SUPPOSE YOU ARE NOT AT ARTER MUSEUM İSTANBUL CURATED BY SELEN ANSEN
ÖMER MEHMET KOÇ COLLECTION
JANUARY 01, 2024 – DECEMBER 29, 2024
SUPPOSE YOU ARE NOT AT
ARTER MUSEUM İSTANBUL CURATED BY SELEN ANSEN …
ÖMER MEHMET KOÇ
COLLECTION ....
JANUARY 01, 2024 –
DECEMBER 29, 2024
Suppose You Are Not, the
first private collection exhibition held at Arter, materialises a wide and deep
territory not only in terms of the artworks and objects it encompasses but also
the diverse mediums and themes that these artefacts are concerned with. Titled
with inspiration from a line in Omar Khayyam's (1048–1131) Rubaiyat
[Quatrains], the exhibition which brings together over 600 works, functional
objects, rarities, furniture, and books produced in different periods explores
the relations that emerge through the juxtapositions formed by a collection.
Curated by Selen Ansen,
the exhibition Suppose You Are Not probes the ways in which the domestic
context of a collection can be transferred into a museum context. In so doing,
it explores the possibilities of restaging and articulating the affinities
created between distinct objects by means of a collector’s desires and
endeavours. The exhibition, which spans the 4th and 3rd-floor galleries of
Arter, brings together works by almost 400 artists, anonymous artefacts and
mass-produced items, as well as multifarious objects. Initially formed for an
individual purpose within the boundaries of a private space, now made public
through a curatorial approach in an art institution, this body of works
presents a world at the junction of times and forms that defy habitual
classifications. This world, which brings to existence the collector as an
abstract subject interacting with the artefacts in their possession, allows a
form of experience that connects reality and fiction, as objects leaving the
private sphere reformulate their unique character in a new context. Approaching
the collection as a multifaceted and living organism, Suppose You Are Not
proposes to reflect upon the kinship between the ordinary and the extraordinary,
the practice of collecting and the objects that populate our daily lives.
Formed with works
selected from the Ömer Koç Collection, Suppose You Are Not is concerned with
finding worldly ways to rise upwards in a world where everything falls and keeps
falling, and with providing possibilities to formulate infinitude where
finitude is the rule. Based on Omar Khayyam’s verses, where the poet reminds us
to embrace life freely by transcending the limits of our own selves, the
exhibition blurs established boundaries while exploring the attribution of new
meanings to objects in a realm devoid of chronology and hierarchy.
In this territory
populated by objects of all sorts, the conglomeration of books, furniture,
paintings, sculptures and photographs not only tells us of human pleasures,
desires, aspirations and dreams of past lives; it also reflects the spirited
viewpoint of the collector. Suppose You Are Not delves into the passionate
striving to collect and preserve the traces of humanity, the good and the evil,
the ephemeral gestures, states, allusions and movements ranging from the most
sublime to the most mundane, from the most permanent to the most ephemeral,
which manage to persist by being conveyed from the dead to the living. Through
the connections they give birth to in the exhibition space, the numerous works
and objects brought together open up a field of vision that allows the
emergence of new associations and alliances.
A WORLD OF WONDERS BY
CLAUDIA SWAN …
(…….)
I have called the Ömer
Koç Collection a world of wonders. As a historian and an admirer of the
collector and his collection, that is how I am able to make sense of it. To
explain, I turn now to the history of wonders and to a particular form of
collecting – Wunderkammer collecting. But first, an etymological digression.
Modern definitions of the word “wonder” include “something that causes
astonishment” and “the emotion excited by the perception of something novel and
unexpected, or inexplicable; astonishment mingled with perplexity or bewildered
curiosity.” Wonders can be miraculous or confounding and even, though this
reaches into archaic meanings, evil or shameful. Synonyms for the verb form
include “to marvel.” The most celebrated wonders are, famously, the seven
wonders of the ancient world – in Greek, “theamata” (θεάματα), “sights” – as in
“things to be seen” – or “thaumata” (θαύματα), the verb form of which,
“thaumazein”, means to marvel, to admire, even to venerate. Antipater of Sidon,
one of those who enumerated wonders of the ancient world, wrote in the first
century BCE: “I have gazed on the walls of impregnable Babylon along which
chariots may race, and on the Zeus by the banks of the Alpheus. I have seen the
hanging gardens [of Babylon], and the Colossus of the Helios, the great
man-made mountains of the lofty pyramids, and the gigantic tomb of Mausolus [at
Halicarnassus]; but when I saw the sacred house of Artemis [at Ephesus] that
towers to the clouds, the others were placed in the shade, for the sun himself
has never looked upon its equal outside Olympus.” These exceptional monuments
inspire wonder through the noblest of the senses – sight – and sight alone.
Even the sun, in Antipater’s account, renders judgment through sight.
Centuries later, in the
wake of the Renaissance in Europe, a new form of collecting emerged that was
also structured around wonder. Beginning in the sixteenth century, collections
known as Wunderkammern (German, “chambers of wonder”) were cultivated, visited,
recorded, and emulated across the continent. Princes, patricians, humanists,
pharmacists, doctors, scholars, artists and others assembled capacious, wildly
varied collections of works of art, wonders of nature, and everything in
between. Based on a longstanding convention of housing valuable goods in a
Schatzkammer or treasury at courts and cathedrals alike, Wunderkammer
collections featured precious natural items – narwhal tusks, rhinoceros horns,
ostrich eggs, fossils, gems, shells and corals – often deemed powerful,
alongside works of art and ingenious handicraft, scientific instruments,
mechanical works, antiquities, exotic (foreign) goods and more. Imagine a space
in which a single collector has brought together plumage of birds of paradise;
paintings on canvas, panel, and stone; elaborate automata capable of being set
in playful motion; crystal and stone vessels; foreign arms and armour; and a
variety of other objects made of myriad materials and in a variety of sizes,
shapes, and forms. No two Wunderkammern were alike, each a reflection of the collector’s
interests, access, networks, and wealth, and none survives intact.
* The quoted sections on
this page are taken from Claudia Swan’s essay “A World of Wonders” and , that
featured in the book accompanying the exhibition. [Suppose You Are Not, ed. by
Selen Ansen and Süreyyya Evren (Arter: Istanbul, 2024), p. 277-278.]
You may click below link
to visit Arter’s past exhibition news of “ARTER MUSEUM EXHIBITIONS: NURİ
KUZUCAN - PASSAGE, SARKIS – ENDLESS & IN ITS OWN SHADOW” from My Magical Attic.
https://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com/2023/12/arter-museum-exhibitions-nuri-kuzucan.html
NASAN TUR
Arms 4, 5, 7,
10, 11, 12 (From the Series Arms), 2006
C-print 6
pieces
Dimensions: 257 x 107 cm each (framed)
MELTEM IŞIK
Twice Into
the Stream (Untitled No: 2), 2011
Pigment-Based
Archival Print on Fine Art Paper
Dimensions:
213 x 143 cm (Framed)
MELTEM IŞIK
Twice into
the Stream (Untitled No: 4), 2011
Pigment-Based
Archival Print on Fine Art Paper
Dimensions:
213 x 143 cm (Framed)
MELTEM IŞIK
Twice into
the Stream (Untitled No: 15), 2011
Pigment-Based
Archival Print on Fine Art Paper
Dimensions:
213 x 143 cm (Framed)
ANONYMOUS
Bye Bye the
Pooh 2018
Taxidermy,
Satin Ribbons, Pearly Resin
Dimensions: Height of the bear: 1.01 m; Balloons: 56 x 97 cm
MENGÜ ERTEL
Ordeal of
Jeanne d’Arc, 1980
Felt-Tip Pen
and Watercolour on Paper
Dimensions: 41.5 x 31.5 cm (Framed)
JOANA
VASCONCELOS
Marilyn, 2009
Stainless
steel Pans, Lids and Cement 2 Pieces
Dimensions: 297 x 155 x 410 cm each
TIP TOLAND
Monkey Mind, 2010
Stoneware,
Paint, Chalk, Pastel
Dimensions: 68.6 x 63.5 x 96.5 cm
ANTONY
GORMLEY
Drawn Apart
2000
Cast iron
Dimensions: 152 x 187 x 133 cm
BALTHASAR
BURKHARD
Fuss II/Pied
II (Foot II), 1983
Black and
White Photograph
Dimensions: 171 x 136 cm
FRANCESCO
ALBANO
On the Eve
2013
Wax,
Polyester Resin, Iron, Ceramic
Dimensions:
170 x 176 x 213 cm
FRANCESCO ALBANO
On the Eve 2013 (Detail)
ANONYMOUS
Pulpit model
Mid-19th century
Wood
Dimensions: h: 50 cm ø 33 cm
ANONYMOUS
Staircase
Model Late 19th–Early 20th Century
Wood, Metal
Dimensions: 35 x 42 x 32 cm
ANONYMOUS
Staircase
Model,
Wood
VERNER PANTON
A pair of
Panton Chairs 1958–1967
Plastic, 2
pieces
Dimensions: 85 x 50 x 60 cm each
MARC NEWSON
Wooden Chair,
1988
Beechwood
Dimensions: 70 x 95 x 83 cm
GERRIT THOMAS
RIETVELD
Zig-Zag
Chairs ca. 1932–1939
Solid Maple
Segments, Transparent Varnish 2 Pieces,
Dimensions: 74 x 28 x 40 cm each
HERBERT von
THADEN
Adjustable
Lounge Chair ca. 1947
Birch-Veneered
Plywood and Metal
Dimensions: 95 x 90 x 50 cm
ANONYMOUS
Ashanti stool
Date unknown
Painted Wood
Dimensions: 49 x 51 x 30.5 cm
BERTOZZI
& CASONI
Ossobello,
2010
Polychrome
Ceramic
Dimensions: 80 x 63 x 49 cm
ANIL SALDIRAN
Untitled,
2012
Pigment on
Canvas
Dimensions:
62 x 52 cm (Framed)
BERNARD
ADRIEN STEÜER
Artist’s
Foot, 1897
Pencil on
Paper
Dimensions:
26 x 21.5 cm (Framed)
ANIL SALDIRAN
Untitled,
2012
Pigment on
Canvas
Dimensions: 62 x 52 cm (Framed)
GÜRBÜZ DOĞAN
EKŞİOĞLU
Reading a
Book 2000
Ink and
Watercolour on Paper
Dimensions: 39.5 x 29.5 cm (Framed)
LUCIAN FREUD
Francis Bacon
1951
Charcoal and
Pencil on Paper
Dimensions: 68 x 55.5 cm (Framed)
PAUL FRYER
For Laplace
(Fear), 2008
Oak staircase, Waxwork Figure, Bird’s Wings, Glass Eyes,
Steel Plate, Books and
Tools
Dimensions:
246 x 96 cm
PAUL FRYER
For Laplace (Fear), 2008 (Detail)
FABIEN
MÉRELLE
Study of a
Mask, 2014
Pencil on
Paper
Dimensions: 54 x 42 cm (Framed)
GEORGE TOOKER
The Mirror,
1978
Lithograph on
Arches Paper
Dimensions: 75.5 x 64 x 5 cm (Framed)
PAUL RUMSEY
Library Head,
2019
Charcoal on
Paper
Dimensions: 110 x 84 cm
PETER SIMON
MUHLHÄUßER
The Innerself
2009
Glass,
Carrara Marble and Epoxy Resin
Dimensions: 20.5 x 32 x 21.5 cm
DAVID FARRER
Javan
Rhinoceros 2007
Paper Mache
and Wood
Dimensions: 65 x 86 x 58 cm
NINA SAUNDERS
The Age of
Reason, 1995
Red
Leatherette Chair Upholstered With Central Ball
Dimensions: 100 x 133 x 91 cm
SİNAN
DEMİRTAŞ
Self-Portrait,
2008
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 100 x 250 cm
FRANCESCO
ALBANO
Self-Portrait
2014
Wax,
polyester, plastic
Dimensions: 30 x 33 x 40 cm
RICARDO
CINALLI
Pas de Cheval
2006
Pastel on
Tissue Papers
Dimensions: 260
x 244 cm (Framed)
NAPOLEON
SARONY
An
Autographed Photograph of Oscar Wilde, 1882
Silver Print
Made From Glass Plate Negatives
Dimensions: 43 x 29 cm (Framed)
YAEL
ERLICHMAN
Digging Dog,
2004
Bronze
Dimensions: 72 x 26 x 46 cm
AARON SISKIND
Pleasures and
Terrors of Levitation #37 (Christmas Card) 1953
Gelatin
Silver Print Flushmounted to Board
Dimensions: 17.5 x 14.5 cm (Framed)
ALBRECHT
DURER
Rhinoceros,
1515
Woodcut Print
on Paper
Dimensions: 40 x 48 cm (Framed)
GARY ANDERSON
He Always Was
a Strange Boy, 1995
Mixed media
Dimensions: 17 x 17 cm (Framed)
ANONYMOUS
An Okimono in
the Form of a Human Skull With Frog ca. 1920
Stoneware
Dimensions:
11.5 x 11.5 x 8 cm
ANONYMOUS
An Okimono in
the Form of a Human Skull With Serpent ca. 1920
Ceramic
Dimensions: 9 x 13 x 8 cm
SANTISSIMI
(ANTONELLO SERRA & SARA RENZETTI)
Naturalists,
2011
Silicon,
Resin and Human Hair
Dimensions: 7 x 14 x 4.2 cm
NANCY FOUTS
Still
Smiling, 2012
Plaster of
Paris, Paint and False Teeth
Dimensions: 16.5 x 23 x 14 cm
SANTISSIMI
(ANTONELLO SERRA & SARA RENZETTI)
Naturalists,
Date Unknown
Silicon,
Resin and Human Hair
Dimensions: 7 x 14 x 4.2 cm
VLADIMIR
FEODOROVITCH STOZHAROV
A Man Posing
ca. 1960
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 87 x 71 cm (Framed)
ROY
LICHTENSTEIN
Pistol, 1964
Dimensions: Felt, 223,5 x 127 cm (Framed)
EVAN PENNY
Back of
Martha, 2006
Silicone,
Pigment, Aluminium
Dimensions: 81 x 89 x 17.8 cm
LÉA
BELOOUSSOVITCH
Self-Portrait,
2010
Chromogenic
Print Facemounted on Plexiglas
Dimensions: 35 x 35 cm
KONRAD ADOLF
LATTNER
Two Men with
a Boat on the Beach, ca. 1930
Watercolour
on Cardboard
Dimensions: 74 x 53.5 cm (Framed)
F.AD. MÜLLER
SÖHNE COMPANY
Prosthetic
Eye Box, Date Unknown
Dimensions: 28 x 27.5 cm (Open) 18 x 27.5 cm (Closed)
ILYA REPIN
Study of a
Child, Date Unknown
Black and
Coloured Chalk
Dimensions: 56 x 47 cm (Framed)
DOUGLAS
GORDON
Never, Never,
2000
Two
Chromogenic Prints Mounted on Board 2 Pieces,
Dimensions: 62.5 x 78 cm each (Framed)
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MASSIMO
KAUFMANN
Untitled,
1997
Bronze 3
Pieces
Dimensions:
23 x 13.5 x 3 cm (Left Hand),
23 x 13 x 3.5 cm (Right Hand), 11 x 23 x 18 cm (Face)
LUIZ PHILIPPE
CARNEIRO DE MENDONÇA
Box with
Hands, 2020
Wood
Assemblage
Dimensions: 86 x 75 x 9 cm
MARTHA WILSON
Thin-Skinned
2014
Colour
Photograph
Dimensions: 73.6 x 43.2 cm (Framed)
ABOUT ARTER MUSEUM İSTANBUL
At its new building,
Arter continues to be a sustainable, vibrant cultural hub, making its broad
range of programmes accessible to everyone.
Having presented 35
exhibitions from 2010 to 2018 at its building on Istiklal Street, Arter moved
to its new building in Istanbul’s Dolapdere district in September 2019. At its
new building designed by Grimshaw Architects, Arter continues expanding
the range of its activities beyond exhibitions to performances and events
across many disciplines.
Arter’s
building has 18,000 square metres of indoor area and features exhibition
galleries, performance halls, learning areas, a library, an arts bookstore, and
a bistro.
Arter brings together
artists and audiences through celebration of today’s art in all its forms and
disciplines.
COLLECTION &
EXHIBITION
Instigated in 2007 and
conceived on an international basis, the Arter Collection values and welcomes
novel ideas, discourses, and tendencies in contemporary art, embracing all
formats that might be considered unconventional.
The
Arter Collection comprises more than 1,400 works by around 400 artists as of
2022 and brings together various contemporary expressions, positions and
practices from all around the world. The collection includes works from the
1960s to the present, covering a broad variety of media ranging from painting,
drawing, sculpture, print, photography, film, video, installation to sound,
light and performance-based practices.
Incorporating
a plurality of themes, concepts and gestures, the Arter Collection offers an
inspiring source for the practice of exhibition making and contributes to the
programme. Alongside the exhibitions drawn exclusively or primarily from the
collection, Arter also presents curated non-collection solo and group
exhibitions in order to re-contextualise and give visibility to works both from
within and outside the collection.
EVENTS
Arter’s
multi-disciplinary Events Programme features outstanding and innovative
examples of performing arts, classical, contemporary and electronic music,
film, performance and digital arts.
Placed
in dialogue with the collection and exhibitions where possible, the events are
not limited to Arter’s two performance halls, the Sevgi Gönül
Auditorium and Karbon, but are also held in different parts/spaces of
the building. Collaborating with local and international artists, curators and
various institutions, Arter commissions and co-produces new works.
https://www.arter.org.tr/about-us
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THE ECOLOGY OF A HOUSE OF
CORRESPONDENCE BY CANA BOSTAN
‘’ During the days that
followed his return home, Des Esseintes browsed through the books in
his library, and at the thought that he might have been parted from them for a
long time he was filled with the same heart – felt satisfaction he would have
enjoyed if he had come back to them after a genuine separation. Under the
impulse of this feeling, he saw them in a new light, discovering beauties in
them he had forgotten ever since he had bought and read them for the first
time. Everything indeed – books, bric – à – brac and furniture – acquired a
peculiar charm in his eyes. (…) He steeped himself once more in this refreshing
both of settled habits, to which artificial regrets added a more bracing and
more tonic quality ‘’¹
“ If I myself did not
understand, it was no wonder that others could not understand
What
drove Des Esseintes “²
ON THE THRESHOLD OF
(SOME) THINGS
In his 1993 novel The
Club Dumas³ (El Club Dumas), a portrayal of obsessive bibliophiles,
Arturo Pérez- Reverte fastens his narration onto the story of The Nine
Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows (Umbrarum Regni Novem Portis), a book
whose publisher was condemned to death by burning by the Inquisition because it
was believed to contain instruction that would serve to summon the devil⁴.
While striving to authenticate a manuscript of The Three Musketeers,
purported to have belonged to Alexandre Dumas himself, the bookhunter Lucas
Carso meets with collector Varo Barjo in Madrid, prompting him to accept the
latter’s uncanny job offer. This forms the beginning of a tense detective
story, ultimately transforming a collectors’ item into a symbol of immortality.
One of the reasons which led Varo Borja, perhaps one of the greatest collectors
of devilish books in the history of literature, to go on the trail of The
Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, an extremely rare book printed in
Venice in 1666, only three copies of which have survived to this day, is his
aspiration to become the Lord of Chaos himself. Eventually, the power bestowed
upon the collector by the intelligence which he has gathered on the most
formidable upsetter of the natural order of things – the devil – is such that
it may provide him with the very secret to immortality. Thus, the preservation
of worldly objects in the light of a precise set of principles materializes as
the very action that drives the desire for eternal life.
One of the most
remarkable images of the desire for eternal life is kept in a catalogue
published in the year 1599. Titled Dell’historia Natural, this
catalogue is the first known printed work to contain a representation of a
cabinet of curiosities (wunderkommer), a reflection of the desire to combine
chaos with the microcosmos. With the cabinets of curiosities, where diverse
objects such as extraordinary plants, rare animals’ limbs, stones, manuscripts,
scientific documents, palaeolithic hand-made artefacts , mystical objects,
totems and, of course, works of art were displayed according to entirely
personal interests and preferences, for the very first time, the world’s
knowledge and magic were forced side by side into a single “closet”. As a
matter of fact, toward the mid – 1500s, these cabinets of curiosities, which
were initially set up in real closets but soon came to occupy rooms connected
by labyrinthine corridors, promptly became a status symbol, providing but a
meager spatial reflection of a grandiose idea, that of “eternal life” itself.
This knowledge – object association – both being read (con-lego) and placed
(con-ligo) in connection to one another – provided the background for what
later evolved into the rational and ordered catalogue of human knowledge during
the Age of Enlightenment. The most famous embodiment of this virtual catalogue,
in the Enlightenment’s intellectual frame work, was, of course, the
Encyclopaedia, assembled under the editing supervision of Denis Diderot and
Jean La Rond d’Alembert over the years 1751-1772.⁵ This dictionary of sciences,
arts and crafts, which constituted the very materialization of the aspiration
to compile, in between two covers, a puzzle that would never reach completion
and was even, in fact, onto-logically condemned to eternal deficiency, was
conceived out of the nation of a cross-section of the world, consisting in
singularities capable of extending to universalities. Following the Renaissance
and the Age of Enlightenment, which during the nineteenth century had made not
only life but the inorganic elements of culture, leaving their imprints on the
former, the subjects of the regime of knowledge, as the subconscious was taken
into consideration as well, world knowledge came to be derived from a temporal
construction of a different nature: a sort of collection of dreams.
A night spent in a
cabinet of curiosities would be enough to pull dreams away from the realm of
sleep and project them onto steep walls of objects in a state of sheer
awakedness. There, the knowledge cast on the objects by the morning has long
withered. Dazzled by the Enlightenment’s brightness, the eye recedes into the
shadows. This dialectics of light opens up a limbo, a world of shadows, before
the gaze. Now, this age, no longer under the truth of the sun but of street
lamps, surrounds things with the shadow of artificial light. The nineteenth
century was also the very first moment in history when things became displayed
in window displays. The object behind the glass pane and the collector waiting
before the window display now met one another under the rays of artificial
light, which rendered both half-transparent. By assuming his/her position
within this moment of optical transformation, the collector, broadly viewed as
one of the main social archetypes of the nineteenth century, no longer noticed
and observed objects one by one but rather a mass thereof. Thus, the body came
to be defined not only by the object but by the artificial light as well,
alternately making it either visible or invisible. Indeed, being positioned
(somewhere) does not only determine the object’s fate; it also sheds light on
the next movement of the hand that holds it. All in all, the objects determines
the direction of the organ, frees the body from its aimless swinging about, and
opens up a pathway for a stroll from one room to the next.
Concurrently with the
contamination of light by shadow, the material world surrenders to oblivion.
Just as a thigh in a cramped position during his sleep reminded Proust of the
birth of Eve from Adam’s rib⁶, so the body, subdued by the formlessness of things
forgotten, relinquishes its capacity for motion to an unbounded ponderousness,
its skeleton to the pain that stems from the ultimate torsion, and its
sensuousness to a wound kept forever opened. Put to the test by a material
resistance, by virtue of which realism slips into the gap that separates the
body from reality, the three main components of the corporeal material –
motion, bones and flesh- do not attempt to compensate for their irremediable
lack; on the contrary, they preserve all sorts of diminution within absence
itself. Thus, the body records immobility and inexpressiveness within motion,
fracture and cleavage within the bones, and ruptureand tear within the flesh.
That being so, the main spatial extension of accumulation being the trunk, the fundamental
image of this form of existence whose integrity is defeated, is mending. Unlike
healing, patching, curing or remedying, what is being performed here is a sort
of detective work, an enquiry into a lost space. Just as a rip itself is
somehow the very moment when stitching up begins, that operation starts with
the identification of a tear, a cut, which occurred somewhere in time before
translating that time into space. Indeed, objects do not stand facing one
another because they occupy an empty space, but by virtue of the principle of
porous proximity. Space, void, objects, the body and artificial light coexist
without disrupting the balance that informs the very notion of time. And what
allows for this adhesion, this coexistence, or, as Aby Warburg phrased it, this
“law of the good neighbor”, is correspondence. Initiated, at least
content-wise, by the Romantics, further elaborated by Charles Baudelaire in
his The Flowers of Evil, and eventually articulated with genuine,
physical experiences for the first time by Marcel Proust, correspondence
constitutes the fundamental principle upon which this coexistence, this
communication and balance rest.⁷ As for the collector, he/she is driven, again
through the agency of the principle of correspondence, to conserve the
monadologic design that operates within the order of things and eventually
breathe life into the objects by coercing them into abandoning their resting
places – spellbinding and reducing them into mere nostalgic elements,
triggering their intentional memory.
This, however, is not
some sort of the whole of things to which the collector would attribute the
image of his/her fractured self. As a matter of fact, the very principle of
correspondence opposes a resistance against the idea that some sort of series
of fragments might be likened to a whole. On the contrary, wht infuses şt is a
roaming mimetic desire whereby each singularity is capable of reflecting the
whole universe. The logic of correspondence is precisely what keeps the
probability intact for the primordial balance – that which allows the collector
to become part of his/her collection or various collections of different
objects to be merged inside a broader one – to repeat itself.
According to the Dictionnaire
de la langue Française, the classic French dictionary assembled by French
linguist Émile Littré, initially published in four volumes by Hachette over the
years 1863-1874, which in time came to be designated after its author, simply
under the sobriquet of Littré, the word “object” (objet) is defined
in its seventh sub-entry as “anything that causes, drives or motivates an
emition or a passion”. In the present case, as far as the collector is
concerned, passion bears a double meaning. Indeed, as per its etymological
origin, a passion is not something which the subject initiates but rather
something the latter is caught by; in other words, it commands passivity: the
subject falls under the object’s influence, is affected by it, caught into it.
On the other hand, by recording objects on a symbolic level, the subject, too,
creates its own reflection in the mirror of immortal things. Passion unites a
desire, which is to say a horizon, forever escaping and receding as one draws
nearer, and a face, remaining forever “beautiful”, which consists of the
objects. By doing so, it builds up a higher reality, a simulation area, where
the game of desire may forever be kept circulating. When the principle of
correspondence is at stake, the collector becomes a player, siding with things,
as phrased in Francis Ponge’s 1942 book titled Le Parti pris
des choses (Taking the Side of Things). The term ‘object-game’, or
shall we venture ‘obgame’ (objeu), forged by the poet by merging the words
object (objet) and game (jeu), supplies the idea of the game of passion with
another dimension, which forbids the poetic, economic or political consumption
of things. Thus, as the collector leans over objects in order to deliver them
from functionality – within the current order -, so do the objects place the
spirit of things within the mechanisms of desire at work in the collective
subconscious. The act of disrupting the objects’ functionality, which is at
stake here, does not suggest a form of death, neither is desire being reduced
to consumerism or a profane form of appropriation. What is actually being
hinted at here is a theoretical interstitial area, which both allows the
objects to live and enables the collector’s willingness to search. I a rather
similar fashion to how Franz Kafka put together, by having it carry its own
representation within itself, such a poetic that would meet the dire need felt
by the creature Odradek – sparking jealousy wherever he appeared because of his
extraordinary longevity – for the amphibious spirit’s world of objects, this
theoretic interstitial area also creates a series of objects whose display is
being kept on hold. They await being recorded in a database, finding their
proper place in a singular location, and thus reaching incorruptibility. They
do not vitiate the shadow’s share, which artificial light provides them with,
nor do they betray the gaze – contradicting component within the gaze itself.
In other words, the theory (viewpoint) implied here, as is the case
in Baudelaire’s “Correspondences” (“Echoes”)⁸, is regulated by the regime of
the gaze, which stems from the symbolic wood in response to the totem tree’s
course. Every thought articulated regarding the world of objects bound to each
other by correspondence it exposed together with such elements as involuntary
intuition, feeling or oblivion. Thus, what turns into an inventory of moments
is the body of the objects themselves. What, somewhere in time, gave weight to
the objects is no longer limited to history. It now also consists of glimpses
of the future, oozing from the pores of the present being lived. The objects
that will soon leak into the realm of dreams not only give corporeal shape to
the phantoms of the past but to prophecies as well. By means of its own
singularity, but also together with those that surround it, the object opens up
a parenthesis for space, one that is likely to deepen it towards history. Thus,
the correspondence principle – to which books standing side by side on a shelf
owe their ability to be read in more than a single way - makes the
subconscious one among the things contained by a dream scene,
forfending any hierarchy between that which looks and that which is looked at.
This passive attack, directed by the collector – who transforms the objects
into the occupation of space – against psychology, conveys the very convulsions
sparked by the blow delivered to psychoanalysis by Anti-Oedipus down
to the smallest unit where the creation’s capillary vessels extend: the house.
The house is the altar where memories are etched into objects, a temporal refuge
for nomadic works of art, a spirit cocoon carrying the collector’s body, a
bulwark fending off the foreigner’s gaze, a monad equipped with windows, and,
essentially, the correspondence between the indoor and the outdoor.
THE OPPOSITE SITE OF
THINGS
Where does the collector
stand within a cosmology where space, stemming from the solidified void in
between the objects of a collection, is considered as reaching out to the whole
creation? Even though the topography of the collector figure summons up such a
notion as settlement or such a mode of existence as entrenchment, it is of the
utmost importance to always think of it as at the farthest end of a
considerable distance. Not that which separates a wall from the door so much as
that which extends from a painting, a sculpture, a book, a carpet or a stairway
to the entire creation. As for the ontological tendency which
prompts the collector to “enclose” objects, it stems from the abovementioned
cartographic signs and symbols. Quiet like the ephemerality of the collector,
who carries an elusive truth by his/her side, the objects of a collection, too,
stand on the very brink or emerging point of the idea of escaping or breaking
away. Once they begin to sway in the house of correspondence, the objects –
which cannot distinguish their own death from their own liveliness as long as
the collector has not rendered them useless – become overcome (oufhebung) while
being preserved at the same time. This overcoming, occurring concurrently with
the historical overriding of the collector, provides the
objects not only with tonality but, in the general sense, with a manner of
detectability/perceivability. This detectability, in turn, contains the lost
object that hasn’t reached consciousness yet. The fidelity which the collector
feels for his/her lost object turns melancholy into his/her manner of
experiencing the world. The very melancholy in question here, much more than a
feeling, rather constitutes an idea and even an “action”. The collector, who,
by perceiving, observes the moment when the past acquires a citable quality,
shows a vital interest in dead historical objects. However, this interest is
not of a nostalgic nature. What is at stake here is a tendency to refrain from
building such a notion of history that would ease the existential concerns as
to the present while being assembled out of the privileged moments of a past
that is longed for. In order to possess an image of the past as a whole, it
disposes of a perception that must make absolute atonement for history. This
perception is precisely what gives melancholic collectorship its momentum, busy
as it is with temporary settlement on the one hand and its own will to condemn
itself to astonishment on the other.
The collection’s objects
draw a twisted portrait of the collector, not only through their presence
within the collection but through their manner of clinging to absence as well.
The object whose absence leaves the collection incomplete grants a negative
consistency to the collector. The involuntary knowledge imparted by oblivion,
postponement, having missed an opportunity, or by loss – which contains all of
the above – is the chronic trigger of this form of knowing without knowing: the
tendency to accumulate In a scenario where a hard copy of Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita, signed by the latter for Graham Greene, is “snatched” by a famous
actress, the lost object of a collector busy building their ideal library
deepens the collection’s own story. However, the defective object, which the
collector will eventually possess, is nothing but the fate that awaits those
forever placed on hold by yet another library. This ontological intervention of
loss of life gives rise to a pacification economy. By recording the
excess of void contained within the collection onto itself, the missing object
renders the search infinite. The impulse to multiply things, stemming from the
object’s absence – in other words, this dialectics between pacification and
provocation – renders the collection immanent to itself. This very immanence stems
from the fact that the collector’s figure is not external to the collection;
rather, it is the organ that has recorded the collection’s irremediable defect
onto itself. Under this light, the collector’s decipherability depends on
literalism, in other words, on the illusion that what shows and what is shown
correspond with one another. Such an illusion brought to its most radical and
almost instates correcpondence as consubstantiality. Here, the fake becomes the
founding element of truth, and the irrational is what sets rationality in
motion. This situation could well be likened to how, in Joris – Karl Huysmans’
1884 novel Against Nature (À rebours), considered a major blow
delivered against the naturalist muvament, the aesthete Jean des Esseintes,
devoting much time and money for this purpose, designs his bedroom as a monk’s
retreat fit for purification from his sins. Just as in Proust’s lines, pretence
comes into play in the form of prophecy. Here, in this carefully assembled
poverty decorum, fakeness coincides with the very moment that precedes truth.
Deception, caused by the fact that the words cannot find their proper place
within time, bewitches the order of things. In that sense, this literary work
is the sanctification of a mechanical form of artificiality. Des Esseintes’s
goal is, no matter how excruciating it may be, to find the ultimate home, which
presents itself as the right tool in order to encircle a playful memory. The
latter must have felt it: within a collection of modes fossilized inside the
backbone of an amber memory, perhaps only the past possesses an autonomous
present. In Huysmans’ universe, the spirit of things is no different from the
holy spirit, which is why he eventually found his ultimate home in the Catholic
Church. In Proust’s world, on the other hand, the faith in the Trinity is
reflected and diffracted on the surfaces of a porcelain tea cup, a tray and a
sugar bowl standing side by side.
Still, by following the
traces of the Trinity’s infinite fragmentations, both writers always believed
in the fact that fake memories of lifeless objects could disrupt historic
necessity, in other words, in a contingent notion of history.
What grants history its
contingency is the non – hierarchical arrangement of times. The collector
writes a minor history, where what is ancient fits within the same space as
what is current. Within such a historiography, which challenges the positivist
or progressist understanding of history, a mind, pursuing its occupation with
weary earnestness as would a cosmic curator, is likely to turn into a pen that
no longer writes but, in order to write, opens up empty lines, fills them with
ink blots, and leaves its traces behind as would a pen – sharpener: shaving off
and petering out. The next that a collector would scribble down under
the influence of such a frame of mind could be likened to the translation of an
image of the past by a scrivener before a courthouse, giving it the appearance
of a juridical document. Such a “translation” would record privileged moments in
the history of culture in the shape of passages. However, a two - sided
manipulation is at work in the selection of those privileged moments. On the
one hand, the collector bewitches the historic order of things; on the other,
he/she grants non – monumental coordinates both to the objects which he/she is
set to preserve and to the march of history as well. Indeed, there are such
coordinates that become devoid of decipherable finesse once one surrenders to
the dominant cultural codes. For instance, there is a common belief that
rhinoceroses mark their territory with pink tears. These animals are actually
known to leave small amounts – sometimes designated as “tears”, sometimes as
“sweat” drops – of a sort of mucus, which they secrete as skin protection against
the sun, on branches, bushes and the likes as they go. In that sense, one could
think of the way in which a collector marks the world as inverted, as though
he/she drew such an itinerary that would secure his/her remaining forever lost.
The collector loses him/herself vertigo, spanning history. Thus, the
collection, as multi-layered wreckage of loss, becomes a convenient mode of
“existence”.
Gathering the objects of
a collection, all the more so when breathing life into them inside the house of
correspondence, imprints a somewhat grandiose time notion onto a form of
petiteness, of scantiness. Seduced by both mythological and natural history,
the collector tends to feel culture as a dynamic that almost appears of its own
accord, mono-temporal and mono-spatial. This feeling is precisely the reason
why collectorship came to be designated in psychoanalytical literature as a
neurosis which also contains its own cure. Yet, in this context, one should
note that Sigmund Freud himself made a distinction between collectorship and
hoarding (syllogomania) in his introduction To Psychoanalysis (1917). According
to this distinction, while hoarding, i.e. the accumulation of objects without
order or principle, is considered an obsessive-compulsive disorder,
collectorship is viewed as a primal and safe manner of exerting control over
the world. Yet, considering the collector’s elegiac happiness with regard to
the notion of the symbolism of loss, invalidating the grip of reality would
certainly provide more meaningful perspectives. The mythical axis of this
elegiac happiness extends all the way to Eros and Thanatos, which we could also
phrase in more mundane terms as a melancholic reflection carried out along the
orbit that connects pleasure with death, the low and the high, the naked and
the covered, or what comes down with what goes up. In such a context, what is
at stake is not so much the reorganisation of the subject’s own story,
highlighted as a heroic salvation or the illusion of a safe defeat, as it is
the suspension of the disappearance of the object encircled by the ego. The
collector’s melancholy transforms an inner world on the brink of death, the
loss of aura in the orks of art, or the eternal defect in history into a
condition of decipherability. Here, things are endowed with the right to be
forgotten. The melancholic, happily going on the trail of his/her lost object,
is wary of such suppressions, in Freudian terms, as the identification and
designation of the object of mourning or burial ceremonies. He/she does not
fall for the delusion that consists in bringing the remains, whether in memory
or the physical world, of what is lost back to dead – or mortal – life. On the
contrary, he/she is faithful to the knowledge enshrouded by death and ambitions
to address it or present it him/herself, thus revealing the daring presumption
of an anti – therapeutic thought set to summon up a normal – not branded as
conservative – and a pathological thought. The “melancholic” collector creates
a gaze between vision and him/herself, which the word seeing itself cannot
enter, so much so that the astonishment which he/she feels, not at the
existence of something, but at its not having disappeared yet, is precisely
what enables him/her to start a collection. Bewitched by the fact that he/she
still shares the same world with the rhinoceroses, so very close to the
dinosaurs, he/she may summon that magic into his/her home by means of
rhinoceros mummies. Against the manner in which history enshrouds things with
death, he/she extracts “death”, the only concept capable of representing
transcendence, from the backdrop of things and summons it inside. Thus, as an
elegy, things may extend from a finiteness coiled up on itself to a happy
infinity where objects call for repetition. Such is the method by which the
collector renders the transcendent within his/her immanent world: by taking the
side of things.
THE SIDE OF THINGS
For the collector, bound
to the past by devotion, patience and composure, the present provides erotic
and thanatologic urgencies. For he/she is constrained by the eternity of things
with which his/her coexistence would remain pointless in his/her absence. The
things which, not being included in his/her collection, are rendered
replaceable within myriads of relations of possession represent a threat to
him/her. This other world, both here and now, grants authority to mythical
powers within the secret agreement passed between the collector and things. A
theatre of memory, receiving Eros and Thanatos on the same stage, is adorned with
the pieces of the collection. The collector, on the other hand, is responsible
for prompting their lines to every piece in the play. The prompter is the
person who deprives the play’s text of glorification; through his/her presence,
he/she acts as a reminder of the fact that the sacred writer (or,
in another context, market)’s authority may be forlorn. The very moment when
the line – an ideal copy of the prayer, divine words read by heart – is erased
from the object’s memory is when the prompter/collector steps in, reading out
loud. As is the case in every ritual where oblivion and decipherability come in
contact with one another, several layers of repetition come into play here. The
dialectic tension between the prompter-collector and comedian-object is felt
across all of these layers. As for what restitutes the volatile shape, or in
other words, the ephemerality of the word learnt by heart, it is, once again,
correspondence, which renders objects rememberable in relation to one another:
such a principle that places the oldest piece, dating from 1943, within a book
collection, face-to-face with twentieth-century pieces of furniture, and
convenes stairways with sofas, folding screens with carpets, and mirrors with
self-portraits.
The history of culture,
which the collector is so tightly bound to, is actually, and ironically too,
the history of the dispersion of Eros. Ironically indeed, because the collector
usually includes in his/her collection, say, a seminal book with regards to the
culture at large due to how that object aroused a desire in him/her,
and on the basis of such sensual criteria as emblems, or goat-skin binding, for
instance. A great number of traditions, from institutionalized religions to
Western philosophy, have associated (if not accused) materiality, in other
words, the physical/material world and what etymologically refers to the
mother/women (mater) , with sin and malevolence. Eros, on the other
hand, comprises everything that reminds the body of its fullness and absolute
integrity when inside the womb, thus pleasing it. In a sense, the gains of
culture are just representations of separation from the mother. Indeed, due to
its being positioned on the opposite pole with regards to logos, Eros is
deprived of the order and discipline required in order to bring about or become
a part of the culture. As a matter of fact, its attempt to conceal this very
lack by means of sensual pleasure may be viewed as the trap that awaits those
who are born into the world of culture. The collector carries the traps laid
out by Eros into the field of culture. Besides, as it preserves both cultural
staticities’ and erotic dynamics’ independence, this conveying neither remains
eclectic nor achieves a genuine synthesis as a result. Under such gold contact,
each piece of the collection becomes a subject for psycho-history, as much as
it does for a sort of archaeology of the future. A self-portrait, for instance,
signals the evolution undergone by self-representation just as much as it does
the erasure of the stages of the self from the future within a fixed
expression. By the same token, a mirror may place the point of view of
twelfth-century humans, which associated the reflection with the demon, on a
glass pane whose back surface has been glazed, inside the future’s narcissistic
prison. Likewise, folding screens may renew a delayed desire felt sometime in
the past as someone undressed, within an image of intimacy long turned into a
fake wall. As for a “stairway”, either leading down to Eros or up towards
culture, it may sift the history of descents and ascensions through the filters
of fairy tales or the holy scriptures and imprint them onto a houses’ memory.
Just as the ladder seen by Jacob in his dream in the Old Testament is,
Rapunzel’s hair and the steps that cause Cinderella to leave a single shoe
behind in her escape are all symbols of passages across different forms of
existence and bridges connecting the oldest layers of the past with the
furthermost of the future.
THE SELF – PORTRAIT
The theories that have sparked
one of the most fundamental debates of our times, such as object-oriented
ontology, denying humans any privilege before objects, devise their fundamental
questions by assessing perceivability through the criteria of the possession of
the other’s gaze.⁹ Despite most views on the other’s gaze being
based on the notion of the face – more precisely on that of possessing a face –
these approaches, deriving approval from the methods which broke down the
dualisms brought about by the regimes of looking that existed in the post – war
context, currently encompass the inorganic, following a trail that extends from
the posthumanists to the compostists. As for the self-portrait, it is an object
that is heavy with dialectical tensions with respect to how it concurrently
hosts the vulnerability of the face and the safety of being encased inside a
frame. There, the self possesses the others’s gaze. In self-portraits, the face
defaces and defeats the memory associated with the body’s shape. This object
is, in a sense, the self-representation’s memorial, speaking in the name of the
other. Yet somehow, self-portraits are also eternal resting places where their
painter may indulge in the aesthetics of ruins. Van Gogh is known to have
completed more than thirty self-portraits between the years 1886 and 1889;
Frida Kahlo, too, produced a great number thereof while her entire body was
encased in an orthopedic plaster corset after suffering a severe accident,
which she gave an explanation for by saying ‘I am the subject I know best’. In
this version of self-occupation, I provide sometimes a flesh, sometimes a face,
sometimes a shape, no matter how blurry it might be, to the remains, the
damage, the leftovers, the decomposition and ruins of myself. This framed
burial place places the dispersion of the self between brackets and suspends
it. In self-portraits, the ego masks the canvas and fastens the face to the
history of the world; as it does, it sometimes tears down the face, sometimes
history.
THE MIRROR
The mirror is the amphibious
version of the self-portrait. Every single movement that occurs before this
object draws the image anew in connection to the impressionist tradition. In a
sense, it is memory’s certification authority. Just as Rodolphe, in Théophile
Gautier’s Celle-ci-Celle-là , runs up to mirror every morning,
anxious to check whether horns have sprouted on his head during his sleep,
memory too looks for consistency as per its self inside this glazed glass. This
object, which could be regarded as Narcissus’ discovery, constituted both the
latter’s hearth and crime scene. All the mediations of the history of culture
fit between the eye and the gaze by virtue of the mirror. It forms the place
where vision recognizes, and simultaneously loses, its own appearance, while I does
its uniqueness, its breaking apart from another I. The absoluteness
of ephemerality crystallises within this reflection. The mirror is what allows
the copy, fakeness, light/shadow plays, and, of course, partition to reunite
with a face, a scene and surface.
THE FOLDING SCREEN
The folding screen
applies the mirror’s logic of false multiplication to decoration. In this
respect, it becomes a manipulative object, directed no longer only towards the
gaze but to the surface that encompasses it as well. It is sometimes used in
order to create room for silence and even meditation amid spiritual anxieties
and ruckus, sometimes to form an inner chamber, enclosing the intimacy that
suffuses the act of dressing and undressing. Folding screens are mysterious
tunnels, opening up only for a room’s esoteric congregation before extending
from rituals to births and burials, fro dowry exhibitions to the preservation
of smell and warmth. Within this manner of veiling, the image of a hole
punctured so as to peer into the house’s interior is at work. In this respect,
a folding screen is a vulval object, and it is no coincidence that throughout
the history of cinema it was invested with erotic insinuations, both covering
and opening the naked body of women to the stranger’s gaze. It is a separator,
disconnecting the gaze from its objects, only to better reunite them on the
plane of fantasy.
The ecology of a house of
correspondence takes shape underneath the tendencies of a collector who leaves
pebblestones, stars, or the dead in cemeteries where they are. The worldliness
of such a collector, who professes to be the prophet of the natural places of
things, gives an altogether different disposition to the idea of
belonging/possession. In its wake, closure begins. By his/her very concerns as
to the step starting with which a world of objects that prolongs multiplication
by carrying their own lack deserves to be regarded as a collection and the
boundary whose crossing causes the same ensemble to lose such a privilege, that
collector keeps the door to closure forever open. “Why don’t you play Donizetti
anymore,” asks the woman, to which the man replies, “Because we started
talking”. That is how Man of Flowers (dir. Paul Cox, 1983),
the story of Charles, a collector of artworks, flowers and undressing women,
ends: with a composition that silences, relying on the authority
conferred by desire. As for the collector of the house of
correspondence, he/she appeases his/her desire to be seen by multiplying what
is visible. There, neither are mirrors passive witnesses nor
the faces of self-portraits naked. By turning into one another’s armour, the
pieces of the collection repress such an indiscretion, for they look at each
other so lengthily that a table may well begin to bear the knowledge of being-a-chair,
or a stairway the memory of having been a folding screen. What allows for such
a poetic and mimetic circularity and ultimately provides the nature of things
with the capacity for movement is, of course, the collector’s gaze, that which
assigns its own unique room to each piece of the collection,
expression of the countless facets of his/her own spirit’s
objectivation/reification. Each in their own unique unique rooms, things now
possess safe conduct, allowing them to circulate through all the dreams that
were once dreamt in history.
Trans. By Baptiste
Gacoin
1- Joris-Karl Huymans,
Against Nature, trans. by Robert Baldick (Baltimore: Penguin, 2003, p. 286
2- Ibid.,
“Preface Written Twenty Years After the Novel”, preface trans. by Patrick McGuinness,
p. 436
3- Arturo
Pérez – Revert, The Club Dumas, trans. by Sonia Soto (New York: Vintage, 1998).
4- “Legend
has it that Lucifer, after being defeated and thrown out of heaven, devised the
magic formula to be used by his followers: the authoritative handbook of the
shadows. A terrible book kept in secret, burned many times, sold for huge sums
by the few priviledged to own it … These illustrations are really satanic
hieroglyphs. Interpreted with the aid of the text and the appropriate knowledge,
they can be used to summon the prince of darkness.” Reverte, op. cit., p. 57.
5- Denis
Diderot and Jean Le Rond d’Alembert, Encyclopaedia, or a Systematic Dictionary
of Sciences, Arts, and Crafts, trans. by John Mortey (London: MacMillan, 1905)
6- Marcel
Proust, In Search of Lost Time, trans. by C. K. Scott Moncrieff,
vol. 1, p. 6, Centaur, 2016.
7- Etymologically
speaking, “correspondence” (from the Latin correspondentia) bears
the meaning of “responding to, heading towards one another”. The word is mostly
used in order to express an exchange of written messages, the like of letters.
As for the poem by Baudelaire, titled “Correspondances” (“Echoes”), part of the
letter’ The Flowers of Evil, it received an exceptionally high number of renditions
in its Turkish translations: “Uyuşumlar” (concordances, Ahmet Necdet), “Eşduyumlar”
(synesthesiae, Sait Maden), “Haberleşmeler” (conversations, Vasfi Mahir
Kocatürk) and “iletişimler” (communications, Erdoğan Alkan). However, in
this poem, Baudelaire does not consider the relation between nature and the
subject as a duality. Quiet on the contrary, what he touches on are the many
ways in which supernatural affinities, or subconscious kinships, leak into this
relation. Therefore, the notion’s conceptual consistency appears
more precisely when examined in light of the literature that backs ,it,
stretching from the Early Romantics to Critical Theory. The present essay aims
to retain the richness of this conceptual track, which is why the Turkish term
that was chosen is “mütekabiliyet” (reciprocity). According
to Nişanyan’s etymological Turkish Dictionary, “mütekabil”, which stems
from the Arabic root “kbl”, is an adaption of the world “mutakãbil …., meaning
corresponding, greeting, reciprocal. By the same token, “tekabul”
(correspondence) initially meant “meeting face-to-face”. Within the modern
world, what allows us to acknowledge the presence of the mythical, or the
residues of ancient rituals in the field of technique, are these reciprocities
or correspondences, hence their rendition in the present essay as
mütekabiliyet.
8- Charles
Baudelaire, The Flowers of Evil, trans. by Cyril Scott (London:
Elkin Mathews, 1909), p.10.
9- The
course of the mediation that widened the spectrum of theory progressed from the
visible to what occupies space, fro space to void, from openness to echo, and
fro acoustic to silence. Indeed, since the most efficient defacement strategy
was identified as “silencing”, it so happens that, in the most radical
enclosing facilities, the likes of slaughterhouses, zoos and laboratories,
priority is granted to minimizing noise first and foremost. Seen as the silent
form of existence that is presumed not to resist, but on the contrary to
surrender, the gesture that consists in silencing provides great comfort and
ample room to the perpetrator of violence, responsible for putting merchandise
in circulation. Likewise, only through the mediation of a double denial principle
– in other words, by adding a piece of knowledge regarding, say, the
primitiveness of their nervous systems, aside from their being of a
different nature that humans – are we entitled to speak of the otherness of
underwater creatures, considered bereft of voices because the sounds which they
emit exceed humans’ audition spectrum. In that case, the emergence of Noah’s
neo-ark from underwater, and that of its occupants – forming a collection of
living creatures – from slaughterhouses could be predicted ; or still, we would
be inclined to believe that divine justice should occur through the revocation
of the painful steps enforced on all the living beings whose
perceivability has been usurped. Of course, by suspending such a theologico-poetic
prediction, the contexts brought forth by the abovementioned examples ought to
be associated with the notion of the right to possess rights. The notion of
justice cannot be thought of through the mediation of beings exclusively
endowed with juridical status. Under that light, all forms of second
nature – the habitus of the inorganic - are
capable of transforming “closure” into a milieu where the usurpation of
perceivability is revealed. The house of correspondence – that is, a landscape
area (second nature) that maintains a part-subject, part-object epistemology in
effect, whereby the collector him/herself is a piece of his/her collection of
living objects – is such a place: there, the objects possess, if not a face,
the other’s gaze; there, the objects reunite their collector with
decipherability.
You may click below link
to reach exhibition book “Suppose You Are Not” to read more essays as “A Door
Either Open or Shut” by Selen Ansen and “A World of Wonders” by Claudia Swan.
https://www.arter.org.tr/publications
ARNE JACOBSEN
Giraffe
Chair, 1957
Laminated
Beech, Ash and Upholstery
Dimensions: 103 x 60 x 58 cm
ANONYMOUS -
ATTRIBUTED TO WILLIAM FETNER
Keyhole Chair – 20 th Century
ANSELM KIEFER
Melancholia,
2004
Mixed Media
on Canvas With Glass Polyhedron
Dimensions: 280 x 381 x 57 cm
HELMUT KOLLE
Boy Lying
Down, 1925
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 98 x 107.5 cm (Framed)
SEMİHA
BERKSOY
Self-Portrait,
Hope 1972
Oil on Panel
Dimensions: 111 x 81 cm (Framed)
JAMIE SALMON
Older Self,
2015
Silicone,
Pigment, Resin, Hair and Metal
Dimensions: 56 x 44 x 38 cm
JULIE RRAP
Horse’s Tale,
1999
Cibachrome
Photograph
Dimensions: 139.5 x 130 cm (Framed)
EVAN PENNY
Self-Portrait
2003
Silicone,
Pigment, Hair and Fabric
Dimensions: 69 x 70 x 20 cm
EVAN PENNY
Self-Stretch,
2004
Silicone,
Pigment, Fabric, Hair, Plastic and Metal Brackets on Wood Support
Dimensions: 79.3 x 19.3 x 5.7 cm
MARC CHAGALL
Self-Portrait
on Easel 1949
Brush and
India Ink on Paper
Dimensions: 53 x 42 cm (Framed)
EADWEARD
MUYBRIDGE
Hammering at
an Anvil and Using a Hatchet, Saw (Self-portrait) 1887
Calotype
Dimensions: 52.5 x 64 cm (Framed)
SEDA HEPSEV
Auto-Control,
Self-Portrait 2010
Acrylic on
Canvas
Dimensions: 60 x 80 cm
OLIVER JONES
Passport
Photo #2 2010
Pastel on
Paper
Dimensions: 223.5 x 184 cm (Framed)
PABLO PICASSO
Head, 1928
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 63 x 54 cm (Framed)
THEO van
DOESBURG
Self-Portrait,
1911
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 55 x 45 cm (Framed)
DAVID HOCKNEY
Self-Portrait,
1982
Make-Up on Paper
Dimensions: 66.5 x 56.6 cm (Framed)
NEJAD DEVRİM
Self-Portrait
ca. 1952–1955
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 50 x 41 x 4 cm (Framed)
ANDY WARHOL
Feet, 1960 -
1962
Black
Ballpoint on Paper
Dimensions: 58 x 49 cm (Framed)
GIORGIO CHIRICO
Self-Portrait,
1930
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 67 x 80 x 7 cm (Framed)
BRUCE NAUMAN
Studies For
Holograms a-e (Cordes 1-5), 1970
Screenprint
on Paper 5 Pieces
Dimensions: 77 x 83 cm each (Framed)
ANTONY
GORMLEY
Shrive VII
(Twisted), 2011
Cast Iron
Dimensions: 181 x 46 x 40 cm
JOHN COPLANS
Self-Portrait,
Body Language No 1-3-4-5, 1986
Gelatin
Silver Print 4 Pieces
Dimensions: 76.5 x 66.5 cm each (Framed)
DERRICK GUILD
Clara and
Oval Miniature Painting 2023
Oil on
Canvas; Oil on Linen
Dimensions: 154.5 x 194.5 cm (Framed) 10.5 x 7.5 cm (Framed)
ZHANG DALI
Artist’s Bust
(Suicide), 1999
Bronze with
Gold Patina
Dimensions: 70 x 60 x 30 cm
MAURIZIO
CATTELAN
Untitled,
2009
Polyurethane
Rubber and Sterling Steel
Dimensions: 51 x 38 x 18 cm
ALEXANDER
MASOURAS
East 95th
Street III, 2023
Oil on Linen
Dimensions: 95.5 x 80.5 cm (Framed)
LEYLÂ GEDİZ
The Other
Pair I & II 2010
Epoxy and
Paint
Dimensions: 30 x 70 x 57 cm, 47 x 240 x 70 cm
ANONYMOUS
Anatomical
Model of the Human Torso Early 20th Century
Plaster
Dimensions: 77 x 33 x 25 cm
YÜKSEL ARSLAN
Arture 85,
1965
Ochre Stone,
Earth, Tobacco, Urine, Blood, Ink and Pencil on Paper
Dimensions: 82 x 63 cm (Framed)
CHUCK CLOSE
9-Part
Self-Portrait 1987
Polaroid
Dimensions: 212 x 166.5 cm (Framed)
GAETANO PESCE
Donna, ca.
1970 Lounge Chair and Ottoman (Manufactured by B&B Italia)
Dimensions: 104 x 114 x 116.8 cm Ottoman: 60.9 cm
REBECCA
ACKROYD
Garden
Tender, 2020
Gouache and
Soft Pastel on Satin Paper
Dimensions: 191 x 140 cm (Framed)
HARLAND
MILLER
Incurable
Romantic, 2010
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 235 x 155 cm
KERRY STEWART
& ANA GENOVES
Ghost, 1995
Cast
Fibreglass and Acrylic
Dimensions: 186 x 150 x 100 cm
İRFAN ÖNÜRMEN
Curriculum,
2018
Concrete
Dimensions: 88 x 93 x 50 cm, 85 x 81 x 50 cm
ARTIST
UNKNOWN
Study of a
Male Lying, 1941
Ink on Paper
Dimensions: 28 x 49 cm (Framed)
MIGUEL
CALUMARTE VAQUER
Josephine
Baker, 1930
Pastel on
Paper
Dimensions: 63 x 48.5 cm
OTTO DIX
Studies of
Self-Portrait, 1929
Pencil on
Gray-Brown Wrapping Paper
Dimensions: 68 x 58 cm (Framed)
ERNST FUCHS
Self-Portrait
Through the Mirror 1946
Pencil on
Paper
Dimensions: 80.5 x 67.5 cm (Framed)
ARA GÜLER
Self-Portrait
with Fikret Adil, ca. 1950
Photograph
Dimensions: 49 x 36 cm (Framed)
VISCOUNT
FRANCIS HASTINGS
Marquise Luisa
Casati Stampa of Soncino 1934
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 92.5 x 76 cm (Framed)
PEDRO
FRIEDEBERG
Hand Chair,
ca. 1964
Carved
Laminated Pine Wood 3 Pieces;
Dimensions: 87 x 46 x 50 cm, 86 x 48 x 52 cm, 86 x 48 x 52 cm
PETER BEARD
The Mingled
Destinies of Crocodiles and Men, 1965
Gelatin
Silver Print
Dimensions: 83 x 92 x 4 cm (Framed)
SAM JINKS
Untitled
(Boy), 2013
Silicone,
Pigment, Resin and Human Hair
Dimensions: 10 x 105 x 40 cm
ERWIN WURM
Toilet, 2014
Polyester and
Wood
Dimensions: 77 x 11 x 67 cm
ERİNÇ SEYMEN
Miracle 2004
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 150 x 90 cm
GUSTAV KLIMT
Old Male Nude
With Clasped Hands, ca. 1900–1907
Black Crayon
on Paper
Dimensions: 76 x 59 cm (Framed)
ECEM YERMAN
Anyone 2023
Wood
Dimensions: 162 x 60 x 54 cm
RICHARD
ZIEGLER
The Police
1929
Oil on Canvas
Dimensions: 109 x 127 cm (Framed)
BRIAN GRIFFIN
Portrait of
British Jazz Musician and Humanist George Melly, 1990
Chromogenic
Print
Dimensions: 67.5 x 67.5 cm (Framed)
DAPHNE WRIGHT
Kitchen Table
2014
Hand-Painted
Dimensions:
Jesmonite Figures: 105 x 65 x 70 cm, 60 x 45 x 45 cm,
Chairs: 90 x 40 x 40 cm each, Table: 76 x 100 x 190 cm
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