"ENDLESS": Beyond "Respiro"

ENDLESS mainly consisted of existing works drawn from the Arter Collection, but also featured two new pieces, seen here which welcomed the visitors as they entered the space.

These connotations are eased by the artist's second new work, Wheelchair with Bird Feathers: a wheelchair embellished with white feathers, appearing poised for motion at any instant. It guides us towards the brilliance and hues of Respiro, forging a path towards optimism.

While discussing his works, Sarkis speaks of where they are born and how their lives change as they are brought into new places.

Each work is alive and has its own breath; each flourishes, expands, and transforms itself ceaselessly through new experiences. 

With its title that originates in the Latin verb spirare (to breathe) and means “breath” in Italian, Respiro instantly hints at its liveliness, its call for endlessness, and how it registers the passing of time through its act of breathing.

Painted with the seven colours of the rainbow by the fingertips of seven children, the mirrors and neons installed on two opposing walls reflect and reproduce each other endlessly. 

Jacopo Baboni-Schilingi’s music – created for Respiro with inspiration from the lines of the neon rainbows – revolves around the space through speakers placed intermittently on the ceiling around the exhibition space, like a celestial sound.

Suspended from the ceiling, the copper bell of Calling (To the Bees) I moves up and down over the honeycomb on the floor, accompanying the music of Bach and Shostakovich resonating from Sarkis’ other works in its own rhythm throughout the exhibition.

The icons that Sarkis began making from 1986 onwards are small-scale stagings placed in frames gathered from different histories, geographies, beliefs, and cultures.

Like most of Sarkis’ works, how the Icons are exhibited varies according to the space and the context in which they are located.

The Seven Dresses of the Rainbow, which is not a part of the Arter Collection, was specially produced for Sarkis by Domenika Kaesdorf, with whom Sarkis has collaborated on several other occasions.

The work rises right above Transflammation, like the ancient Greek goddess Iris bearing good news, and scatters all the colours of the rainbow to the gallery space in celebration and consecration of the infinite cycle of birth and burning.

Created by the artist in 1996 for the exhibition Kunsten soger hjem [Art at Home], organised at Ballerup, Egebjerp in Denmark,Transflammation is one of Sarkis’ works that employ such strategies.

The film was shown on the TV in the same living room, and those who came to the house to watch it witnessed the burning of the furniture around them. 

For the reinterpretation of Transflammation in the context of ENDLESS, Sarkis brought its timbers from his studio in Paris to Istanbul to bring them together with the film and the original watercolours from the Arter Collection. 

Sarkis often refers to the concept of memory while speaking of his works: “The artworks act with their experiences. Experiences turn into memory. Each work has its own memory – flourishing as it ceaselessly moves from one place to another, from one country to another.”

In 2001, Sarkis interprets the idea of retrospective in the form of an artwork created for his exhibition at Maçka Art Gallery. He displays photographs of his exhibitions since Çaylak Sokak – an installation he showed at the same gallery in 1986 – on a table under glass.