This Page Intentionally Left Blank
Akbank Sanat International Curator Competition 2013′s winning proposal
March 19–May 17, 2014
Akbank Sanat
İstiklal Cad. No:8
34435 Beyoğlu, İstanbul
Turkey
Hours: Tuesday–Saturday 10:30–19:30h
Curator: Franz Thalmair
Akbank Sanat International Curator Competition is intended to provide support for emerging curators, reinforce interest in curatorial practices, and encourage new projects in the field of contemporary art. Akbank Sanat is proud to present the exhibition realized by the winning proposal of Franz Thalmair at Akbank Art Centre, Istanbul.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank
This Page Intentionally Left Blank is the first in a series of exhibitions based on a wide-reaching research about writing. The original typewritten manuscript of Vilém Flusser’s essay “The Gesture of Writing” provides its thematic and formal-aesthetic foundation. “To write,” says the philosopher about the basic requirements that should lead to a complete piece of writing, we need “a blank surface, for instance a white leaf of paper; an instrument which contains a matter that contrasts with the whiteness of the paper; the letters of the alphabet; the convention which gives a meaning to the letters; ‘orthography’ = correct writing; the rules which order that language, what is called ‘grammar’; an idea to be expressed in a language; and a motive to express that idea.” Understanding the act of writing as a broad culturally embedded gesture, the exhibition This Page Intentionally Left Blank covers artistic, literary, as well as curatorial and editorial fields of action and combines them.
This Page Intentionally Left Blank makes reference to so-called blank pages. These pages are intentionally left unprinted by bookmakers and serve as placeholders, to fill surplus book space or to structure the content. The fact that these white pages are included in the pagination of a printed work illustrates that it is not simply about coincidental or even forgotten elements, rather there is quite definitely an intention behind these blank spaces. So readers don’t have the impression that there is a printing or binding mistake in the book, blank pages are marked in some cases with the note “This page intentionally left blank.” The paradox of this written marking is that the sentence infiltrates itself through suspending with text the very blank space that it is simultaneously trying to articulate.
The exhibition project draws from the contrariness of this momentum, a momentum in which the readers are cast into an infinite perceptual loop between linguistically conveyed content, text form, and the carrier medium and confronted with the material-haptic properties of an otherwise empty piece of paper. In addition to the format, the surface quality, to the weight and the color of the used paper, also the context in which the apparently vacant page is embedded comes to the perceptual fore. This enables the gaze to wander from the microcosm of the printed letters to the macrocosm of the greater printed work—part of which, in turn, are the words “This page intentionally left blank.”
Artists:
John Baldessari, Fiona Banner, VALIE EXPORT, Kenneth Goldsmith, Wade Guyton, Daniel Hafner, Marianne Holm Hansen, Bethan Huws, Joséphine Kaeppelin, Michael Kargl, Ulrich Kehrer & Agnes Miesenberger, Jörg Piringer, Falke Pisano, Stefan Riebel, Karin Sander, Ignacio Uriarte, Anita Witek
—based upon “The Gesture of Writing” by Vilém Flusser