The Columns held Us Up

July 8 - August 1, 2009

Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin, Can Altay, Burt Barr, Daniel Bozhkov, Celine Condorelli, Jeremiah Day, Cevdet Erek, Corey McCorkle, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Wael Shawky, and the invited (cordially uninvited) curated by Krist Gruijthuijsen with Ben Kinmont, Lisa Oppenheim, Adam Pendleton, Julika Rudelius, Alexandre Singh and Jordan Wolfson

Reception: Tuesday, July 7,2009, 7-9pm (Performance by Jeremiah Day at 7:30pm)

Artists Space
38 Greene Street Fl 3
New York, NY 100131
+1.212.226.3970
Tuesday > Saturday, 12:00 - 18:00

Platform Garanti is pleased to announce The Columns held Us Up, a collaboration with Artists Space, New York comprised of an informal exhibition and series of events curated by Vasif Kortun and November Paynter.

At the end of 2007. Istanbul's Platform Garanti paused its exhibition program to undergo a major structural and organizational transformation into an interdisciplinary institution developed in partnership with Garanti Galeri. Still awaiting the renovation's completion, Platform's offices, residency, and archive have continued to function in a temporary location. With this in mind, Artists Space has invited Platform to program its gallery for the duration of July 2009 (framed much like a one-month artist residency) as an opportunity to realize a series of physical activities in the interim period between the closing of Platform's previous space and the launch of their new organization.

Platform will create a program that continues to reflect its fundamental approach to collaboration, focus on local art situations, and facilitation of residencies and discussion, all within the walls of Artists Space, with whom these institutional characteristics are strongly shared. Works by New York based artists that Platform has previously partnered with, as well as works by a roster of international artists who have spent time on their residency program in Istanbul, will be presented.

The columns held us up is a confluence of intertwining relationships and shared interests, based on the strength of thoughts and ideas to uphold or pillar a situation in the absence of structural parameters. Here, Platform takes into consideration those artists who have supported it during its eight years of development. A number of the selected works in the exhibition stem from intensive research of layered, everyday systems that accumulate to propose intricate narratives. For example, a collaborative multimedia installation by Can Altay and Jeremiah Day investigates Istanbul via the chain of production of stuffed mussels, the city's well-known street delicacy, while an itinerant work by Daniel Bozhkov hosts a site for storytellers that traces the journey of a family jewel, engraved with an Ottoman Persian poem, and the reflections on and translations of its meaning formed along the way. Other works have been chosen because they are, in themselves, systems or products of support, such as Celine Condorelli's structural intervention based on the study portrayed in the 1475 painting St. Jerome in his Study by Italian Renaissance master Antonello da Messina. Further works in the exhibition that embrace these ideas include the videos Telematch Suburb by Wael Shawky and Self Portrait by Burt Barr; a series of photographs titled Hayvanat Bahfesi by Corey McCorkle; the slide installation Wonderland by Christodoulos Panayiotou, and the installation Kara-kum by the late Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin.

Additional activities build on past interests and concerns: Celine Condorelli's functioning intervention will host a book collection point, where institutions and artists can donate books that will travel to Platform's library in Istanbul at the close of the exhibition* (a project first presented as Collection Point at the Frieze Art Fair in 2006); a period of on-site work and research by artist Cevdet Erek; and the invited (cordially uninvited), a series of collaborative events and performances organized by past Platform resident Krist Gruijthuijsen that will take place in Artists Space's surrounding Soho neighborhood July 14-18.

In collaboration with Platform Garanti, this exhibition has been organized by Meredith Johnson and Amy Owen.

*Book donations for Platform Garanti's library can be dropped off or sent to Artists Space during the months of June and July 2009.
For further information please contact info@artistsspace.org.

The columns held us up is generously supported, in part, by The Dedalus Foundation and the Mondriaan Foundation, Amsterdam.


About Artists Space:
One of the first alternative spaces in New York, Artists Space was founded in 1972 to support contemporary artists working in the visual arts, video and electronic media, performance, architecture and design. The mission of Artists Space is to support artistic experimentation and dialog in contemporary culture.

Accented

Presentation of the Interregional Residency Programme
British Council’s Creative Collaborations programme.
The presentation is followed by a reception.

Saturday, May 30 at 17:00
DEPO / Tütün Deposu
Lüleci Hendek Cad. 12 , Tophane

Platform Garanti is pleased to announce the launch of Accented, an interregional residency program. Accented Residency is part of the British Council’s Creative Collaboration programme. The overall aim of the Creative Collaborations programme is to enrich the cultural life of Europe and its surrounding country and to build trust and understanding across communities by generating dialogue and debate.

Accented offers a total of 20 curators, artists, and writers the opportunity to undertake six to eight-week residencies at the participating institutions over the course of 2009 and 2010.

Participating institutions are Delfina Foundation, London and Spike Island Bristol (UK); Vector Association, (Iasi, Romania); Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, Lebanon) and Townhouse Gallery (Cairo, Egypt); and Platform Garanti Istanbul, Turkey.

The program is open to applicants from Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Egypt, Greece, Gulf Region, Iran, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Libya, Macedonia, Morocco, Palestine, Romania, Serbia and Montenegro, Syria, Tunisia, Turkey and the United Kingdom.

Following the fall of the Berlin Wall, numerous exhibitions have been organized by West European institutions with a focus on East Europe. After 9/11, these gave way to projects featuring the Southeastern Mediterranean region. While one can understand the desire for inclusion, the research around post-traumatic conditions, and/or different approaches to the "Muslim" world, the meeting points of the cultural producers have been external to the regions they practice in. The complex impediments facing the production; the concrete hindrances to travel; the lack of public support; the ineffectual organizational structures, have lead artists traditionally to convene in Western Europe. However, cultural and political similarities, as well as centuries of shared histories ask for lateral relations to be empowered. British Council’s Creative Collaborations program places importance on these issues aiding the development of regional bonds.

Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin: Global Mockery

maison Folie de Wazemmes - Lille - April 30 - July 7, 2009


Organized by Platform Garanti Contemporary Art in the context of Lille3000 for Europe XXL, "Global Mockery" is the first large-scale exhibition of works by artist Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin after his passing away in December 2007.

Presented on the two floors of the maison Folie de Wazemmes, “Global Mockery” includes important works from Alptekin's oeuvre such as the 1992 version of Heterotopia, the installation Winter Depression, the sculptural work Karakum and stop-motion videos from the Incident-s series previously shown in the Turkish Pavilion at the 2007 Venice Biennial.

Many of the works in the exhibition, such as the over-sized cheap oil cloth Karakum (Black Sand) bag, pay witness to Alptekin's acute interest in the human condition after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the resulting enormous human traffic, as well as the migration of authorless images that followed it. This work embodies an intercultural travel log through its transformation of the Camel cigarette logo into the adornment of a cheap bag, a reference to the part of the world where the exotic potpourri of Central Asian and Middle Eastern imagery that brands the Camel cigarette packet was originally taken from. In dialogue with the migratory references in Karakum, Heterotopia presents a plane of anonymously rendered images and objets trouvés of history and contemporaneity, juxtaposed and set in friendly tension alongside one another.


After pursuing graduate studies in aesthetics, the philosophy of art and sociology at the Sorbonne, Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin remained in Paris as a photographer for Sipa Press in the 1980s. Steeped in European philosophy, semiotics and post-structuralist ideas emerging in France during this time, Alptekin returned to Turkey at the end of the decade, where he taught the philosophy of art.

In 1990, Alptekin began to make art, fusing associative images and objects in bric-a-brac installations. Befitting a philosopher turned artist, his oeuvre is not unified stylistically, but by an ambitious set of themes.

Alptekin took part in numerous international exhibitions including the Istanbul Biennial in 1995 and 2005, the Bienal de São Paulo in 1998, the 2002 Cetinje Biennale in Montenegro, the Tirana Biennial in 2003 and 2005 and Manifesta 5 in 2004. Along with numerous international residencies, Alptekin won a UNESCO prize for his work in the Cetinje Biennale, and the M. Mulliqi Prize at the 3rd International Exhibition at Kosovo Art Gallery, Prishtina, in 2005. As a curator, Alptekin organized exhibitions and events in Istanbul, Tirana, Havana and Helsinki, including cultural activities during Istanbul’s 1996 Habitat II NGO-City Summit.

Between 2000 and 2004, Alptekin headed the Sea Elephant Travel Agency (SETA), a non-profit, artist-run collaborative space in Istanbul that sponsored artists’ residencies and seminars. Sea Elephant served as an umbrella for Alptekin’s numerous international, collaborative ventures, including “B-fact: Black Sea, Baltic Sea, Barents Sea,” a platform for Balkans art, and “BRG: Bunker Research Group,” an ongoing collaboration between Scandinavian and Turkish artists initiated during the 2003 Tirana Biennale.

Alptekin represented Turkey in the Arsenale at the 2007 Venice Biennale with the installation Don’t Complain (2007), where he screened 14 different videos made from hundreds of assorted snapshots taken on his travels around the world that he called “Incidents” five wooden huts. Don’t Complain brought together disparate geographies through the images, connecting places as far apart as Mumbai and Rio de Janeiro.

Platform Garanti houses the archive and library of Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin. The institution is also engaged in a comprehensive study of the artist's career and life.