Misfortunes And New Joys
2010 Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting, 2001 Dokuz Eylül University, Fine Arts Faculty, Graphical Design Department Making surpassing ideological fictions and historical sublimation over social and political events a priority for himself since the beginning of 2000s, TUNCA has a versatile practice starting with design and extending toward sculpture, video and performance arts. Rambling between the grandiose layers of “memory” fueled by official history and individual stories, the artist captures the act of witnessing beyond documentaries and indications. Photographic documents used by him are combined with his subjective memory and then, reflected onto the paper by means of charcoal pencil, leaving behind a chemical sediment on it. The research focused practice of the artist is expanded to include history writing, in which he excavates the past in order to bring the present time into light, to fictionalize and animate it. Misfortunes And New Joys is the product of a research and dialogue process extending over two and a half years. It adds a new page to the artist’s practice tracing the historical sites, events and persons based on the ephemera collected by the artist from the second-had book sellers and auctions. The boxer figure seen on 6 photos that came to the way of the artist in an auction organized years ago and that were understood to be taken in the studio of Georg Gerlach in Berlin, producing memoir postcards, servedas the starting point of the exhibition although it was not known how they ended up in Istanbul. Reproducing on paper in big sizes of the photos of this boxer named Sabri Mahir, by using charcoal pencil as his main material since a long time, the artist invites the viewers to discover this enigmatic figure. *A quotation written by Serra Yentürk for this exhibition.
05.05.2023 - 13.06.2023