Artworks

Freezer, safe-box

Oil on canvas

Steel, polyurethane foam, silicone, human hair, glass, textile, pump, stage blood and clothing

Searchlight

Fiberglass, theatre lamps

Street lamps, electric components, electric current

Concrete, microphones, mixer, amplifier, loudspeaker

PAL-DV (Colored-Auditory)

4'43''

Jewel beetle wing-cases

Plaster, clothes, shoes, sound, light, various plastic objects, metal

Silicon bronze and gold leaf

Fine Art pigment print on museo portfolio rag

Fine Art pigment print on museo portfolio rag

Fine Art pigment print on museo portfolio rag

Fine Art pigment print on Hahnemühle paper

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print, traditional Washi paper

Archive pigment print, traditional Washi paper

Archive pigment print, traditional Washi paper

Archive pigment print, traditional Washi paper

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Archive pigment print

Ink, acrylic artificial gemstones & pearl on engraving textured paper

Ersan Mondtag's contribution to the German Pavilion at the 60th Venice Art Biennale is an ark of remembrance for the ghosts of Germany's past, who created the country's prosperity without ever being adequately recognized for it.

The elaborate installation tells the story of Ersan Mondtag's grandfather, Hasan Aygün, who came to Berlin in 1962 as a “guest worker” from a village in Anatolia. He worked there for the Eternit company for 28 years. Before he could begin his retirement, he died of a lung disease caused by processing asbestos products.

Different stages and aspects of Hasan Aygün's biography are transformed on three levels in the teardrop-shaped clay building. The installation, with its many biographical and poetic details, the dusty and gloomy atmosphere, forms the stage for a performance of the family’s experiences up to the of the grandfather´s death. It is a story of a struggeling life in cramped conditions and it is condensed into a silent theater with absurd features.

Multimedia installation; earth, steel, wood, fabric, furniture, everyday objects, video

An animatronic mouse partially visible emerging from a hole broken through the gallery wall. The mouse delivers a 9 minute monologue using the voice of the artist's 9 year old daughter, imparting a philosophical speech based on the final scene of The Great Dictator (1940) by Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin, rewritten from a post-simulacrum perspective.

Glazed stoneware, gold luster/ Sırlı seramik, altın tozu

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on Canvas

Ink and acrylic on engraving textured paper

For Ersan Mondtag, Langgaard's opera, which heralds a sparking frenzy of doom, is a parable of our times. Socio- political themes, such as the fragmentation of society, the hardening of public discourse and the intensifying climate debate shine through in his visually stunning production.

Despite these references, Mondtag’s over-aesthetised visual language leaves room for Langgaard’s multifaceted and dazzling music, in which large sections are purely orchestral: A group of dancers translates Langgaard’s composition into a gripping language of movement. In his expressionist stage aesthetic, Mondtag references the visual arts of the time when ANTIKRIST was created, while simultaneously creating a surreal world where the laws of physics seem to have been suspended.

Gold luster on glazed high fired modelled stoneware

Oil on canvas

A pair of cartoon-like, animatronic eyes with eyelids and eyebrows are installed in the gallery wall. Sensors, activated by the viewer, trigger the eyes to go through a series of pre-programmed movements that create an endless loop of randomly choreographed expressions.

Ink, acrylic, artificial gemstones and pearls on engraving textured paper

The installation “The Temple” is the model for a place that combines artistic, social, sensual, and metaphysical aspects. The intersection of ancient temple architecture with a bath in AT the center, surrounded by steps for resting and chatting in a peculiar light that tempts you to perceive the world in a completely different way, creates a multi-sensory atmosphere of contemplation. In the temporary architecture conceived for the exhibition “Nature and State” at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Ersan Mondtag staged the choreography “becoming sculptures” with five actors. The performance reflects various situations of the transformation of the physical into the spiritual, as well as the movement of liberation from normative boundaries.

Gold luster on glazed high fired modelled stoneware

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on canvas

A bronze figurative sculpture of a young female ballerina resembling Degas’ dancer, sleeping on the floor of the gallery accompanied by an ultramarine blue cube and a display plinth.

Aluminium

Hand carved tyre

Oil on canvas/ Tuval üzeri yağlı boya

The new production of the anti-fascist folk opera by Kurt Weill and Georg Kaiser, which premiered in only three cities after the Nazis seized power in 1933, becomes a contemporary piece about the threat to art in Ersan Mondtag’s adaptation. The coproduction by Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and Nancy Opera transfers the story about class conflicts and possible friendship between enemies to the year 2033.

With this theater within the theater, “Der Silbersee” takes on a new political explosiveness, developed in elaborate stage designs with many art quotations as a caustic satire on any abuse of power.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on canvas

Gold luster on glazed high fired modelled stoneware

An antique framed mirror covered with a dust sheet that has been reproduced in cold cast marble, the sheet has been draped to obscure the mirrors reflection as if protecting its surface.

Laser-cut Corten steel