Artworks

Arşivsel pigment baskı, geleneksel Washi kağıdı

Arşivsel pigment baskı

Arşivsel pigment baskı

Arşivsel pigment baskı

Arşivsel pigment baskı

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

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

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

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

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.

Alüminyum

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

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

Ink on paper (high pigment printing) / Kağıt üzeri mürekkep (yüksek pigment baskı) /

Elle şekil verilmiş ve sırlı stoneware seramik, altın tozu

In a doubling of reality and almost without text, Ersan Mondtag's play “De Living” tells a private story of despair that is intertwined with a historical one.

The suicide of a woman in her kitchen is also a story about the liberation from the trauma caused by the atrocious regime of the Belgian King Leopold II in the Congo. The events leading up to the moment when the lonely woman sticks her head into the gas stove developed with the twins Doris and Nathalie Bokongo Nkumu into an unfolding of history in parallel universes.

The synchronicity of their imprisonment in fear and depression dissolves into two possible outcomes in the course of the performance. One fatal and one optimistic. In addition to the systematic mirroring and the breaking of patterns, the use of smells is an impressive artistic effect, olfactorily guiding the reception of this silent double story.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

A Wassily Model B3 chair designed in 1926 by Marcel Breuer, up ended onto its front, on top of which cast marble sits representing several inches of settled snowfall.

Laser-cut stainless steel

Ink on engraving textured paper

Three revolving postcard racks which, when viewed from certain angles, form three complete images from the multiple postcards they display; showing two artworks and a portrait of Santo Sterne.

Elle şekil verilmiş ve sırlı stoneware seramik, altın tozu

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on canvas

What will the world look like in the future if social and technological developments progress as rapidly as they have in recent decades?

When artificial intelligence has left human intelligence behind and dominates all areas of life? What will become of humans - these unpredictable, flawed, slow and sentimental beings?

Sibylle Berg's play WONDERLAND AVE. is set in a museum of humanity, a memorial to the once dominant species, whose physicality is now primarily preserved in paintings, photo installations and sculptures. Sometimes naked and carnal as in Ron Mueck's work, sometimes renaissance-like and damned as in a fall from hell.

In this bitter and comical swan song to humanity, five robots that could have come straight out of a Picasso painting control two pathetic specimens who reflect one last time on what has gone wrong with their world, in which they felt so selfrighteously in control.

Laser-cut Corten steel and stained windows

Oil on canvas

A wall-mounted postcard rack displaying multiple postcards which create an image of the fictional artist, Aston Ernest, as a child.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

The starting point for Mondtag’s production was a myth about Maria Callas. To achieve her dream figure, the world famous opera singer is said to have ingested a tapeworm with a glass of champagne. The legend claims that the parasite led to an astonishing weight loss of 50 kilograms
within a short period of time.

Callas’ uncompromising endeavours to shape her appearance according to her ideal vision, and its flipside - the dissolution of her own body - formed the leitmotifs of the exhibition.

A scenic parcours transformed the museum into a stage with winding paths to encounter bordercrossers and doppelgangers, silent rebels and failed existences.

The tapeworm-stage presented works from Kader Attia, Miriam Cahn, Marlene Dumas, On Kawara, Teresa Margolles, Bruce Nauman, Thomas Ruff, Rosemarie Trockel, Andy Warhol and many others as connected parts of an ongoing narration about irritated bodies.

«Old-gold» luster on red glazed high fired stoneware, signed, dated, titled in the mass

Kullanılmış karter yağı, çelik

Oil on canvas

Glazed stoneware

A fortune-cookie slip revealing a catalytic point of departure for an action yet to be undertaken concealed from view within a painting constructed from white-washed broken glass sheets and black duct tape.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

In the dark forest the muezzin calls, the father returns home with the ax and goes into the cellar, a very fat girl shakes the house with her defiant stomping.

In “Tyrannis” by Ersan Mondtag there is always a fairytale atmosphere, but of the eerie kind. The red-haired family with their avatar movements, which can be observed via surveillance cameras in their rooms and live in a strange kitchen-living room like in a human zoo, does not speak, lives according to fixed rules rituals and hides secrets. Have terrible things happened in the past or are the zombie-like souls of single-family homes just waiting to happen? Associations with horror films and computer games, David Lynch and the Brothers Grimm, but also with the narrow middle class à la Fassbinder and Christoph Marthaler's bashful staff arise when patiently contemplating Mondtag's room world dreams.

The powerful imagery creates an intimate horror of everyday life in an enchantingly stubborn atmosphere.

Ink on engraving textured paper/ Gravür dokulu kağıt üzeri mürekkep

The Green and the Gardens, 2019, focused on a holistic need for a communal and public shared space. As such, Gander worked directly with the commissioners chosen landscape architects, Gillespies, to create a space that included rain gardens to ensure a natural drainage system, wildflowers to increase biodiversity and intimate spaces for groups to relax, escape and find inspiration. The artistic elements mimicked the common groups of England’s villages, featuring a series of highly realistic fibreglass sculptures of tents positioned in the landscape that lit up during the night, as well as fences, a gateway, a stile and a communal notice board.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

Majolica stains on mat and shiny white glaze, high fired stoneware

Mor sırlı stoneware seramik, altın cila / Purple glazed stoneware, gold luster

69 pieces of steel blades/ 69 adet çelik bıçak

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya

A life-size replica of a helium filled balloon that appears to be floating against the ceiling of the gallery. The balloon is in fact made from fibreglass and finished in a high gloss black colour.

Sırlı stoneware seramik, gümüş / Glazed stoneware, silver

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on canvas

A giant, swollen, mirror-finish stainless steel version of 'Rapport de volumes' (1919) by Georges Vantongerloo in a crater as if crash landed.

Tuval üzerine yağlı boya / Oil on canvas

Glazed stoneware, silver

A life-size figure upscaled from an animator's movable desktop armature. The figure stands in front on ann illuminated rectangle hung on a wall as if looking at a painting in a gallery.

Sırlı seramik, altın parlaklığı/ Glazed stoneware, gold luster

OR SOMEWHERE BETWEEN A MODERN REPRESENTATION OF HOW A CONTEMPORARY GESTURE CAME INTO BEING, AN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PHYSICALlITY OF AN ARGUMENT BETWEEN THEO AND PIET REGARDING THE DYNAMIC ASPECT OF THE DIAGONAL LINE AND ATTEMPTING TO PRODUCE A CHROMA-KEY SET FOR A HUNDRED CINEMATIC SCENES, 2010

The gallery space is entirely covered by hundreds of simple matt black arrows all of which seem to have been shot from the side of the gallery that faces the most commonly used entrance. The arrows randomly penetrate the walls and floor, protruding into the gallery space at various angles and depths.

A marble sculpture representing a den / simple shelter made by the artist's 3 year old daughter using a full size Rietveld Cargo chair and smaller Rietveld Cargo chair designed for children.

Glazed stoneware, reduction firing

Engobes, glaze on modelled high fired stoneware
Signed in full 2016 but finished 2017 and titled in the mass, situated “Den Haag”, “eagle” stamp

A large sphere made up of thousands of unidentifiable shiny stainless steel components of various sizes and shapes, the distribution of which has been decided using magnetic forces.

Rendered in cast bronze and taking the form of large-scale key chains of a ballet dancer, a model of a school, and an architectural tetrapod, the sculptures are suspended improbably from the trees of Laguna Gloria. Gander, a consummate storyteller but intentionally unreliable narrator, describes his use of the key chain as a simple “vessel for communicating something of greater value, a signifier for the story.”

Part of an ongoing series of works, the key chain shapes are based on those employed in performances by Earnest Hawker, a persona of Gander’s future self. These sentimental objects suggest narratives, snippets of which come from the artist’s history and biography, while the viewer projects his or her own meanings, sparked by the works’ incongruous scale and placement. Chronologies and realities conflate, spinning with possibilities: How did these get here? Are they larger, or am I smaller? This playful interrogation of the viewer forms the nexus of Gander’s work.