As matter is separated and reshaped, as it is heated and then left to cool in moulds to reach its final form, there are happy coincidences and uncontrollable developments that are part of the very nature of the process. Could it be said that these unforeseen destinies harbor a mysterious inner beauty?
I have been both surprised and delighted by a similarity that I observed in two distinct areas. In recent years discoveries and developments in the medical field, focusing on a cellular level, have in a strange way paralleled common industrial techniques.
The works in this show are a reflection of these thoughts.
"Objects of desire", born from the industrial womb, bring with them their strange siblings, these unwanted cast-offs of the production process. It is these estranged byproducts which are central figures in this cycle of life/production. It is the yin and yang of the desired and the unwanted that come together to create a whole. One could regard this recycling as a second chance. Life and death.
I tried to discover and play among these coincidental progeny, these cast offs, these excesses. They came to life in assemblages and were reborn in paint. Fear of death, a factory, illness, a course of treatment, memory, confinement and a new house in the forest were their playgrounds.
The adventure of molecules.
In my observatory journey, tracing the paradoxical relationship between our flesh and our shiny metal boxes of transport, a very serious affliction resulted in my own transformation: I in turn became a construct containing metal. These alien substances that threaten our fragile existence - bullets and shrapnel, the raw material from which we create our modes of transport - this time gained new meaning... as a part of my body.
In matters of health, no one desires to get sick or die. In matters of production no one wants defects and unwanted byproducts which increase costs and slow production. However, in matters of the production of life, we are discovering that what had been regarded as useless now holds the key to life, to a theoretical immortality. One may regard my search through these industrial cast-offs as a naïve desire to reach the same results, to rally these strange siblings of the industrial mother under the banner of a creative process and to perhaps create a new platform of immortality.
Şevket Sönmez