Sarkis exhibition opens at Gallery Mana

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

In İkiz I Twin, Sarkis creates a universe of dualities at work in multiple layers.

Galeri Manâ is preparing to host Sarkis’s solo exhibition titled “İkiz I Twin” in Istanbul starting from May 24. This first solo exhibition of Sarkis at Galeri Manâ will present a new installation by the artist, bringing together his most recent works. The exhibition will be complemented by a discussion between Sarkis, Uwe Fleckner and Nico Anklam at the nearby Galata Greek Primary School.

In İkiz I Twin, Sarkis creates a universe of dualities at work in multiple layers. Copper surfaces with their reflective and transmissive properties take the central stage in a setting where each floor of the gallery space acts as an original twin to the other. The twins are endowed with minor distortions expressed in the time lapse and spatial divide between the two floors, and also in the substance and the form of each work. Each object is encountered twice but both are of essence, referring to the founding dualisms of the human experience and conception of the universe. This duality is transcended only by the sound element of the exhibition. A musical score fills the entire space; also connecting the exhibition to Sarkis’s Ballads installation at the former shipyard in Rotterdam, the distant, ringing sound of bells conveys the song of two whales in dialogue as Sarkis engages in his own conversation with John Cage.

Nico Anklam says, “We hear the far-off sounds of bells or ringing coming from loudspeakers covered with copper. We keep finding ourselves doubled in the exhibition space and look into the face of our mirror-image twin through a curtain of colorful fingerprints. Leaded windows display photographic portraits whose protagonists appear to be saints of everyday life. We find a brownish shirt, worn just by a copper rod, which is adorned with numerous applications. It hangs strangely high on the wall.”

Fully illustrated catalog

A fully illustrated catalog will accompany the exhibition with contributions by Uwe Fleckner and Nico Anklam focusing respectively on Sarkis’s use of visual phenomena in relation to memory and on this latest installation of works. There will be a discussion between Sarkis, Uwe Fleckner and Nico Anklam on May 24, 2013, at 6 p.m. at the Galata Greek Primary School.

Since the earliest stages of his artistic practice, Sarkis has searched for an aesthetic language and experience characteristic of our time. A constant urge to create a new language underlies Sarkis’s oeuvre, always reflective of the nature of the materials, media and sites he uses. Taking inspiration from autobiographical elements as well as art history, literature, music and film, he emphasizes the historicity and performativity of objects and sites. Through the physical, historical and conceptual encounters he stages, the artist brings new life into fixed and frozen depositories of memory.

Recent retrospective exhibitions of Sarkis were held at Musée d’Art Moderne et Contemporain, Geneva (2011); Centre Pompidou, Paris (2010) and at Istanbul Modern (2009). Sarkis has participated at numerous international exhibitions including When Attitudes Become Form (Kunsthalle Bern, 1969).