For an optimal view of our website, please rotate your tablet horizontally.
The Unanswered Question - İskele 2. Exhibition at Tanas and Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), 8 Sept. - 3 Nov. 2013. Curator: René Block.
Oct 2013Photos: Exhibition at Tanas Berlin
Photos: Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.)
After five years in Heidestrasse in the centre of Berlin, the project space TANAS will close its doors on 3 November 2013 at the end of the exhibition The Unanswered Question. İskele 2.
In partnership between Edition Block Berlin (physical and administrative organisation) and Vehbi Koç Foundation Istanbul (financial funding), TANAS could be initiated as a free and independent space in autumn 2007 in order to introduce the latest Turkish art to an international audience in Central Europe. This self-imposed task has been accomplished.
Over the years, TANAS was assigned with additional important roles beyond this mission as a stage for artistic pursuit as well as a focal point for further cultural issues. With an extensive educational programme the non-commercial art space established itself as a place for intense exchange between international artists of Turkish origin and curators, authors, students and globetrotters.
After his gallery years in Berlin and New York, his longstanding engagements with the DAAD Artists-in-Berlin Programme and as artistic director of Kunsthalle Fridericianum, after a long series of free curatorial projects in Berlin (in 1973 and 1974 for n.b.k., and in 1976 and 1980 for Akademie der Künste), Paris, London, Copenhagen or for the Biennials in Sydney, Istanbul and Gwangju, René Block opened TANAS in April 2008. Since then a total of 22 solo and group shows offered deep and often exciting views onto the present Turkish art. For many Turks TANAS grew into something like Istanbul’s secret "Kunsthalle".
With the exhibition The Unanswered Question. İskele 2, realised in cooperation with Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, TANAS says goodbye with a splendid finale. Thus René Block also concludes a bow he had opened 20 years ago in the ifa galleries in Stuttgart, Berlin and Bonn with İskele, the first survey show of the then state of contemporary Turkish art.
The title İskele referred to the moorings of the Bosporus ferries, it stood for start and departure. 20 years later, İskele 2 stands for arrival. TANAS takes its leave with the certainty that Turkish artists have "arrived". This is verified by the long series of TANAS Talks and Dialogues with renowned conversational partners, also to be continued during this show.
The Unanswered Question. İskele 2
Exhibition and performance programme, presented at Tanas and n.b.k.
Curated by René Block
Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.) and the project space Tanas stand for a practice of transnational dialogue between the cultures. After the political and cultural rapprochement between Turkey with its neighboring regions and the European Union, the time is ripe for a survey exhibition, which is designed in a prospective way. Turkey is the starting point of the investigation, but the show is looking much further, to the regions formerly belonging to the periphery, which during the last 20 years have experienced a boost of modernization and internationalization.
Invited to the exhibition The unanswered question - Iskele 2 are artists, performers and musicians from different generations and geopolitical spaces, who work on and with social intersections and create links and connections to the lived concepts of an exemplary global citizenship within the cultural field. The exhibition and performance program try to explore the materiality of the interstices, the transit, and to open a space, which brings about a new perspective of the relationship between audience – work – space. The project, together with the artists, aims at temporarily creating a space, in which cultural representation and attribution are not at the forefront.
Artists:
Adel Abidin, Johanna Adebäck & Merve Ertufan, Nevin Aladağ, Halil Altındere, Fikret Atay, Maja Bajević, Rosa Barba, Claus Böhmler, Candice Breitz, Jae Eun Choi, Sunah Choi, Braco Dimitrijević, Maria Eichhorn, Ayşe Erkmen, Andrea Faciu & Florin Bobu, Asta Gröting, Mona Hatoum, Pravdoliub Ivanov, Christian Jankowski, Annika Kahrs, Gülsün Karamustafa, Ali Kazma, Kimsooja, Jarosław Kozłowski, Alicja Kwade, Jonas Mekas, Olaf Metzel, Bjørn Nørgaard, Ahmet Öğüt, Şener Özmen, Dan Perjovschi, Sonja Rentsch, Mario Rizzi, Michael Sailstorfer, Anri Sala, Sarkis, Superflex, Cengiz Tekin, Hale Tenger, Raša Todosijević, Endre Tót, Thu Van Tran, Rosemarie Trockel, Nasan Tur, Lawrence Weiner, Maaria Wirkkala
Publications:
TANAS catalogue booklet No 8 accompanies the exhibition, with 240 pages, in German and English, approx. 120 colour illustrations, short texts and biographies, available for 5 Euros.
Within the n.b.k. series "Discourse" a book in German and Turkish language is published by Verlag der Buchhandlung Walther König, Cologne, with an introduction by Marius Babias, René Block, and Sophie Goltz, an essay by Boris Buden, and short texts about all participating artists.
The Unanswered Question. İskele 2
8 September - 3 November 2013