Die Letzen Dinge [Last Things]

Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center organized an exhibition titled Die Letzen Dinge at Westfäelischer Kunstverein Münster. This collaboration between Platform Garanti and Westfäelischer Kunstverein was not imagined as a familiar exchange and circulation project based on the presentation of the works of artists from one city to another city. Two different exhibitions reflecting on and discussing different approaches to the same theme were planned. The Westfäelischer Kunstverein exhibition will take place in Istanbul in fall 2008. Even though theology resorts to concepts like death, judgment day, heaven and hell in regard to the eventual fate of humanity and/or the world, the ultimate underlying question is basically existence and/or nonexistence. The exhibition Die Letzen Dinge is a reflection on individual takes on existence and finitude. Ha za vu zu’s broken disco ball is an object that has witnessed violent end. Hüner’s video depicts an apocalyptical picture around abandoned industrial sites in the center and the periphery of the city. Eviner’s piercing photographs her creatures eluding rational descriptions linger between life and death. In Borlakov’s photograph, the man seems to be reenacting a local myth about liberation, salvation and ascending to heaven. With a precise and medical stance, Kazma’s videos stare without a blink, at life and death. In Tenger’s video titled ‘Beirut’, the flitting curtains on the identical windows of a huge building seem to suggest that what is apparent can hide ineffable violence. In one of Gediz’s paintings included in the show, the artist’s reflection appears on the face of a young woman who had committed suicide. In her other painting, we gaze at the back of a middle-aged man wearing an overcoat that doesn’t seem to fit well, in an obscure, creepy ambiguity. Amidst these works that trace the very different aspects and limits of our existence, Alada?’s “kissing” planes reflects on the poetics of the arrested moment.