:mentalKLINIK: That’s Fucking Awesome / Galerist, Istanbul

Coinciding with the Istanbul Biennial 2011, Istanbul’s Galerist gallery presents a survey exhibition of works by the Turkish artist duo :mentalKLINIK. The show is titled That’s Fucking Awesome and presents ten years of work by Yasemin Baydar and Birol Demir. The exhibition has been curated by Jérí´me Sans. In this video the curator talks about the artists and the concept of the show.

Yasemin Baydar (born 1972 in Istanbul) and Birol Demir (born in 1967 in Ankara) founded :mentalKLINIK in 1998. That’s Fucking Awesome is a pop up project in the Haskoy Yarn Factory just across Istanbul’s Koç Museum. The exhibition’s curator, Jérí´me Sans conceived a show that allows the visitor to dive into the world of :mentalKLINIK. The presentation starts with the video Whiff (2010). The exhibition is accompanied by four sound works titled Fucking Awesome. The show continues with high gloss sculptures and videos and concludes with hand-woven carpets with high polished bronze applications. Hit the jump for more information and the press release.

PS: In 2009 :mentalKLINIK participated in Art Basel’s Art Unlimited section with the work PuFF. Click here for the video.

:mentalKLINIK: That’s Fucking Awesome at Galerist, Istanbul / Turkey. Professional Preview and interview with curator Jérí´me Sanse, September 16, 2011.

> Right-click (Mac: ctrl-click) this link to download Quicktime video file.

From the press release:

Like a disco ball, this project shows a selection of their multifaceted approach on their universe. Resisting to the limitations of a single vocabulary or style, their world is a playful one full of hedonistic appeal which can be experienced as festive and glamorous but also surprising as one approaches to discover with a closer view an underlying violence suggestive of a bad trip after party or a creepy beginning of the end. Their works shift between emotional and robotic attitudes. Is it fake or true, or could it all be about falsification. Does it have to do with Poker face attitudes or with the alchemy of changing lies into truth or fake into real?

To begin, their game requires several players and thus the KLINIK’s interplay with a minimalist ideology of seriality. Some Works begin by slicing or cutting whereby the artists introduce an element of danger, as a metaphor of art. Other works are emotionally charged with connotations set in direct contrast to other works completely devoid of human characteristics such as the series of robots or slivers.

Like the title of this exhibition, « THAT’S FUCKING AWESOME » :mentalKLINIK often employs oxymorons (figures of speech that combine contradictory terms) in their works with language (He is digustingly handsome/ She is awfully beautiful) as a reflection on the inevitable paradox of life… or death? Are you ready to become their patient?

:mentalKLINIK

:mentalKLINIK was founded in 1998 by artist duo Yasemin Baydar and BirolDemir. Converting all pieces of present time into materials for their Works of art, :mentalKLINIK points out to contemporary reality by means of sound, action, object, text and form.

Reflecting upon our habits of consumption and production; the artist duo forces the limits of interdisciplinary working and questions the patterns and the modes of relation underlying these patterns. The artists dislocate the materials already detached from everyday life and create a new aesthetic form that is awkward, alien and uncanny within the exhibition space.

Jérí´me Sans

Jérí´me Sans is a pioneer in presenting, speaking about and exhibiting contemporary art. He has curated numerous international solo exhibitions worldwide and created installations at the major international art biennials including Lyon, Taipei and Venice.

In 2000, he co-founded Palais de Tokyo with his partner Nicolas Bourriaud. In March 2006, Jérí´me Sans was appointed Director of Program at Baltic, in Newcastle, UK. His mission was to establish Baltic as the most creative institution in Europe. Since February 2008, Jérí´me Sans has been the Director of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, the first private institution in China.

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