Arslan Sükan’s Second Solo Exhibition at Galerist ‘INtheVISIBLE’

ISTANBUL / Galerist is pleased to present Arslan Sükan’s second solo exhibition ‘INtheVISIBLE’ from September 11 to October 12, 2013. Sukan’s new photographic works explores the conventions of the modern white cube as both an architectural context and as a content subject in and of itself. By addressing the notions of spatial memory, presentation and representation, this exhibition enhances the confrontation between visibility and invisibility in social and phenomenological terms.

Arslan Sukan / 'Untitled 12', 86x130 cm, C print on masonite, 2013 / Courtesy of Galerist

Arslan Sükan appropriates images from the internet of 'installation shots', white cube spaces within museums, galleries and art institutions around the world. His first step is returning them to their original state by digitally removing the artworks inside. He then manipulates the remaining image, 'the original condition of the gallery', by digitally painting some of the parts, like walls, ceilings or floors. Sükan's layered approach embraces the disputed characteristics of the white cube 'as a sacred space undisturbed by time'; at the same time it expands the potential of artistic intervention in a gallery by transforming the space itself on a plane surface. The artist’s reconceived images of uninterrupted spaces, composed of heightened geometrical shapes, touch base with the minimalist aesthetic and its emphasis on the viewer’s perception, while the flatness of the picture calls to mind the infinite possibilities in abstract paintings.

By means of deconstruction, intervention and reconstruction of the white cube, Sükan brings complicity between opposites and creates dualism between recognition and non-recognition, visibility and invisibility, abstraction and concrete concepts. The result is an entirely new space, an architecture of past and future, with a continuously shifting viewpoint. Sükan proposes a phenomenal situation, challenging the viewer on the realism of the photograph and the memory of a space, while also opening up the horizons of the viewer’s interpretation of the exhibition’s and their own immediate setting.

Some of the works of the ‘INtheVISIBLE’ series will continue to be displayed at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv (Zurich) until the end of September, with the complete series to be exhibited for the first time at Galerist.

Arslan Sukan / 'Untitled 5', 170x255 cm, C print on masonite, 2013 / Courtesy of Galerist

Arslan Sükan

Arslan Sükan was born in 1973 in Ankara. He graduated from Bilkent University's Interior Architecture and Environmental Design department and received his photography training at New York's School of Visual Arts. He continued to work as an architect in New York until 2008. He received the contemporary photography award at the New York Photography Festival in 2009. His works have been exhibited at the Maxxi Museum (Rome), Museum Haus Konstruktiv (Zurich), Maison des Metallos (Paris), Kappatos Gallery (Athens), Batagianni Gallery, NYPH New Visionaires Tobacco Factory (New York), Galerist (Istanbul) and Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art. Sükan lives in New York and Istanbul.