Curator Hasan Bulent Kahraman has staged the exhibition on two levels, exploring the modeling of a figure in space and the expression of that figure in a form both familiar and alien. Abakanowicz's larger-than-life sculptures fit this idea of creatures from another universe framed by a dreamlike, fantastic approach to existence. Once the viewer gets below this surface, a conviction can arise that these figures also represent the prehistory of mankind, and link us to our past and our predecessors.
The creatures consist of a body without a head - or a disfigured one, at most - emphasising anonymity and ambiguity, avoiding the human body's most expressive part and thereby allowing its full spectrum of expression. According to Kahraman, Abakanowicz examines the tension between perpetuity and mortality, following the adventure of mankind, touching upon death while representing eternity. Taking art as the "bridge between the God of man and the man of God", the works represent the 30,000-year-old adventure of man on earth and within the realm of art. Through time, man has interpreted and transformed reality through art, leaving traces of existence on cave walls and the world beyond. Kahraman declares, " If man is the ashes of his art, then this exhibition is the fire that burns that ash".
The exhibition surveys the artist's work over the past several years, in particular, the Coexistence series, which endows human bodies with the heads of animals, reaching towards the cosmic mystery of creation. They appear to pose questions about the origins of species and their interaction on earth under the rule of forces unseen.
Magdalena Abakanowicz (born 1930) is associated with her soft sculptures known as Abakans. These Abakans reflected the artist's sculptor-like approach to fabric and to technical possibilities in manipulating the medium, taking advantage of softness, pliancy and submissiveness. Abakans look dangerous, like hides stripped from monsters, an effect enhanced by the artist's use of a superhuman scale for these mysterious beings.
As Abakanowicz once said of representing mankind in her work:
When examining man, I am in fact examining myself... My forms are the skins I strip off myself one by one, marking the milestones along my road. Each time they belong so much to me and I belong to them so that we cannot exist without one another. Soft, they contain an infinite number of possible shapes of which only one can be selected by myself as the right, meaningful one. I create space for them in exhibition rooms where they radiate the energy I have given them. They exist with me, they depend on me, I depend on them … Without me they make no sense, like discarded body parts separated from the torso.
The Akbank Art Center was established in 1993 as an institution aimed at the promotion of major works of contemporary art from all over the world. It has grown to become one of the most important cultural centres in Istanbul, presenting not only exhibitions, but also concerts, festivals and lectures. In 2003 the centre restructured in order to broaden its reach as a showcase for worldwide developments in art for the Turkish public and a platform for Turkish artists to develop at home at abroad. Hasan Bulent Kahraman (b. 1957 , Kars ), the Turkish writer, art critic, academician and cultural advisor is on the advisory board of the centre and one of its chief curators.
The exhibition takes place between the 20th of November - 30th of January 2012. For more information, see: www.akbanksanat.com
Editor: Agnieszka Le Nart
Source: Press release, e-flux