September 21 – November 13, 2010
Boğazkesen Cad. No: 27/A
Tophane Beyoğlu
İstanbul, Turkey
T: +902122498774
info@galerinon.com
www.galerinon.com
NON is proud to present the first solo exhibition of Extrastruggle titled “Extrastruggle 2010 / I didn’t do this, you did.”
‘Extrastruggle is an enormous project which began in 1997.’ Thus began Extrastruggle’s manifesto and continued by stating that Extrastruggle works on imaginary demands from imaginary customers, designing logos for all groups under social pressure. In ‘I didn’t do this, you did.’, Extrastruggle’s first comprehensive show since the 10th International Istanbul Biennial, the big logos, the images of power and the ruling heads of the great powers meet the forms, rhythms and cul-de-sacs of the real world, with relationships we all in some way try to understand, leading to the emergence of new images, new relationships and new questions: Do our beliefs rest on a pedestal, like a statue? If we really, really concentrate, can we make others do what we want them to? Should we go forward or backwards, or is it best just to mark time?
(The excerpt below is from the extrastruggle manifesto.)
WHAT IS EXTRASTRUGGLE?
Extrastruggle is an enormous project, which began in 1997. It works on imaginary demands from imaginary customers. Just like a graphic designer designing a logo for a client, it designs logos for all communities under social pressure. It makes pictures, which suit their imaginary requests. The girl who is not allowed into university because she covers her head, the man who is frowned upon for speaking Kurdish in public, the islamist who is opposed to Europeanisation, the army disturbed by the anti-revolutionary desire of the islamist and also the leftist intellectual are all imaginary clients of Extrastruggle. Extrastruggle has no political views. It does not take sides. It is impossible for it to do so.
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Borrowing continuously, “Extrastruggle” seeks its dreamland. This search is the dream of thought rather than a will to form a conceptual base. Just like the dream being the only place where the picture of an apple and the script of an apple are the same thing. Or the real Istanbul being very different from and at the same time identical with the Istanbul roadsign welcoming a stranger. Extrastruggle is the relationship of things which have nothing to do with each other. It’s the will to shift from the “I think” mode to the mode of “It is being thought.” Extrastruggle is the neverending struggle between photograph, form, sign and script. Torn off from different worlds, there is a continuous transition and escape among this quartet. Each one is a ghost of the other. Just like the world, the other world and the other other world… Extrastruggle forges a single body from different items. It creates a whole, a Frankenstein, from pieces which are ghosts of each other.
Recent group exhibitions include White Out, Kunsthaus Erfurt, Erfurt, Germany, 2010; Istanbul Cool!, LTHM Gallery, New York, 2010; états d’âmes, ENSBA, Paris, 2010; Extrastruggle vs Tanja Nellemann Poulsen, Danske, Copenhagen, 2010; 10 years of Rotor, Graz, 2009; The 13th Biennial of Art “Pure Expression”, Pancevo, 2009; E-flux video rental, Gulbenkian, Lisbon, 2008; 10th International Istanbul Biennial, 2007; E-flux video Rental – Centre culturel Suisse, Paris, 2007; E-flux video rental – Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, Cambridge, 2007; The Free Will, bunkers of Treptow/Arena, Berlin, 2005; False World, Rathausgalerie, Munich, 2004. Extrastruggle’s works were included in the book Vitamin D/New Perspectives In Drawing (2005) by Phaidon.
*Image above:
Photo by Serkan Tunç.
Courtesy of the artist and NON.