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until 21.10. | #1580ARTatBerlin | Galerie Jochen Hempel presents from 15th September 2017 the exhibition “But first you must learn how to smile as you kill.” by the artist Yeşim Akdeniz.
The artist, born in Turkey in 1978, cites a line from the song ‘Working class hero’ by John Lennon and, with her work, attaches a bit to the social criticism of the song. While John Lennon threats the misery of the exploited working class, Yeşim Akdeniz deepens the gender discourse and the resulting problems within society and their dealing with these issues.
For the current work cycle, Akdeniz was inspired in particular by the history of the E-1027 house, built by the architect Eileen Gray. She was never recognized as the initiator and architect of the construction project during her lifetime and always stood in the shadow of the influential, predominant male colleagues. It was thus, that Le Corbusier, who was in close contact with Eilen Gray, and frequently visited the villa she had planned and built, one day in her absence provided the white walls of the house with six oversized, cubist paintings. To have also immortalized himself in this architectural masterpiece. It is believed, that Gray had never given her permission for this artistic act and was very angry at the disrespectful, selfish behavior of the artist. Thus their paths separated.
Yeşim Akdeniz takes up the story in one of her works by repainting one of the murals of Le Corbusier and integrated it into the interior of one of her paintings. It almost seems that she wants to banish the brutal painting. To regulate the male power. In the other works, too, the artist repeatedly touches symbolic objects and images, in order to isolate them in the following and to arrange them in newly created contexts. Previous content and meaning seem to dissolve, usually also reverse.
These resulting surreal arrangements contain their very own substantive references . The smooth surfaces of the objects, as well as the pastel color selection, open up the viewer’s own reality of things, which can not be questioned at first. The conscious choice of well-known design objects, architectural spaces, con tent loaded stereotypes and landscapes, firmly anchored in our cultural memory, as main components of her paintings, creates kind of a display. The viewer as a spectator identifies himself with well-known motifs and sees himself in this way quite personally confronted with the picture worlds created by Akdeniz.
In this way, Yeşim Akdeniz succeeds in positioning herself with her works, both in social-critical discourses and political events, without initiating a direct influence. The expression of her works is more of a subtle, more mysterious, and therefore more powerful.
Vernissage: Friday, 15th September 2017, 6 to 9 p.m.
Exhibition period: Friday, 15th September to Saturday, 21st October 2017
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Image caption: Yeşim Akdeniz, The Painting, 170 x 145 cm, oil on canvas, 2017
Exhibition: Yeşim Akdeniz – But first you must learn how to smile as you kill. – Galerie Jochen Hempel | Contemporary Art – Kunst in Berlin – ART at Berlin
