Viron Erol Vert
28 Sep - 09 Nov 2014
Viron Erol Vert: Der Chronist / Chronicler / Vakanüvis, 2014. Exhibition view at Künstlerhaus Stuttgart 2014
VIRON EROL VERT
Der Chronist / Chronicler / Vakanüvis
28 September - 9 November 2014
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents the first institutional solo exhibition from Berlin based artist Viron Erol Vert, with new productions supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, during its autumn program. Through its title, the exhibition refers to the Ottoman court chronicles (vakanüvis), which are the official accounts of the imperial history, recorded by the sultan’s court chronicler. Relating this metaphor with the methodological aspects of Vert’s practice and his narrative focus on Mediterranean history, the exhibition creates a link to the relationship between history writing and artistic production. Vert’s artistic interest in systems of belief, cultural identity, and linguistic experience plays an essential role in shaping his research process.
“Viron Erol Vert virtually works as a kind of alchemist. He collects curative imagery, fascinating stories, and characters that inspired him and then proceeds to compile them freely in the light of his own imagination. Some visual codes are employed on strategical designs, repeated as a template to create a new mise en scene. He sincerely believes in his own tales, just like every good storyteller should. In fact, he keeps a record of his own epoch, just like a vakanüvis (court historian or chronicler).”[1]
The installation at the second floor of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart brings together three main works produced in different media and based on various levels of abstraction -filtered through the visual, aural and material research that the artist has developed through his recent collaborations with artisans and artists based in Istanbul and Berlin, examining their creative labour. Working together with the musician and sound artist, Hermione Frank and DJ/video editor, Hanno Hinkelbein, Viron Erol Vert has generated a meditative video piece rendered from animated forms of cultural codes, and historical symbols that he recorded himself. Like an atomic ceremony, abstracted forms are flying on the black surface reminding of an orbital plane, and the audience hears the artist spelling out the alphabets of his epistemological cosmology.
Following this, as site-specific elements, curtains hung from above are circled around the form of sculpture -made of mirrors and metal- inviting the visitors into the installation. At the end, a photographic image breaks the abstracted narrative structure of the exhibition; taken in a traditional photographic studio in Galata, Istanbul, Vert connects this with Levant memories, teasing us, as the chronicler of our time.
Viron Erol Vert (born 1975) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the UdK in Berlin, and later at the Department for Visual Art at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. He graduated from the Dept. of Fashion Design at the HTW and Experimental Surface at the KHB in Berlin. Since 2004, he participated in many exhibitions in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and Turkey. In 2008 he was awarded the first prize in the category Painting and Illustration by the Turkish Society for Sculpting and Arts in the framework of the exhibition “Contemporary Artists Prize Exhibition” hosted by Aksanat, Istanbul. Recently, his works are exhibited at the Colette of Paris; at the group exhibition “Die ungarische Methode” at Ascherleben; at Galerie Reinhard Hauff in Stuttgart; “Künstlerhaus Bethanien and at the anniversary show from Berghain in Berlin among many others. He opened his first large-scale solo exhibition “7 Perde / 7 Curtains” at Galerist in Istanbul during fall 2012.
[1] Misal Adnan Yildiz “Who is Viron Erol Vert?” 7 Perde / 7 Curtains, exhibition catalogue, Galerist, Istanbul 2012
Der Chronist / Chronicler / Vakanüvis
28 September - 9 November 2014
Künstlerhaus Stuttgart presents the first institutional solo exhibition from Berlin based artist Viron Erol Vert, with new productions supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds Bonn, during its autumn program. Through its title, the exhibition refers to the Ottoman court chronicles (vakanüvis), which are the official accounts of the imperial history, recorded by the sultan’s court chronicler. Relating this metaphor with the methodological aspects of Vert’s practice and his narrative focus on Mediterranean history, the exhibition creates a link to the relationship between history writing and artistic production. Vert’s artistic interest in systems of belief, cultural identity, and linguistic experience plays an essential role in shaping his research process.
“Viron Erol Vert virtually works as a kind of alchemist. He collects curative imagery, fascinating stories, and characters that inspired him and then proceeds to compile them freely in the light of his own imagination. Some visual codes are employed on strategical designs, repeated as a template to create a new mise en scene. He sincerely believes in his own tales, just like every good storyteller should. In fact, he keeps a record of his own epoch, just like a vakanüvis (court historian or chronicler).”[1]
The installation at the second floor of Künstlerhaus Stuttgart brings together three main works produced in different media and based on various levels of abstraction -filtered through the visual, aural and material research that the artist has developed through his recent collaborations with artisans and artists based in Istanbul and Berlin, examining their creative labour. Working together with the musician and sound artist, Hermione Frank and DJ/video editor, Hanno Hinkelbein, Viron Erol Vert has generated a meditative video piece rendered from animated forms of cultural codes, and historical symbols that he recorded himself. Like an atomic ceremony, abstracted forms are flying on the black surface reminding of an orbital plane, and the audience hears the artist spelling out the alphabets of his epistemological cosmology.
Following this, as site-specific elements, curtains hung from above are circled around the form of sculpture -made of mirrors and metal- inviting the visitors into the installation. At the end, a photographic image breaks the abstracted narrative structure of the exhibition; taken in a traditional photographic studio in Galata, Istanbul, Vert connects this with Levant memories, teasing us, as the chronicler of our time.
Viron Erol Vert (born 1975) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at the UdK in Berlin, and later at the Department for Visual Art at the Royal Academy in Antwerp. He graduated from the Dept. of Fashion Design at the HTW and Experimental Surface at the KHB in Berlin. Since 2004, he participated in many exhibitions in Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, and Turkey. In 2008 he was awarded the first prize in the category Painting and Illustration by the Turkish Society for Sculpting and Arts in the framework of the exhibition “Contemporary Artists Prize Exhibition” hosted by Aksanat, Istanbul. Recently, his works are exhibited at the Colette of Paris; at the group exhibition “Die ungarische Methode” at Ascherleben; at Galerie Reinhard Hauff in Stuttgart; “Künstlerhaus Bethanien and at the anniversary show from Berghain in Berlin among many others. He opened his first large-scale solo exhibition “7 Perde / 7 Curtains” at Galerist in Istanbul during fall 2012.
[1] Misal Adnan Yildiz “Who is Viron Erol Vert?” 7 Perde / 7 Curtains, exhibition catalogue, Galerist, Istanbul 2012