Candan Öztürk: Power and Oblivion, 30 Oct 2014 — 06 Dec 2014
Exhibitions

Candan Öztürk: Power and Oblivion

In Power and Oblivion the works of Candan Öztürk (b. 1988, Ankara) focus on individuals’ ever-changing moods forced by the system that praises false appearances. The words power and oblivion in exhibition title is doing a good job to make us more aware of these structured identities by highlighting the contrasting forms of what is actually existing and what is served.

Power, as a symbol of authority, promises wealth, happiness, perfection and a life that everybody would envy. However, Öztürk‘s story about the emptiness that people who have everything fall into, reminds us that power does not always keep its promise.

To tell his story, the artist carefully picks some images from period movies and TV series’. These ripped-from-the-context scenes consist of two types of narratives. As one demonstrates a weak and highly emotional moment of the character, that is when she/he lets her/his guard down, the other points at opposite situations: the studied behaviour of the characters, which they meticulously manicured for the eyes of the spectators. By using these contrasting narratives she uncovers the ebb and flow of the inner worlds of human beings and skilfully touches the opposing nature of these very human state of minds.

The permeability of the works’ materials is also in harmony with the exhibition’s narrative. The layers and the transparent and naïve structures of the folios beautifully complete his story of ever-changing identities and fragile psychologies of his characters.

Using these frozen movie scenes the artist shows us that the world does not change that rapidly as we’d like to think. The fact that they are chosen from different periods accentuates the artist’s discourse of that every period has similar courses and therefore offers similar experiences. His work implicitly argues that human nature in self-repetition gives us a feeling of a constant déjà vu and our universe is in fact only a vicious cycle.

 

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