaposing it with the death of ordinary people.Yıldırım’s “Nobody’s Death” at Galeri Zilberman in Istanbul is a series of works about the death and homicide stories that traditionally go on the “third pages” of Turkish newspapers, displayed against the sterility of whitewashed gallery walls.
What is traditionally called a third-page story in Turkish media consists of mind-numbing death and crime stories. The third page is allocated to the ordinary people who may even make the page’s headline story depending on the luridness of their death, granting them 15 minutes of fame, albeit posthumously. Their deaths only make it to the third page and nowhere else.
“Those dying on the third pages are away from everyone. The third page deaths are always singular,” according to the exhibition catalogue, which is a newspaper as well. Titled “Revised Second Edition,” the fictional newspaper re-narrates the story behind photographs reproduced on canvas in the show.
Unordinary death stories
The unordinary death stories of the same people are filtered through the literary sieves of different authors for this single-issue newspaper. Interpreted and re-edited by Ozan Utku Akgün, Hayati Çitaklar, Beliz Güçbilmez, Süreyya Karacarombey, Coşkun Kirazlı, Pelin Temur, Umut, Şamil Yılmaz and Süreyya Aylin Antmen, these all-peculiar news pieces about death change form and find another means to convey themselves.
The artist uses the newspaper again in the transformation of the newspaper images on canvas.
Newspaper is contrasted with canvas on a material basis, while media coverage and artistic creation is contrasted on the level of content.
The contrast between the availability and abundance of the newspaper and rarity and the
expensiveness of canvas is to symbolize the opposition between the temporary and permanent, life and death, important and unimportant.
Yıldırım invites the viewer to question his or her own oblivion to the death of others by reminding them of their daily reading material and through the sharp images of dead faces hanging on the walls.
The exhibition opened May 18 and will continue until June 18.
Born in 1978, Yıldırım is a graduate of the Painting Department of Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University and is pursuing his postgraduate studies in the same department. He has previously made three solo exhibitions in addition to participating in group exhibitions.
“Nobody’s Death” is the artist’s first solo exhibition at Galeri Zilberman in Mısır Apartment on Taksim’s İstiklal Avenue.
