"Locus Solus": On Different Ways of Nature

Named after Raymond Roussel's novel, curated by Selen Ansen and spread over Arter’s 4th and 3rd-floor gallery spaces between 31.03-31.12.2022 the exhibition brought together a selection of works from the Arter Collection with site-specific new productions and existing works. 

The journey envisioned by the exhibition through subterranean, heavenly and terrestrial realms, subconscious territories, past and lost, fantasised or never-existed places and various landscapes continues online with the works exhibited in Locus Solus from the Arter Collection.

Maddalena Ambrosio’s installation called Untitled displayed in the exhibition consists of a wooden chair with roots growing on its frame and legs.  

Approaching the idea of nature by referencing the tree that provided the wood for the realisation of the chair, the work confronts the inertia of a manufactured object with the vitality of a natural organism.

A closer look at the photo seen on the right,  Cengiz Tekin’s work titled Here Is No Water, But Only Rock, reveals that there are people and plants among the stones.

What is the ultimate fear of a shepherd?

Osman Dinç, who worked as a shepherd during his childhood in Denizli and lived a life closely connected to nature, often addresses these autobiographical references in his works. 

In Nightmare of the Shepherd Who Fell Asleep – 2, the artist places a piece of carved onyx marble on a sheepskin he laid on the floor, like a gravestone. 

As its title suggests, the work not only reminds us that falling asleep is the ultimate nightmare of a shepherd, but also signals a disaster that may occur in a moment of weakness or absence of mind.

Ella Littwitz’s practice investigates political, social, and cultural landscapes through specific elements connected to land. 

For her work titled Uproot, the artist collected an archive of the 143 weeds listed in Zohary’s book published in 1941, The Weeds of Palestine and Their Control. 

Produced by the artist Panamarenko whose practice mainly focuses on flight and flying engines, Meganeudon II consists of a motorised mechanism imitating an insect’s morphology and flight. 

Merging natural sciences and innovation, the artist morphed the name Meganeudon from “Meganeura”, a giant dragonfly species, in order to make it sound prehistorical.

In his series New Influences, Yüksel Arslan elaborates on writers and thinkers who inspired his practice by referring to themes such as insanity, illness and anxiety, which he has been scrutinising for many years.

Arture 647 (left), Arture 735 (middle) and Arture 546 (right), which are part of the same series, centre on the relationship between human and nature by referencing Robert Walser and Pliny the Elder.

The notions of drawing and line occupy a special place in Jytte Høy’s practice. 

Referencing the human-nature relationship by merging natural forms (tree branches) with artificial means (bronze), Sketch for the Structure of Peace #2 is inspired by a piece of blotting paper with a pencil drawing exhibited in the Imperial Museum of War in London. 

Translating a two-dimensional drawing into a three-dimensional sculpture, the work sheds light on the transformation of form and meaning that occurs during the translation process. 

The work also materializes the space between the place one translates from and the place one translates to by questioning what the structure of peace might be.

İnci Eviner’s artistic practice is inspired by mythology, history, literature, and philosophy. The artist also uses organic materials such as wax, copper and leather.

With an aim to restore– by means of images and symbols – a bond damaged due to the modernisation process, the artist’s series titled Body Geography provides a landscape of humanity that bridges the terrestrial and the celestial.

What we commonly call “landscape” designates a representation constructed by the human gaze, which holds in that sense an artificial dimension. 

Juxtaposed on a “wall of landscapes” these four works emphasize the dichotomies that are at play in the exhibition. They invite viewers to trace the subjective gazes and the manmade worlds.

The work Carpet Land (left) by Halil Altındere takes its cue from a photograph the artist saw in the window of a carpet shop in Istanbul’s Grand Bazaar.

These carpets, which are produced in various regions of Turkey, are aged in a short period of time by exposure to the sun in order to provide them an antique appearance. 

Pointing at the ways in which touristic capital, consumerism and culture transform the ecological system, this eerie landscape opens a space where the natural and the artificial, the real and the surreal are intertwined, turning in passing the established dualities upside-down.

Reminiscent of an anonymous/non-monumental funerary marker, the haystack bears an inscription that reads “HERE RESTS THE GRASS 03.2008–06.2008”. 

Transitioning from a human-centred commemoration ritual into a non-discriminatory and non-hierarchical honouring of mortality, the work marks out the unnameable losses that the earth bears.

The photograph shows the tractor filled with watermelon-looking plastic balls in a farmland area, as if referring to the tradition of landscape representation. 

Widely grown in Diyarbakır, watermelon has a significant place both in the artist’s personal memory and in the geography in which he lives. 

Creating a permeable zone between reality and fiction, the work presents an uncommon landscape which renders the common representations of a geography tenuous through illusion and play.

Involved with the Fluxus movement since the 1960s, Claus Böhmler’s experimental practice investigates the intersections of different mediums. 

The exhibition Locus Solus presents remains of Böhmler’s past performance during which the artist sat on a chair as Claude Money, and painted over the cover of the LP record that shows a painting by the Impressionist artist Claude Monet. 

Böhmler’s performance is a re-enactment that can be interpreted as a re-production/re-manufacturing of the landscape, which has been alienated by culture.

In his work titled Stars, Ahmet Doğu İpek covered the surface of a large-scale cotton paper with black Indian ink he frequently uses in his works, and then notched and indented the black surface using a stitching awl. 

Exposing the white surface of the paper through an action which gives birth to light out of darkness, the artist creates a configuration by extraction and reduction, rather than piecing together various materials.

In this photographic work, Bülent Şangar focuses on the historical and everyday references that surround the notion of sacrifice.

Through actions related to tradition, religion, belief, and submission, he points out the sacrifice and sacrificial rituals existing in society. 

Consisting of six photographs taken from a distance, the work deals with the sacrificial ritual performed on the side of a highway in a city centre during Eid al-Adha. 

In the background, on a hill with mass housing, the sacrificed animals are seen being portioned out, the remains are being buried, and another animal is brought to the site to be sacrificed. 

While documenting a social phenomenon, the artist brings the changing urban topography and the new social constructs up for discussion. 

Bülent Şangar also examines the possibilities of photographic narrative in this landscape, which he created by establishing a new architectural structure through the city with the multiple photographs he combined.

Mariana Vassileva’s work titled Puddle creates a melancholic environment evocative of muddy village roads full of puddles. 

Addressing the living conditions the artist was familiar with during her childhood in her home country Bulgaria, the works reveals the dramatic tension between presence and absence, life and death, human finitude and cosmic infinity, the known and the unknown.