TUNCA
‘TERRA AMATA’
SEPTEMBER 07 – OCTOBER 14, 2017
OPENING: SEPTEMBER 07, THURSDAY 19:00–21:00
PRESS PREVIEW: SEPTEMBER 07, THURSDAY 17:00–19:00
Galerist is pleased to present TUNCA’s solo exhibition titled
Terra Amata between the dates 7
September - 1
4 October 2017. This is TUNCA’s first solo presentation at Galerist after having
joined the gallery earlier this year.
Taking its title from the pre-historic settlement in Europe where Neanderthals are first known to
have built shelters, the exhibition investigates the relationship between architecture and land
around the most basic forms of dwelling. Gathering together TUNCA’s most recent drawings on
paper and sculptures, the exhibition also presents a site-specific intervention suspending the
gallery’s
architecture between objecthood and spatial experience.
Time, memory and commemoration take center stage within the artist’s investigation into
architectural function on one hand, and into the fluid relationship between built environment and
nature on the other. At first sight, the architectural forms depicted in the series of drawings titled
“Domus” appear as the most basic representations of a home. On closer inspection, they reveal
disfunctionalities and adaptations, as one has no doors, another has no windows and a third one
has its door sealed off with bricks. These playful permutations on the spaces of transition
suggest a blurring of the line between inside and outside, pointing either to an unusual extension
or a complete obliteration of spaces of transition.
All of these drawings on display are in fact based on photographs taken by TUNCA during a visit
to the Auschwitz-
Birkenau concentration camps in Poland. These are façade and interior views
of the cavalry barracks that were repurposed as part of Auschwitz I, and today repurposed again
as monuments commemorating the holocaust. TUNCA’s depictions of brick walls, doors and
windows belonging to these structures thread through several layers of history, creating a space
where use value and symbolic value constantly replace one another. In these works, buildings
are erected, repurposed, monumentalized, forgotten or taken back by nature at once, reminding
us the transience of what we consider as granted in our present, history not being just a thing of
the past.
TUNCA graduated from Mimar Sinan University’s Faculty of Fine Arts. His multi
-faceted practice
includes canvas painting, drawing, sculpture, installation works, video and performance. He
constructs a world of images departing from historical memory, cultural identity and political
facts. Historical sublimation and ideological constructs of social and political events are central
issues in his practice. He investigates the monumental layers of memory ranging from official
histories to individual stories, and the phenomenon of testimony beyond documentarism.
In 2005, parallel to the 9th Istanbul Biennial, as part of the performance titled ‘Floating Slum
House’ the artist spends a week, together with Guido Casaretto, in a floating slum house they
have built on the Golden Horn and they document this process. TUNCA participated in group
exhibitions at various museums and art institutions including the 4th International Çanakkale
Biennial, CerModern, santralistanbul, KuadGallery, Elgiz Museum, and Siemens Art Gallery. In
2014, the artist received culinary training and realized a series of performances around
gastronomy, history and politics for his solo exhibition “Desire” in Istanbul. TUNCA’s works were
recently shown
at Sabancı University Kasa Gallery, Istanbul, (2016) with Hera Büyüktasçıyan,
“All The Light We Cannot See” at Galerist, Istanbul(2017) and two
-person exhibitions at Corridor
Project Space, Amsterdam (2017) with Superflex. Most recently in 2017 he was awarded a
residency at the Cité des Arts in Paris.