Press

“Hope is a good thing”

Artists: Alice Miceli, Esra Okyay, Halil Vurucuoglu, Jari Silomaki, Mehmet Dere, Nejat Sati, Runo Lagomarsino, Underscene Project (Merve Sendil )
Curator: Borga Kantürk

Ausstellungsort: ATELIERFRANKFURT / Hohenstaufenstraße 13-25 / 60327 Frankfurt
Ausstellungsdauer: Samstag, 25. August – Samstag, 22. September 2007
Öffnungszeiten: Do & Fr 17 – 20 Uhr / Sa 15 – 18 Uhr (und nach Vereinbarung)
Vernissage: Freitag, 24. August 2007, 20 – 23 Uhr

ATELIERFRANKFURT is pleased to present “hope is a good thing”, a group exhibition curated by Borga Kantürk with seven artists and one collaboration, called Underscene Project, plus the post-punk band “DDR” from Turkey. All of the Turkish artists – Esra Okyay, Halil Vurucuoglu, Mehmet Dere, Nejat Sati and Underscene Project, produced by Merve Sendil – are part of the Izmir-based K2 initiative. The other participating artists are Alice Miceli (Brazil-Rio De Janerio), Jari Silomaki (Finland-Helsinki), and Runo Lagomarsino (Sweden-Malmo).

Due to the interactive speed of the present world, the pace in contemporary art has also accelerated. Today, a contemporary artist is perceived as a person with various communication and networking skills, struggling within a high-speed, global art network. This system, in which the contemporary artist has to negotiate tight schedules and agendas, creates a chaos that is further intensified by long trips and difficult demands. Workshops, presentations, lectures, studio visits, artist residency programs, online conferences and similar commitments set the pace. The artist can either be a lucky but tired person, who builds useful contacts and finds sponsorships in this tense climate; or the artist takes a position in the background, out of sight, with an independent stance, having to build own contacts and to find an own budget.


When Beuys said “Every human being is an artist”, the world with its dynamic political and social infrastructure was showing the promise of new hope. Art would accompany this acceleration and bring about a new kind of energy.

Today’s hectic pace and lifestyle has seriously diminished the sense of hope that once existed. Today's ideals are strongly attracted by the hope of corporate and financial gain. To a large extent, hope has been replaced by greed. At the same time, the art community exists within a tighter global network, with more stringent time constraints encapsulating a larger audience. It can be said that art is increasingly drawing closer to becoming a corporate entity. It is thus the right time to quote Kippenberger’s more humanistic dictum, “Every artist is a human being”, as a direct alternative to Beuys’ remark. So going back to Beuys statement, the “artist=human being/myth” notion, we see the art world being increasingly affected by the rules of the corporate world and turning into a priced pawn of the market, a commodity worthy of higher accolade.

Throughout contemporary art and the endeavors of artists trying to position themselves within the system, we need to discuss alternative strategies questioning the global network of the contemporary art market and try to focus on a situation in which artists can act freely and independently. In this sense, the word “hope” in the exhibition’s title is used as a necessary notion to represent what is human. The artists’ choices, their independent existences, and their personal, textual, verbal and visual languages have been taken into account during the process of developing the exhibition. The purpose is to release the artist entirely from the process of being an “illustrator” and view the artist as an “illusion producer” instead; as well as to focus on the framework represented by the artists and to consider the relationship between sound, image and atmosphere.


Pressekontakt:
ATELIERFRANKFURT
Corinna Thiele
Hohenstaufenstraße 13-25
60327 Frankfurt am Main
M +(0)177.7772811
T +49.(0)69.74303771
thiele@atelierfrankfurt.de
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