Versus Art Project hosts Ömer Pekin’s solo exhibition titled ‘‘Infatuation’’ between 11 May – 17 June 2023. In his second solo exhibition at the gallery, the artist focuses on the faith for an unmoving Truth. With the physical objects he presents and the perceptual manipulations he constructs around them, he invites us to rethink the idea that seeks rigidity of experience.
‘Recognizing the experience of artistic creation and the dialogue between the viewer and the object as a process of continual becoming, Pekin focuses on flux, change, and where the realities that cannot be experienced in this constant change can find a place in the world of short-lived obsessions we live in.
Through light, and lack thereof, the exhibition seeks to ask questions on the relation that comes to being between the spectator and the object of art. The nature of various forms of interaction is discussed through the idea of the “hidden essence”, an essence that is not reducible to any particular property of the artwork such as material, visual qualities or tactility, but is rather based on its substance arising from the way in which the artwork interacts with the viewer’s imagination and emotions.
Through the possibilities of artistic experience that Pekin opens up to discussion, the artist calls on the audience to consider all possible ways of encountering the object of art, how fragile the bond we create with the Other is, and how it can be a form of social power relations, rather than a mere private emotion. As he invites us to rethink what the essence of the attraction towards the object of art is, he studies the nature of fascination, enchantment, attachment and all similar affects on multiple levels.’
Burcu Fikretoğlu
In the exhibition where color and light are used as materials in the essence of the works of art, the artist’s new wall sculptures made from basalt stones will meet the audience alongside the metal works that will be shown for the first time in Turkey.
