Ghosts: Redbull Art Around

In it's third year Red Bul Art Around takes place in Arnavutköy between 4 - 20 May, 2018. Curated by Collective Çukurcuma (Mine Kaplangı, Naz Cuguoğlu, Serhat Cacekli) Red Bull Art Around Arnavutköy brings the works of 14 artists together around the theme of “Ghosts" departing from the Derridean concept of “hauntology". The exhibition connects a never-ending nostalgia feeling towards the past with an unrealized imaginary of future. With reference to those dreams which had once been dreamt of and later got detached in some way from our collective memory, the exhibition raises the question: “How many different ghosts do we hold inside?”

With the works of Canavar, Can Büyükberber, Bahar Yürükoğlu, Pınar Yoldaş, Ali Emir Tapan, Ilgın Seymen, Uğur Engin Deniz, Sabo, Begüm Yamanlar, Guido Casaretto, Eda Aslan, Pınar Marul and Ceylan Göksel the neighborhood of Arnavutköy is at the center of “Ghosts” and the exhibition moves on a trajectory following this neighborhood’s past, destruction, annihilation, rebirth and hidden parts.

FOREVER BLIND | Press Release:

art ON Istanbul hosts Ilgın Seymen’s solo exhibition “FOREVER BLIND”. In the works that will be presented for the first time, Seymen makes use of consumption materials that are an inevitable part of the everyday life. Using a colourful and black humour-oriented language, the artist closely examines the shopping oriented lifestyle of today’s people.

In her exhibition “Forever Blind”, Ilgın Seymen whose works were presented in various international exhibitions in San Francisco, New York, Berlin and Seul, builds up a relationship in between sculptures, paper works, collages and installation techniques in a quest of different forms. Thus, with an interdisciplinary approach, she opens the doors of several experimentalities to viewers. The artist, benefiting from the messages commonly used in the advertising language, adapts a critical approach towards the characteristics of consumption frenzy, which stimulate the hedonist feelings. At an age in which happiness is defined with further consumption and further luxury, the artist, employing two different metaphors, has developed an exhibition style that houses both sociological and psychological expansions. The first of these metaphors is “the pink world” and lying behind the former is “the real world”. At this point “Forever Blind”, the title of the exhibition, is the product of a critical approach formed by the relationship between these two different notions.

Furthermore, the title of the exhibition also makes a sarcastic reference to the system in which the self-deceptive cosmetic and beautifying products render blindness with the instant happiness they supply. As a part of this system, Seymen underlines how our belongings lead us to addiction. Through its use of imagery, “Forever Blind” makes viewers comprehend the dangers in the unwittingly gained chain of habits.

Photographs by CHROMA

Ghosts: Redbull Art Around

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Ilgın Seymen X Godiva

Printed'16

Nature Morte

Contemporary Istanbul

Meta Takeover

Forever Blind