The exhibition, which will present 10 artists from Turkey and Serbia, developed as a result of cooperation between the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Istanbul Bilgi University.
The exhibition Formless: Fluid Reality in New Media Art deals with defining form and content from the perspective of digital technologies and new media. New media art implies digital practices that are based on programming a work of art, like computer, digital and biotechnological art. In their works, the artists observe fluid positions and unstable boundaries in the framework of new media art. They deal with production of flexible forms, plugging into fast data flow, openness towards instant information, reflexive organization and participation in hybrid net systems.
The exhibition title itself is borrowed from the concept “L’informe”, written about by French theorist Georges Bataille. In the context of the exhibition, the concept of “formless” represents a metaphor that could describe the today’s world and contemporary art. Although the production of the works of art is dominated by digital technologies, the attention is focused more on the experience/perception than on the form/representation because, as Bataille pointed out long ago, art is manifested as a reflex for “overcoming boundaries”. Observation of the “real” in the digital world is a strategy for reexamining the boundaries condensed in the “fluid reality” full of possibilities, but also traps.
Besides the artists from Serbia, Turkish artists Buşra Tunç, Selçuk Artut, Ozan Türkkan, as well as curator Derya Yücel will also be present at the opening.
The Belgrade exhibition was preceded by an exhibition with similar concept, which took place last May in the space of the Energy Museum with the SentralIstanbul complex for art and culture of the Istanbul Bilgi University. Thirteen artists from Turkey and Serbia took part at the mentioned exhibition: Ansen Atilla, Barış Mengütay, Dejan Grba, Dorijan Kolundžija, Elif Öner-Vincent Rozenberg, Gizem Karakaş, Nemanja Ladjić, Ozan Türkkan, Stevan Kojić, Yağız Özgen, Yetkin Yılmaz/Decol and Zorica Čolić. Some of them will be represented in Belgrade as well.
Artists: Selçuk Artut, BENTO (Elif Öner and Vincent Rozenberg), Dejan Grba, Stevan Kojić, Karolina Mudrinski, Yağız Özgen, Buşra Tunç, Ozan Türkkan
Curators: Una Popović (MCA) and Derya Yücel (Istanbul Bilgi University)
Accompanying Program:
- Wednesday, July 8th at 7 P.M., 12 HUB Gallery, 59 Karadjordjeva Street – presentation of works of Istanbul artist, mathematician and musician Selçuk Artut
- Saturday, July 11th at 7 P.M., Salon of the MCA, 14 Pariska Street – presentation of curator Derya Yücel about the Turkish new media and digital art scene