TR

15.04.2021 – 10.06.2021

Artists: Ali Şentürk, Cengiz Tekin, Çağrı Saray, Erkan Özgen, Ferhat Özgür, Hale Tenger, Neriman Polat, Nil Yalter, Özgür Demirci, Vahap Avşar

Mixer focuses on the video art in exhibition series LENS’21 second edition where traces the evolution of photography and video in Turkey’s contemporary art reflection.

After the LENS exhibition series that focused on photography in 2019, this year, Mixer is taking video as a production tool from a wider perspective. With the power of cooperation between art institutions, Mixer is gathering Bilsart, Monitor, and Loading with parallel bull sessions and online variety shows organized in İstanbul, İzmir, Diyarbakır.

Due to Covid-19, after the postponement of the project which was mainly planned to carry through 2020, Mixer decided to evolve it into a much comprehensive project with Turkey’s leading institution in the video art area Bilsart. With the belief and importance of cooperation and acting together in the art field, with the participation of art institutions from different locations of Turkey, Senkron ‘Synchronized Video Exhibitions’ first steps have been taken this way. Senkron, organized collectively by all institutions’ participation with their programs, aims to fill the gap we feel especially in the field of video, and to be an event where this unity and solidarity will continue with the participation of different art components in the coming years.

Lens'21 exhibition, which brings together the works of artists who have taken an active role in the development of the video as a form of artistic expression, based on their narratives, will meet with the audience between April 15 and June 10 at Mixer gallery area and Bilsart. While Cengiz Tekin, Çağrı Saray, Erkan Özgen, Ferhat Özgür, Hale Tenger, Neriman Polat, Nil Yalter, Özgür Demirci and Vahap Avşar’s works will be on Mixer, Ali Şentürk’s video with the title ‘’Certain Possibilities Arising at Slight Depths’’ will be visited in at Bilsart.

Lens'21 exhibition examines the approaches of nine artists from different periods and generations to video. In the exhibition, Vahap Avşar's video performance work titled "Re/turning", which was shown in the GAR exhibition in Ankara in 1995, and was only open for one day, takes the audience back to the Gar and back to the past. While Neriman Polat's video titled “Jellyfish'', one of her early works produced in 1998, calls for the voice of a melancholic society that disappears over the calm and harmonious image of many jellyfish in the blue waters of the Bosporus, Hale Tenger, in her work titled ''Dream H(a)unter”, she sheds light on the political environment of the period from the 1980s to 2002 with a recording taken in a cafe in Nişantaşı. While a 2002 video documentary produced by Erkan Özgen with Welat, who wants to be a painter, is telling us the story of a young man struggling with the Fine Arts who want to study in Turkey, Cengiz Tekin's video "No Entry” dated 2006, in which truth and fiction intertwine, is telling the story of a guest artist who tries to enter the Landesmuseum with a critical attitude towards artistic, political and cultural authorities. The video work "The Will or Ten Commandments" by Ferhat Özgür in 2009 refers not only to the illness of a Turkish artist but also to the illness of the non-Western art world associated with Western art and art history. Özgür Demirci’s “Dad and Me” (2015) consists of the picture painted by his father based on his photograph which was taken when he was 4 years old, and the video taken by him at the same place. The picture and the video, which were taken where the artist’s childhood took place, convey the feeling that everything that belongs to humans carries a strange sort of nothingness. While Çağrı Saray's video titled “Homage to Peter Handke-2” dated 2018 points to the act of writing in which Handke's poetry is reproduced with cinematic elements such as moving image and sound, Nil Yalter's “Hasköy” dated 2018 point to the artist's video appears as an individual interpretation of the artist's observations on Hasköy, one of the districts where he lived years ago and underwent an urban transformation. The video installation titled "’Certain Possibilities Arising at Slight Depths" of Ali Şentürk's work dated 2010-2011 will meet with the audience at Bilsart.

Under the title of Lens'21 Meetings, online exhibitions and events will be organized together with Monitor and Loading. The works of Monitor, Borga Kantürk, and Gizem Karakaş, who are in Izmir, will be presented in an online exhibition and a talk will be held with the artists during the exhibition. Loading, in Diyarbakır, will include an online speech parallel to the Lens'21 exhibition on the exhibition calendar.

About the Senkron ‘Synchronized Video Exhibitions’ 

Senkron “Synchronized Video Exhibitions” brings together gallery/museum and art initiatives at exhibitions/performances/events focusing on video art on 15-30 April.

In this period when we longed to cooperate and act together between institutions, Senkron ‘Synchronized Video Exhibitions’ to be held under the leadership of Mixer and Bilsart invites gallery/museum and art initiatives to act together under one roof that offers an in-depth look at video art.