"Holy Bargaining"
PILEVNELI Dolapdere
November 30, 2017 - January 13, 2018
PILEVNELI Gallery is pleased to present a solo exhibition of recent works of Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu between November 30 and January 13, 2018, titled “Holy Bargaining”.
The most relevant tension underlying in Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu's works are neither accidential nor intentional, but between figuration and pure materiality. Zümrütoğlu’s figures oscillate between representation and the evidence of marks which are objects of pure pigment applied by means of brush, tube, or knife. This approach subsumes two art historical conditions, that of Physical Abstraction; as embodied by certain works of Gerhard Richter and Bertrand Lavier, and in the predominant works of Robert Ryman and James Hayward. The school of abstraction hat is concerned with making a painting into an object rather than a representation, by having the work's materiality itself. The painting is about its own materiality: canvas and pigment.
The roots of Zümrütoğlu’s works can be traced in another art condition which is the tradition of distortion in figuration that derives from the Middle Ages and culminates in the 20th century.
This dichotomy of figuration and materiality in Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu also has potential symbolic associations that are specific to the historical imperatives of the Turkish condition, that are also felt in the West at large. This is no other than the tension between a globalized modernity and the conservative impulse to defend a national tradition against this international tide; a tension that may be expressed in other words by the dichotomy of secular values, and restrictions imposed by juridical and administrative realities.
A book of the same name will accompany the exhibition which will include a text written by Drew Hammond, lecturer at Colombia University and Exhibitions Director of Los Angeles ACE Gallery.
Erdoğan Zümrütoğlu lives and works in İstanbul and Berlin.