AGENDA:
The order of the day became Holyness nearly century after the emergence of the "individual" who read the newspapers instead of holy book every morning upon waking. Today, this agenda is the master of our minds. My memory and I, whistle to eachother while looking into our master's eyes.
PANTOGRAPHY:
There was somebody who took our black-white photopraphs from our house, then would bring them back enlarged and colorized. I think the name of this method was "manual enlargement".
We did everything we could to escape from manierisms fearsome ghost!
"A moment" which left a mark in the memory, can come out all of a sudden in another "moment".
The guy who enlarged and colorized the photographs was a kind of pantograph.
While preparing for this show, I wanted to be a pantograph too.
THE SOVIET UNION:
The collapsed Soviets, are just like "The Invisible Cities" of Calvino; the only difference is that they stand nakedly before us.
This country never turned into a 'wreck', with only its tragedy for company.
This 'project' doesn't refer to a dynasty, geographical or ethnical concern and seems to belong more to the future more than to the past.
It is no where near 'up-to-date'!
TRASH AND BOB ROSS:
Today, our mind is a trashcan of images. In this case, I would like to be a good trash collector; an ecologist who is so good that he can't see himself from another ecologist's eyes, a painter so good that he can't be an artist.
From now on, while painting in regards to your own personal history with outmoded painting methods, it's a huge possibility that you may be transmuted into "SearchingForaPearlinaPieceofShitBobRoss"!
Within the trash heap of art, bad smells may permeate you.
Within all likelihood, the more we smell bad, the better it is.
Şevket Sönmez, 2009 Fındıklı
As matter is separated and reshaped, as it is heated and then left to cool in moulds to reach its final form, there are happy coincidences and uncontrollable developments that are part of the very nature of the process. Could it be said that these unforeseen destinies harbor a mysterious inner beauty?
I have been both surprised and delighted by a similarity that I observed in two distinct areas. In recent years discoveries and developments in the medical field, focusing on a cellular level, have in a strange way paralleled common industrial techniques.
The works in this show are a reflection of these thoughts.
"Objects of desire", born from the industrial womb, bring with them their strange siblings, these unwanted cast-offs of the production process. It is these estranged byproducts which are central figures in this cycle of life/production. It is the yin and yang of the desired and the unwanted that come together to create a whole. One could regard this recycling as a second chance. Life and death.
I tried to discover and play among these coincidental progeny, these cast offs, these excesses. They came to life in assemblages and were reborn in paint. Fear of death, a factory, illness, a course of treatment, memory, confinement and a new house in the forest were their playgrounds.
The adventure of molecules.
In my observatory journey, tracing the paradoxical relationship between our flesh and our shiny metal boxes of transport, a very serious affliction resulted in my own transformation: I in turn became a construct containing metal. These alien substances that threaten our fragile existence - bullets and shrapnel, the raw material from which we create our modes of transport - this time gained new meaning... as a part of my body.
In matters of health, no one desires to get sick or die. In matters of production no one wants defects and unwanted byproducts which increase costs and slow production. However, in matters of the production of life, we are discovering that what had been regarded as useless now holds the key to life, to a theoretical immortality. One may regard my search through these industrial cast-offs as a naïve desire to reach the same results, to rally these strange siblings of the industrial mother under the banner of a creative process and to perhaps create a new platform of immortality.
Şevket Sönmez 2008
In the everyday images that we are subjected to of car crashes, throhere is a strange feeling attached to that tragic atmosphere, the disturbing union of form and substance.
The images of cars as icons of the modern age go through an abrupt transformation at the moment of impact.
A new car that is put on display for sale bares no ressemblance in form to the graphic portrayal of mankind, but the moment of impact forces these two disparate elements of metal and flesh into a transformed union.
Maybe that is the true tragedy that the object of desire is destroyed and in turn destroys.
In my opinion, mankind with its natural biological structure always seems at odds wiyh the mechanical boxes they are placed in, but as a concept that brings these two elements together the crash is a more powerful force than the accepted theory of modern city life.
These uniform metal formsa are brought closer to the complex nature of body... it is at times impossible to visually differentiate a hand trapped in the wreckage.
It is a paradoxical relationship...
Beyond the complex and often confusing, psychological relationship between man and vehicle, even the archival records of car crashes offer us the opportunity to infer depths into this paradoxical relationship.
We love cars, but they love us also, sometimes they love us to death...
Şevket Sönmez 2005