UNDERCURRENT
06 May – 12 June 2004
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center
276 Istiklal Caddesi, Beyoglu
Istanbul 34340
tel: 00 90 212 29 32361
fax: 00 90 212 293 3071
www.platform.garanti.com.tr
photo: Geert Goiris (with thanks to Bozar, Brussels) UNDERCURRENT
Curators: Hans Martens and Cis Bierinckx
Participating artists: Anouk De Clercq, Koen De Decker, Tina Gillen, Mekhitar Garabedian, Geert Goiris.
The artists in UNDERCURRENT will directly interfere with the space at Platform to open a complex environmental discourse about material, substance, form and the experience of perception. The exhibition has been set up as an installation, with each contribution helping to fertilize the others. It focuses on the relation between concrete, mental, virtual and imaginary spaces, yet it is not the surface that interests these artists, but what lies beneath, an invisible stream that relates the works and guides their audience through the confrontational experience of the artists’ mind games. UNDERCURRENT is an artistic collaborative project rather than a group show, in which mutual processing gains from individual presentation.
In her video work Anouk De Clercq strips landscapes and buildings bare to create atmospheric, geographic spaces, black and white abstractions, and new and fascinating realities. ‘Building’, presented at Platform, was inspired by the architecture of the Bruges Concert Hall, developed by the Flemish architects Robberechts & Daem. Light breaks through the windows and makes the atmosphere ghost-like, a haunted house filled with the alienating sounds of Anton Aeki: architecture as frozen music.
Koen De Decker uses mathematical syntaxes in his sculptural installations to stimulate a stronger awareness of space and those left in-between. His works, mostly made with ordinary materials, function as enigmatic markers. He will use Platform’s space to produce a new sculpture, which will interact with the characteristics of the environment, balancing tension and release.
Tina Gillen’s paintings use a colorful pallet and yet they give an impression of desolation. She often lets architectural forms pop out of the canvas in such a way that known forms become abstractions of color fields. Her works are estranging. Sometimes she enlarges the experience by adding unusual elements to her painterly environment. Gillen will create a new wall painting for the Platform space.
Mekhitar Garabedian’s work deals with memory, identity and history as an unavoidable dilemma, which he carries with him as an Armenian born European emigre. Although he touches on very personal issues, Garabedian avoids the anecdotal by placing his discourse on a universal mental plane.
Geert Goiris’ photo works are bathed in an idiom of absence. The emptiness, which frequently returns in his work, appeals directly to an experience of time and space. Goiris’ images do not document, but reflect, with urban and industrial landscapes appearing differently via the gaze of the artist. His camera eye blends real space to an imaginary state of being.
With support from the Flemish Government and IBK-Initiative for Visual Arts Flanders.
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center
276 Istiklal Caddesi, Beyoglu, Istanbul 34340
tel: 00 90 212 29 32361
fax: 00 90 212 293 3071 www.platform.garanti.com.tr