New Viewings: Nasan Tur, Enes Güc & Evelyn Bencicova / Curated by Philipp Bollmann

Nasan Tur

Nasan Tur is a Berlin based artist who works in different media, with photography, installation, sculpture and video. In his partly interactive works, he analyses social norms and behavioural patterns, which he observes primarily in metropolitan areas. His artistic practice focuses on the tension between self-responsible action and inaction. He examines existing power structures and questions them. The limits of communication and the uncertain or fragile nature of perception are further driving forces behind his practice and many of the situations he creates.

Nasan Tur participated in documenta14, at the 10. Istanbul Biennale and at the 6. Taipei Biennale and exhibited in numerous institutions like Palais de Tokyo,  Centre Pompidou , Schirn Kunsthalle, Hamburger Bahnhof,Städel Museum, Frankfurt.

In 2012 he was awarded the Will Grohmann Prize of the Academy of Arts, Berlin. Nasan Tur studied at the Academy of Art and Design Offenbach and Academy of Art Städelschule Frankfurt.

»Instead of being created independently,  -Schalung- is a direct reaction to a very  controversial, historically charged sculpture  dating back to the aesthetic and ideological  values of National Socialism. Commissioned by the Nazis in the 1940s as a heroic  -warrior memorial-, as soon as it was completed  it was encased in a wooden crate as it was only  supposed to be unveiled once -total victory- had  been achieved. It was hence concealed inside  wooden boarding for many years until politicians  finally remembered it and erected it as a  -warrior memorial- in the town of Göppingen,  where it can still be seen. I regard -Schalung-  as a kind of -anti-sculpture-. Given its  appearance as planking or casing, it questions  the possibility of neutralizing art from society.  It also addresses the political and ideological  functionalization of art and its  associated misuse.« Nasan Tur

Enes Güç and Evelyn Bencicova

„The motionless figure of an androgynous giantess occupies almost the entire gallery space in its entangled posture. On its body and around it, small scaffolding grows upwards. But the construction site is deserted. Only the figure, which resembles an avatar, remains in a calm state. A state of „being in between“. Between day and night. Between dream and reality or even between life and death? It almost seems as if the figure is still being brought back to life.“

„One is inclined to think of Mary Shelley, whose novel character Victor Frankenstein created an artificial human being 200 years ago – in a time of great upheaval and discovery. Today we are once again at a historic turning point in technology. Is that what Evelyn Bencicova  and Enes Güç are alluding to here?

Or are they even illustrating a creation of the „Self-image“? The construction of the persona for external perception has advanced to a mania that was only enabled by the possibilities of the digital world. We use our extended abilities to make ourselves appear larger than we presumably are. The oversize of the figure is a testament to this. And the scaffolding becomes a metaphor for the process of construction, work in progress. How will it develop? To what extent can it grow?

These questions cannot be answered. Like the figure itself, we as recipients also remain in an intermediate stage. Somewhere between fiction and reality, the visible and the invisible and what we think to know and what we can imagine.“ – Philipp Bollmann