INTERTWINED/UNRAVELED, March 18 - April 9, 2023
Curated by Jorin Bossen and Gül Cagin
Artists: Luciana Abait, Zeynep Abes, Jorin Bossen, Gul Cagin, Joe Davidson, David Leapman, and the Durden and Ray Collective
SEER / SEEN exhibition, which is the first part of the exhibition exchange collaboration between NOKS Art Space and Durden & Ray Gallery, an artist run space based in Los Angeles, California. The exhibition took place from January 14 to February 11, 2023 at Durden & Ray Gallery's venue in LA with 5 artists from & Ray Gallery were accompanied by artist Volkan Kızıltunç on behalf of NOKS Art Space. The “Integrated / Unraveled” exhibition, which is the second part of the collaboration, brings together the works of 6 LA-based artists and collectives.
Neither real nor entirely fiction, the artists in INTERTWINED/UNRAVELED contemplate on the forms of reality, which can be conceived as having paradoxical and disjunctive effects and help us to draw deeper meaning and understanding. Within this context, the artists examine and reflect making sense of these constant intertwining activities of the world.
Signs and images of signs, forms and ideas often clash, resulting in duality, dissociative elements, and paradoxical appearances. Rather than being a unified whole, the conceived or imagined forms are multiplicities of fragments, reflecting both internal elements of our perception and pre-existing external properties from the physical world.
In reality, there are news, lifestyles and images that reflect deeper problems on the relationship between money, politics, love, responsibility and health. Images from the earthquake zone in South- Eastern Turkey show a few high buildings standing up; but the majority of the buildings are crumbled down. One can’t help to think, what if corners had not been cut and these buildings had been constructed according to regulations. Furthermore, we skin the animals to make rugs or wear fur coats, we let our environment decay with our destructive productions paying no attention to our future.
In cultural life, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s movie “Love is Colder than Death” explores a dysfunctional love relationship between a pimp, his girlfriend, and his friend where the pimp doesn’t mind selling his girlfriend or offering her to his friends. When the pimp’s friend Bruno dies in failed attempt to rob a bank, they easily dispose the dead body pushing it from the car.
These juxtapositions initially seem as nothing more than concepts at odds with each other. Yet examining the images and works in this show there is a deeper understanding of the duality in our world. The world and the human psyche are part of a much more complicated interaction than we often want to admit. Despite what our internal intentions might be the results of our actions are deeply intertwined with the push/pull of the complexities of living in a physical world.