Viron Erol Vert
„Ich Mag Keine Ausländer, Aber Bei Dir Ist Es Was Anderes.“
19 Sep - 11 Oct 2020
Viron Erol Vert, „Ich mag keine Ausländer, aber bei dir ist es was anderes.“, installation view, Kunstverein in Hamburg, 2020, Photo: Fred Dott
VIRON EROL VERT
„Ich Mag Keine Ausländer, Aber Bei Dir Ist Es Was Anderes.“
19 September - 11 October 2020
The Kunstverein in Hamburg is pleased to present the winners of the Villa Romana Prize to a wide audience in the exhibition series #UNFINISHEDTRACES. The Villa Romana Prize is Germany’s oldest art prize and has been awarded to four artists every year since 1905. Artists Jeewi Lee, Christophe Ndabananiye, Lerato Shadi, and Viron Erol Vert were the 2018 Villa Romana Prize winners selected by Nasan Tur (artist) and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin).
With #UNFINISHEDTRACES, the artists themselves have provided the title for the series. It refers to shared qualities in their works, which each pursue the search for traces in different ways; memories, untold (hi)stories, the artist’s personal biography, and the attempt to experience what is absent are focal points in the content of each project. The title’s reference to what is left unfinished opens up a field of tension between the future and the past. Every exhibition is the realization of a possibility – ambiguity, permeability, and mobility play a large role here, both on the side of the institution as well as on the side of the artists. An experiment emerges that points beyond the specific projects. Supplemented by an online program, a multifaceted dialogue will develop over three months.
Viron Erol Vert - “I don't like foreigners, but you are different”
19.9. – 11.10.2020
The title of Viron Erol Vert's solo exhibition “I don't like foreigners, but you are different”, is formed around a sentence that the artist has confronted since childhood. This is a sentence which he has encountered in different cultural contexts and languages, from his past until today. The various and sometimes contradicting moments contained in such a sentence form the semantic framework in which Vert would like to artistically deal with various aspects and perspectives of the position of oneself and the position of the outsider. Vert grew up between northern Germany, Istanbul and Athens in a multicultural family environment, and has been living in Berlin since his studies. In addition to his artistic practice, he has worked in parallel for over 20 years in various sub-cultural contexts and from within the Berlin club scene. Vert’s use of this sentence is therefore closely related to his biography, which is particularly shaped by the state of being in-between. In this in-between, different cultures, languages, perspectives and also views of life converge and thus combine to form a hybrid identity. Based on a consistent equality and rhizomatic union of different cultures, languages and people, the perspective of being-in-the-middle proffers a fundamental question: Where does the foreign begin, and where does it end?
“I don't like foreigners, but with you it's something different” is shown as an audio-visual assemblage that brings the visitors of the exhibition together. Three artistic forms— expressionist painting, objects and sound—bring the audience into this unity. The central component of this large-scale installation is, figuratively, the triptych, which emerged from the religious art traditions of three-part devotional and altar paintings, which have been widespread in Christian art since the Middle Ages. In its three parts, the triptych refers to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which are taken together to form a divine unity. Vert connects these aspects here with Freud's psychoanalytic model, which also only constitutes the self in a totality of three parts.
During their stay, viewers are invited to sit or stand on seven podiums or seats modeled on architectural objects, each of which forms a unity with painting and sound. A view of the self that is important in this context is from the seven cycles of Sufism, in this worldview, the term nafs stands for the person or the self, but also includes the concept of soul. Classical Sufism sees the development of the ego as an extinction of human qualities, which are replaced by divine qualities. In this exhibition the seven different levels of Sufism are symbolized by paintings of differing colors. These seven paintings collect and superimpose various thought and memory sketches, producing figuratively abstract impressions from their color and surface. It is an unimagined and unconscious painting that tries to focus on the moment of the spiritual and mental in-between which manifests in layers on the canvas.
In the historical context of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, this project raises the critical question of how to reconcile one's own position with the position of the foreign. This spans the historical spectrum of the Hanseatic League, which was shaped by early steps towards globalization, the display of “exotic” objects in museums and the same objectification of living peoples (for instance, that which was practiced in the Völkerschauen of the Hagenbeck Zoo), in addition to our contemporary and openly articulated xenophobia which can be witnessed at the highest political levels around the world.
„Ich Mag Keine Ausländer, Aber Bei Dir Ist Es Was Anderes.“
19 September - 11 October 2020
The Kunstverein in Hamburg is pleased to present the winners of the Villa Romana Prize to a wide audience in the exhibition series #UNFINISHEDTRACES. The Villa Romana Prize is Germany’s oldest art prize and has been awarded to four artists every year since 1905. Artists Jeewi Lee, Christophe Ndabananiye, Lerato Shadi, and Viron Erol Vert were the 2018 Villa Romana Prize winners selected by Nasan Tur (artist) and Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung (director of SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin).
With #UNFINISHEDTRACES, the artists themselves have provided the title for the series. It refers to shared qualities in their works, which each pursue the search for traces in different ways; memories, untold (hi)stories, the artist’s personal biography, and the attempt to experience what is absent are focal points in the content of each project. The title’s reference to what is left unfinished opens up a field of tension between the future and the past. Every exhibition is the realization of a possibility – ambiguity, permeability, and mobility play a large role here, both on the side of the institution as well as on the side of the artists. An experiment emerges that points beyond the specific projects. Supplemented by an online program, a multifaceted dialogue will develop over three months.
Viron Erol Vert - “I don't like foreigners, but you are different”
19.9. – 11.10.2020
The title of Viron Erol Vert's solo exhibition “I don't like foreigners, but you are different”, is formed around a sentence that the artist has confronted since childhood. This is a sentence which he has encountered in different cultural contexts and languages, from his past until today. The various and sometimes contradicting moments contained in such a sentence form the semantic framework in which Vert would like to artistically deal with various aspects and perspectives of the position of oneself and the position of the outsider. Vert grew up between northern Germany, Istanbul and Athens in a multicultural family environment, and has been living in Berlin since his studies. In addition to his artistic practice, he has worked in parallel for over 20 years in various sub-cultural contexts and from within the Berlin club scene. Vert’s use of this sentence is therefore closely related to his biography, which is particularly shaped by the state of being in-between. In this in-between, different cultures, languages, perspectives and also views of life converge and thus combine to form a hybrid identity. Based on a consistent equality and rhizomatic union of different cultures, languages and people, the perspective of being-in-the-middle proffers a fundamental question: Where does the foreign begin, and where does it end?
“I don't like foreigners, but with you it's something different” is shown as an audio-visual assemblage that brings the visitors of the exhibition together. Three artistic forms— expressionist painting, objects and sound—bring the audience into this unity. The central component of this large-scale installation is, figuratively, the triptych, which emerged from the religious art traditions of three-part devotional and altar paintings, which have been widespread in Christian art since the Middle Ages. In its three parts, the triptych refers to the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, which are taken together to form a divine unity. Vert connects these aspects here with Freud's psychoanalytic model, which also only constitutes the self in a totality of three parts.
During their stay, viewers are invited to sit or stand on seven podiums or seats modeled on architectural objects, each of which forms a unity with painting and sound. A view of the self that is important in this context is from the seven cycles of Sufism, in this worldview, the term nafs stands for the person or the self, but also includes the concept of soul. Classical Sufism sees the development of the ego as an extinction of human qualities, which are replaced by divine qualities. In this exhibition the seven different levels of Sufism are symbolized by paintings of differing colors. These seven paintings collect and superimpose various thought and memory sketches, producing figuratively abstract impressions from their color and surface. It is an unimagined and unconscious painting that tries to focus on the moment of the spiritual and mental in-between which manifests in layers on the canvas.
In the historical context of the Hanseatic City of Hamburg, this project raises the critical question of how to reconcile one's own position with the position of the foreign. This spans the historical spectrum of the Hanseatic League, which was shaped by early steps towards globalization, the display of “exotic” objects in museums and the same objectification of living peoples (for instance, that which was practiced in the Völkerschauen of the Hagenbeck Zoo), in addition to our contemporary and openly articulated xenophobia which can be witnessed at the highest political levels around the world.