ALTERITY (2011)

RAMPA Gallery, Istanbul

Ergin Çavuşoğlu’s exhibition, Alterity, considers the human impulse to see pattern and meaning in otherwise random events. The exhibition brings together for the first time a number of disparate elements in which the artist unveils a selection of new pieces alongside highlights from his repertoire of video works, re-appropriating his past and present practice within a new context.

The centrepiece of the exhibition is a five-channel installation, Crystal & Flame expanded from its first staging in London in 2010. This intricate, multifaceted work takes its cue from a quote from the writer, Italo Calvino, in his Six Memos for the Next Millennium. In this, Calvino describes the transformative properties of fire and the phenomenon of crystallisation as exemplars of natural forces that echo the competing energies at work in the contemporary city, a message that underscores several on-going narratives within the installation and indeed the exhibition as a whole. This rich work is offset by new work referencing Robert Bresson’s 1966 dated film Au Hazard, Balthazar to re-tell a tale of morality and corruption. In addition, he presents collateral works that reprise the artist’s interests in the Duchampian, which intentionally play against the themes present within the video elements and ultimately bring together an exhibition dense with complexity and chance.