.artSümer is pleased to host Merve Çanakçı’s fourth solo exhibition at the gallery, Threshold.
A threshold is a tangible thing by definition; it connotes a state of being in between; it is never just what it is. It is the end of something; a boundary has been reached; it is the exit point from a particular space. At the same time, per definition, it is the entryway into a realm, it is a beginning, a moment of genuine newness. At the threshold you are mid-movement, in the midst of a flow, neither here nor there but in a liminal space that distinguishes and connects both spheres simultaneously.
Merve Çanakçı’s exhibition at .artSümer is aptly titled Threshold. Çanakçı has consequently been artistically investigating and commenting on the human condition from various angles in her previous work. With Threshold she presents the outcome of an extended period of reflection and artistic study, which culminated in the striking body of hybrid work.
A key piece is Packed Landscape, a mixed media work in the truest sense of the word, the viewer is confronted with a dilemma, a contradiction, an enigma. The abstract painted landscape on the tiger-striped and processed piece of fabric is presented sculpturally as an object that defies easy classification and demands to be seen as it is. The work that intuitively came into being is nevertheless part of a theoretical framework that allows the artist to make sense of the inner and outer conditions. It allows multiple readings, its form is infused with its content, and the genre-defying materiality entices the viewer to question conventions of landscape painting.
Another striking part of the exhibition is the series Loop, a graphic installation of twenty three charcoal drawings on paper. Here the rhizomatic nature of the whole exhibition is most visible. The sustained pursuit of the Tillandsia caput-medusae motif, an unusual looking air plant, is as mesmerizing as the Medusa-head it is named after. Here, one has a sense of nature as a principle of movement and transition, and not a given static backdrop to human activity.
It is apparent that Çanakçı’s extensive research in preparation for the exhibition and her period of contemplation culminated in ideas concurrent to the contemporary posthumanist discourse. She thus continues her occupation with human nature, while taking a new step forward, and deliberately investigating the threshold we find ourselves on: a moment of transition where the perceived ideas of the human, nature, animal, subject, object, culture and history are critically questioned.
There are also the works that delve deeper into her artistic curiosity of how humans function, what makes them human and how society is shaped. In this vein, Çanakçı comments on family structures, ideas of self, belonging and gender. The images trickle like water in between the cracks, they take different forms, they hide themselves or show skin, they are separate but connected, and suggest novel approaches to handle material, view art and reflect upon our current global moment of transformation.
Text by Seda Mimaroğlu
Merve Çanakçı was born in 1982 in Ordu, Turkey. She studied painting at the Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts in Istanbul. In addition to her solo exhibitions as an artist of the gallery, Çanakçı took part in numerous group exhibitions such as Bank / Blank (48 Stunden Neukölln, Alte Sparkasse, Berlin, 2018), A Room of Our Own (Ark Kültür, Istanbul, 2017), Stay with Me (Apartment Project, Berlin, 2014), A dream… but not yours (National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C., 2010) among others. She lives and works in Berlin.
