Misfortunes and New Joys

Curated by Serra Yentürk, the exhibition adds further insight into the artist’s practice where he pursues the traces of historical figures, places and incidents through the ephemera he collects from second hand booksellers or auctions. The exhibition originated out of six photographs of a boxer figure found by the artist several years ago at an auction, and it remains unclear how these photographs, later found to have been taken in Georg Gerlach’s Berlin studio in the 1910s, ended up in Istanbul. By recreating these photographs of the boxer Sabri Mahir as large-scale drawings with his signature charcoal medium on paper, the artist invites viewers to explore this enigmatic figure. That said, these photographs remain insufficient in revealing much about Mahir’s story although they were originally intended to be souvenir postcards, suggesting that the person documented in the photographs held (or intended to hold) historical significance. Turning into the protagonist of a myth through an assortment of information asserted by an insatiable desire to write history, which is gradually accepted as historical fact through time, Sabri Mahir is condemned to a popular culture narrative where reality is distorted.

TUNCA

11.11.2021 - 11.12.2021

OPENING: 11 November, 2021, Thursday, 18:00-20:00