Banu Cennetoğlu. Publicly introspective

In New York, the Istanbul-based artist introduces her first U.S. solo exhibition at SculptureCenter, dealing  with the gathering of residue of information, data, and images.

Installation view, Banu Cennetoğlu, SculptureCenter, New York, 2019. Photo: Kyle Knodell

In Long Island City, Banu Cennetoğlu’s exhibition at SculptureCenter presents a number of works dealing with her wide ranging cross-disciplinary practice, using objects, images, texts, and printed matter to continuously scrutinize, contemplate, and questioning the position of the artist/individual persona and within the complex geopolitical conditions of our time. Banu Cennetoğlu (1970, Ankara) brings together a selection of works by the artist that consider how we create our own narratives, histories, and memories as we confront large bodies of information produced for or by us. Upholding a cogent form of aesthetic engagement, the artist invites us to consider how our individual positions and actions are in constant negotiation with the larger structures and events that shape our lives.

SculptureCenter in New York has developed a strong reputation for championing under-recognized and emerging artists, many of whom have gone on to celebrated and substantial careers such as: Turner Prize winner Charlotte Prodger and nominee Anthea Hamilton, Sanford Biggers, Nairy Baghramian, Tom Burr, Liz Glynn, Rochelle Goldberg, Camille Henrot, Leslie Hewitt, Rashid Johnson, Ugo Rondinone, Katrín Sigurdardóttir, Alexandre Singh, Monika Sosnowska, Gedi Sibony, Mika Tajima, and recent Hugo Boss Prize winners Anicka Yi and Simone Leigh. As a non-collecting museum, SculptureCenter’s annual exhibition program includes commissioning programs by mid-career artists, projects and commissions by emerging artists, and solo and group exhibitions in addition to an exciting series of special projects by emerging artists through In Practice, an open call program, and Public Process, a public art and education initiative for high school students.

The exhibition includes few but milestones artworks such as 1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 · H O W B E I T · Guilty feet have got no rhythm · Keçiboynuzu · AS IS · MurMur · I measure every grief I meet · Taq u Raq · A piercing Comfort it affords · Stitch · Made in Fall · Yes. But. We had a golden heart. · One day soon I’m gonna tell the moon about the crying game (2018), a moving image work that presents the totality of the artist’s visual archive from June 10, 2006 to March 21, 2018.

Not all the art in Cennetoğlu’s monographic exhibition is on view at the same time. Here the artist uses time as an exhibition device. It is unlikely that a visitor will ever be able to watch Keçiboynuzu in its entirety, or even see all the “works” featured: depending on when you walk in, you might see the preparation of one of the iterations of the Library of Spirits; a production of 29.06.2012, 2012; footage of the artist as she collects newspapers in both parts of Cyprus; the installation of her 2011 exhibition at the Kunsthalle Basel; or The List presented in Berlin, Istanbul, Bonn, or Budapest. But, temporally, 1 January 1970–21 March 2018 comprises 128 hours and 22 minutes of still images and videos sourced from various devices— including Cennetoğlu’s mobile phones, computers, cameras, and external hard drives—in an unedited stream of content.

Installation view, Banu Cennetoğlu, SculptureCenter, New York, 2019. Photo: Kyle Knodell
Installation view, Banu Cennetoğlu, SculptureCenter, New York, 2019

This epic project — for which the artist decided not to choose a single title — reimagines what an artist’s retrospective might be: the period of time it documents is bookended on one side by the beginning of Cennetoğlu’s facilitation of the public circulation of UNITED for Intercultural Action’s List — a growing document that traces information related to the deaths of refugees, asylum seekers, and migrants within or on the borders of Europe since 1993 — and on the other by the production deadline for the work’s premiere at Chisenhale Gallery in London in 2018, which coincided with Nowruz, the vernal equinox that marks the Persian new year.

Moreover, Taq u Raq shows the research and productions phases, the installation process, the final exhibition, the press walkthrough, the opening, the dinner, the after-party, and the artist’s plane ride back home. Curators, museum directors, other artists, and critics make their appearance. In this visual diary, we watch the artist’s daughter grow up, we watch her friends and family, we watch her working, we watch her living.

Banu Cennetoğlu, 1 January 1970 – 21 March 2018 · H O W B E I T · Guilty feet have got no rhythm · Keçiboynuzu · AS IS · MurMur · I measure every grief I meet · Taq u Raq · A piercing Comfort it affords · Stitch · Made in Fall · Yes. But. We had a golden heart. · One day soon I’m gonna tell the moon about the crying game, 2018, SculptureCenter, New York, 2019

Stitch invites us to reflect on our own image archive at a time when we over-document our lives and store them in the Cloud or on hard drives and social media. The culture of oversharing has made us spectators of each other’s realities as we scroll through grams, tweets, and “stories,” swiping left and right, liking, ignoring. Though A piercing Comfort it affords remarks on the trend, Cennetoğlu’s images are awkwardly unselective. Unlike the content of social media, here the one iconic image encapsulating an event is replaced with images from every possible angle, with multiple exposures and without hierarchy, embarrassing and vain, at times boring, at others action-packed. All the photos that someone delete to make room for more are retained. Downloading our photos when the phone reaches its storage capacity, we see a few months of our life sweeping by on the screen: things we did, places we’ve been, people and animals we’ve met, kept, lost, stopped seeing, or left.

In addition to Guilty feet have got no rhythm the exhibition includes the complete 142 volumes of Cennetoğlu’s newspaper projects to date, for which the artist collects and binds a compilation of all newspapers published in a country in a single day. The quantity of papers per capita is of course indicative of the possibility of speech and tolerance for plurality of voices in a given country. Gathered together for the first time, this collection not only pays homage to the waning printed news, but further explores the way that information is mediated and disseminated in more and less free societies. Written on a mirror as if to crown the viewer’s head, What is it that you are worried about? comes from a 2014 collaboration between Cennetoğlu and Yasemin Özcan and greets the audience as they walk in to browse the newspapers.

Exhibition Title:
Banu Cennetoğlu
Opening dates:
From January 14 to March 25, 2019
Curated by:
Sohrab Mohebbi with Kyle Dancewicz
Venue:
SculptureCenter
Address:
44–19 Purves Street, Long Island City, NY 11101

Latest on Art

Latest on Domus

Read more
China Germany India Mexico, Central America and Caribbean Sri Lanka Korea icon-camera close icon-comments icon-down-sm icon-download icon-facebook icon-heart icon-heart icon-next-sm icon-next icon-pinterest icon-play icon-plus icon-prev-sm icon-prev Search icon-twitter icon-views icon-instagram