HELD TOGETHER WITH WATER. Art from the VERBUND COLLECTION, Vienna

Performance and spaces/places

The two terms “performance” and “spaces and places” embody two fundamental orientations that articulate themselves in contemporary art. On the basis of these two thematic fields, the exhibition HELD TOGETHER WITH WATER* showed the specific lines of contact from 1970 to today. The show beings with the decade in which many artists, male and female, moved away from painting, transitioned to completely new forms of expression and brought the media of photography, video and spatial installation into the foreground.

The VERBUND COLLECTION takes the presentation in Istanbul as an occasion to also open itself up to contemporary Turkish art. The video The Meeting Or Bonjour Monsieur Courbet by Sener Özmen and Cengiz Tekin from 2004 reconstructs a painting by Gustave Courbet from 1854. In the video by the two young Turkish artists, the scene of the meeting painted by Courbet degenerates into a wild discussion about realism in painting and finally into a brawl. The incident, originally located in France in the 19th century, is now relocated to present-day Turkey. Nil Yalter’s video La Femme sans Tête deepens the area of “performance”. The video produced in Paris in 1974 is considered to be a milestone of French video art. The film represents an important connection between the feminist positions presented in the exhibition and the Turkish cultural area.

Photos: © Muhsin Akgün / Radikal Gazetesi