Lastwinterspringnevercame
22 January – 28 February 2004
Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center
Istiklal Caddesi 276
Beyoglu, Istanbul 80050, Turkey
Phone +90 212 293 2361
Fax +90 212 293 3071
platform@garanti.com.tr
image: Basir Borlakov, Untitled, 2001
Last winter spring never came. There was no stepping stone into summer, no gradual descent into the sudden all consuming heat of the city. Istanbul missed out on displaying its colour and moments of passion, freedom, desire and love, that spring induces.
This month Platform will exhibit works by artists which pave the way for spring, raising spirits and planting smiles a little earlier than expected. The vibrancy, colour and spirit of the exhibition will change moods, creating feelings of heady spring like abandon to result in a celebration of ‘the quirky, crazy and beautiful things “we” do.’
The deliberately reckless behaviour of a young woman seen smashing parked car windows in Pipilotti Rist’s documentary version of Ever is Over All screams of a lust for life. In the video work Family Sha-La-La, artist Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen films herself and family members attempting to perform a choreographed dance routine to ‘Sha-La-La.’
The installations Untitled (North) after Felix Gonzalez-Torres and a version of Jim Lambie’s ZOBOP Broadband created on site fill the space with pattern, movement and light.
Finally, photographs by Erwin Wurm and Basir Borlakov present staged compositions, which juxtapose the apparently ‘normal’ with bizarre and dream-like scenarios, the two extremes balancing each other out until neither appears more unusual than the other.
Untitled 2001, Basir Borlakov; Family Sha-La-La 1998, Lilibeth Cuenca Rasmussen; Untitled (North), 1993/2004, after Felix Gonzalez-Torres; a version of ZOBOP Broadband 2004, Jim Lambie; Ever is Over All, documentary version 1997/2004, Pipilotti Rist; photographs from series Indoor Sculpture – CC Graz, 2001, Erwin Wurm.
Platform website will be launched on February 21, 2004: www.platform.garanti.com.tr
