Interrupted Halfway Through
April 25–July 27, 2019
Zilberman Gallery, Berlin is pleased to announce the exhibition Interrupted Halfway Through by Istanbul based artist Burçak Bingöl. This exhibition marks the artist’s first solo presentation in Berlin.
Interrupted Halfway Through—taking its name from Ahmet Hamdi Tanpınar’s book Beş Şehir (Five Cities), where he makes a metaphorical comparison of Beyoglu, a district of Istanbul, to Paris. Taking this dialogue as a departure point, Burçak Bingöl carries various fragments from Istanbul to Berlin and makes a visual experiment by superposing times and spaces. While creating a psychological as well as a political landscape on forgetting and remembering, Bingöl’s oeuvre scrutinizes hidden as well as fading and/almost lost memories. Her show, almost like an excavation site, focusing on the social amnesia generated by state control as well as the syncopated connections between the East and the West. The interest in stratification of time in her work—especially linked to the city of Istanbul—is inspired by Tanpınar’s ideas on time that has strong references to Bergson’s notion of durée. By using the concept of Yekparetime—an understanding of time that is based on a selective memory—Bingöl imagines a re-construction, focusing on the ruins of a forgotten past.
Channeling energies of different spaces, Bingöl carries not only wild plants and stones of Istanbul but also carries a piece of the gallery wall in Istanbul’s renowned art-nouveau style Mısır Apartment. The thin layers of the work Displaced Gallery Wall or A Fragmented Memory of a Rose, bring the New Wave—the recent (cultural and/or political) immigrants that came from Istanbul to Berlin—into mind. How do we engage with the new when we are displaced? How to adapt to a new environment?
The artist will also realize a site-specific installation in the gallery’s Istanbul venue as a continuation of this place shift by recalling the Berlin venue, Living Inside a Tale and There Only which will open on May 11 in Istanbul.
For more information please contact: goksu [at] zilbermangallery.com
Burçak Bingöl (1976, Tr) Born in Görele, raised in Ankara, she lives and works in Istanbul. Her solo exhibitions include: Jardin Particulier, (French Palace, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017), Mythos and Utopia (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey, 2017), Solo Presentation (Volta NY, New York, USA, 2015), A Carriage Affair (Zilberman Gallery, Istanbul, Turkey 2014) and Solo Presentation (Art Basel, Hong Kong, 2014); and her group exhibitions include: Unleashing, (Columbia University Teachers College, New York, USA, 2018), a good neighbour - on the move (Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich, Germany, 2017), a good neighbour 15th Istanbul Biennial (Istanbul, Turkey, 2017) and TEN (Baksı Museum, Bayburt, Turkey, 2015). Her work is in many private and public collections in the US, Europe, the Middle and Far East, including The Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, USA), 21st Century Museum (Louisville, USA), Baksı Museum (Bayburt, Turkey) and Salsali Private Museum -SPM (Dubai, UAE).
