You can visit the 360 Virtual Tour of the exhibition: https://kuula.co/post/7FM4X
.artSümer is proud to present Serkan Demir’s latest solo show Difficult to See Ahead. In this show, the artist, whose work generally attempts to map out cultural impressions based on the political climate of his geography, examines the difficult connections formed between the subject and its environment and patterns of life.
The expression Difficult to See Ahead refers not to a physiological inability, but rather to an incapacity for foresight that takes over societies and dampens the individual’s means of looking forward toward a future, which Demir tries to decode through his sculptures and installations. He continues to work through the politics that infect the viewer’s everyday life, the sociopolitical implications of societally significant developments like migration, our state of weariness caused by our precarity, and a future that is increasingly difficult to conjure up. He explores and demonstrates the ways in which thoughts and emotions reshape the subject in society.
Looking at the state of the world today, with the proliferation of conflicts and societal problems on a global scale, we can observe that the average person is in a deep and seemingly inevitable state of anxiety in the face of uncertainty and precarity created through self-inflicted tragedy. At this point, it is apt to refer to Jose Saramago, one of the leading authors of magical realism, and his novel Blindness in which he doubts the distance of both today and tomorrow through his political satire. In this day and age where science is inadequate at explaining phenomena, and where even the very structure of matter is up for debate, the manipulations we execute to maintain the sustainability of systems as well as the blurriness of knowledge that feeds on the peril of societies continue to make the act of foresight increasingly difficult. Even when faced with these conditions, the human mind, no matter how far it drifts away from the modern promise of the “future of the future”, does not give up on its attempts at finding new territories where it can safely reside and dream. So, what is the “ahead” that humans cannot see? Is it incomprehensible and invisible? Is it uncertain and quiet? Is the “ahead” unknown and lost? Is it actually “difficult to see ahead”?
Serkan Demir ponders on the horizons of an unpredictable and unknown future in his show.
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Serkan Demir (b.1975, Kahramanmaraş, Turkey) graduated from Gazi University Painting Department in Ankara in 1999 and completed his graduate degree in Hacettepe University Faculty of Fine Arts, Sculpture Department in 2003. He received his proficiency in art at the same university and department in 2009. Selected exhibitions include; The Clandestine Life of Objects (curator: Beral Madra), Evliyagil Dolapdere, Istanbul (2019); Örebro Biennial, Sweden (2017); Penalty Area (solo), artSümer, Istanbul (2017); Where from here?, (Yaygara Art Initiative), Bilgi University, Istanbul, (2016); Laboro Ergo Sum – I Work Therefore I Am, Amber Festival, Santral İstanbul (2015); Parallax, Hidden Subject, (Yaygara Art Initiative), Arte Art Gallery, Ankara (2015); Operation Report (solo), artSümer, Istanbul (2015); Mythologies, 3rd Mardin Biennial, Mardin (2015) and Emergence (solo), CerModern, Ankara (2014). Serkan Demir is an academician at Abant İzzet Baysal University Faculty of Fine Arts in Bolu where he lives and works.
