x-ist is hosting Ceren Oykut’s solo exhibition titled “Indistinct” between March 2nd and March 30th 2013.
Using various languages, Oykut animates an old and superstitious town, which is sentenced to urban regeneration and has been rebuilt over and over again, and its sleepy residents, who are used to live with all sorts of destruction, violence, and authority.
With its silhouette that is handed over each day under the color of ‘regeneration’, the city reminds us once again that it does not belong to its residents whose elbow room has been getting severely narrower. Oykut magnifies momentary chaos and daily action in her drawings; she wakes up from indistinct moments and takes notes.
Adding a third dimension, Ceren Oykut depicts the ones who are trying to sustain a life sunken into a bird’s eye view of the scenery, flung around, and voiceless. Considering her recent statuettes -which look by no means different from the local soil- and panoramic drawings, one can realize that she is trying to transmit the lonely and unnoticed lives to the audience.
Oykut responds to ever-changing urban life with the stories of people, who keep pace with a district life where the time is less important and are in search for a slow-paced life despite everything that this drift insists on. Making suggestions through a fictional character, who lives in Tarlabasi, tries to find his own solutions, and has distanced himself from money, Oykut points out that an alternative daily life is possible.
Using the spaces and languages of daily life, Ceren Oykut is trying to make the thousands of dreams, which are dragged through the mud, leaf out again like the seeds lying in wait beneath the layers of asphalt and concrete.
In short, who doesn’t give up on humor, Oykut depicts the subconscious of a resident of Istanbul. “Indistinct” will be on view at x-ist until March 30th, 2013.
ceren oykut v4 from x-ist on Vimeo.