EDA GECIKMEZ - MASTER PLAN

Opening Reception: Thusday, May 3rd, 4:00-6:00 pm
Exhibition date: May 3 – 22 May, 2016
Open: Thusday to Saturdays, 12:00 pm-6:00 pm
İMÇ 5. Blok No: 5533, Unkapanı-Istanbul

Proto5533 presents a new painting installation by Eda Gecikmez, curated by Mehmet Kahraman. Master Plan, 2016, is a new suspended painting created free of support structures. The painting hangs much like found-fabrics, blankets, tarps, on a clothesline across streets of Eastern Turkey, and have become a symbols of resistance.

Master Plan takes its title from a project designed by Zaha Hadid in 2006 for an open competition organized by IMP (Istanbul Metropolitan Planning and Urban Design Center) for Kartal district. “The Kartal Master Plan” is an urban transformation project digitally designed by Hadid, taking into account the practical experiences of the district’s inhabitants, it reveals an urban identity defined through capital oriented implementations.

Currently, the city of Istanbul is redesigned in accordance with existing political agendas, it is shaped around piles of structure built in the framework of urban transformation projects. Trapped inside such an environment, citizens of Istanbul face difficulty in getting a hold on their identity and appear as anonymous extras wandering amongst piles of buildings. The devastation currently caused by urban transformation is not only disintegrating the individual, it also erodes memory. By erasing both individual and collective memory, it provokes disaffection. In Gecikmez’s surrealist reinterpretation of Hadid’s simulated urban landscape, fragmented body parts convey a pornographic transformation: to the fetishization of the construction industry by government agency, she replies with a “becoming pornographic” of the body. To shed light on this process, Gecikmez hangs her paintings in the form of a barricade. In order to see the work, the viewer must walk around it, enter into the inner space she creates and cross into the other side of this barricade.

Eda Gecikmez, Istanbul, 1984, graduated Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Department of Painting, 2010 and studied one year at Universidad Politecnica de Valencia, Faculty of Fine Arts, Valencia, Spain, 2008. Selected group exhibitions include “Domates Biber Patlıcan Produce 3”, SPOT Production Fund, Elhamra Han, Istanbul, 2016; “Ottomans & Europeans, Past and Prospectives”, 2016; the 3rd Mardin Biennial, 2015; “Amusement Park” Gallery Nev, Ankara, 2015; “Stay with Me”, Apartment Project, Berlin, 2014; “Borrowed Togetherness” solo show, American Hospital Art Gallery, Istanbul, 2013; and m1886 Art Projects, Ankara, 2016. In 2015 Gecikmez has completed Cittadellarte – Fondazione Pistoletto residency program at Biella, Italy and Kultivera , Tranas, Sweden. Eda Gecikmez lives and works in Istanbul.

Mehmet Kahraman, 1986, Istanbul, is curator, and writer. He received his Bachelor’s in Art History at Mimar Sinan Fine Art University, 2011. He is a regular contributor to several art Magazines in Turkey; director and curator at REM Art Space in İstanbul.

Proto5533 presents exhibitions by emerging artists and curators, with guidance from art professionals, mentor curators, from Istanbul and abroad. Proto5533 is a collaboration by Protocinema, an itinerant, site-aware art organization, protocinema.org, and 5533, an artist run space, imc5533.blogspot.com.tr, bringing together an active generation and providing the relationships and tools to nurture its meaningful growth.

Selected Curators: Naz Cuguoğlu, Kevser Güler, Mehmet Kahraman, Ghaith Mofeed, Nicole O'Rourke, Ilhan Ozan, Ulya Soley. Mentor Curators: Celenk Bafra, Curator, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul; Anne Ellegood, Senior Curator, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; Övül Durmusoğlu, Independent Curator Berlin/Istanbul; Anthony Huberman, Chief Curator, Wattis ICA, San Francisco; November Paynter, Associate Director of Research and Programs, SALT; Yasmil Raymond, Associate Curator, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Mari Spirito, Director, Protocinema, Istanbul/New York; François Quintin, Director Fondation d'entreprise Galeries Lafayette, Paris.