İskender Savaşır, "Those Told By The Artist And Those Told By The Wind"

Nazan Azeri’s works are now organized in three groups in my mind and memory a month after studying the reproductions of her works in a cafe and spending 3-4 hours in her studio. Her latest works, which she is going to exhibit, have not yet been uploaded to the internet and therefore I can not test my memories with impressions from the web but maybe it's even better this way... That's because, as I'm hoping to emphasize thoroughly in a few moments, what matters is that which remains and can resist the passing of time. How the images adopt new meanings and associations as a result of this passing of time, continues to be one of the most important problems occupying the artist’s mind.

 

The first group consists of large scale oil on canvas works, which compose the majority. These images are as disturbing as they’re influential… I can not claim to enjoy them but they don’t seem to request much enjoyment from the viewer either. 

 

Here, there are rooms, doors, stairways and architectural elements that can easily be understood to be modern ones but the way they link, connect and interlace with each other isn’t the way it is in reality or at least the way it is represented in the perception – rather, they have come together on canvas after undergoing a process of filtering, reconstruction and “composing”.

 

However, this composition witnesses how these spaces create a frame without leaving room for having a sense of horizon, a "Gestell" in Heidegger's terms or "matrix" in the sense of the popular usage of the term, and points out to a lack of alternatives rather than a type of alternative.

 

These pictures intend to disturb and yet I have an objection that extends beyond this disturbance and can be generalized to many works of art created in our day (modern times?) - for those of us who think and assume that the reality, which can be expressed with terms such as “matrix” and “Gestell”, isn’t the final word that can be said on the life we’re going through, and expect works of art to rather point out to related opportunities and lead up the way, works such as Nazan Azeri’s bear the risk of being a part of the reality they’re trying to define and expose and even being an accomplice to the gloom of that reality (something in the lines of “if you’re not apart of the solution, then you’re a part of the problem”…)

 

The second group consists of the effaced and covered photographs, which are also displayed in the announcements of the exhibition, and resemble works (or maybe a single work?) of pattern drawing.

 

The exhibition is named as "Unnamed" and these works (work) make us contemplate that under these circumstances when photographs and even our daily outlooks are taking on a nature that are depersonalizing us and imprisoning us within an identity, depletion, covering and concealing may be the only condition under which we can adopt an outlook that would suit our “reality”.

 

The last group consists of video(s). The work is titled “my mother's wedding dress”. This is a highly emotional name for a work and therefore how intensely and ideologically loaded it is and how it binds use to the ideological area of public space from our spots that we think to be our most intimate, may be overlooked.

 

Let me try to repeat what I said in our conversation with Feyyaz Yaman… Numerous associations that are inviting us to take our place within the succession of generations as well as inviting us to think, even grieve about the tokens that we are supposed to pick up from our mothers on that spot where life intersects the tradition and to hand over to the next generation…

 

On the other hand, the piece of cloth that is dispersed in the wind tells of a story that isn’t totally unrelated but yet is different and independent of all these, filling the mind with completely different associations (for example, Feyyaz mentioned Edgar Allan Poe’s stories at this point).

 

In these videos, objects that are very special and familiar bear the meanings and stories that we attribute to them and those meanings make the whole confront with the natural ground in a very harsh manner.

 

Briefly… Nazan Azeri’s exhibition seems to me to be containing more than one artist’s stand… On one hand is an artist who is all too sure of herself and assertive, trusting her own sense of composition in which she speaks of the language of “painting”. Whereas in texture paintings and videos, it seems as if the artist also allowed herself to be effaced together with the photographs and daily meanings and tried to be a passageway through which the means for the voice of something that is not as comprehendible can be found.

*Nazan Azeri, “Sanatı Üzerine Söyleşiler Yazılar “isimli kitapçıkta ve “Adı Konmamış” serge kataloğunda yayınlandı.