EMRE HÜNER
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Emre Hüner, Diamond Head Diving Man, still, 2012, courtesy Rodeo, Istanbul, invited by Mari Spirito, Protocinema, Istanbul, New York
Saat Saath Arts Foundation
Presents
Subjective Views
Cauleen Smith
Emre Hüner
Lisi Raskin
Saat Saath Arts Foundation's exhibition, Subjective Views, brings together videos by Cauleen Smith, Emre Hüner, and Lisi Raskin, representing the artists' idiosyncratic worldviews. Taken together, these works offer personal perspectives and their inherent subjectivity. This exhibition is the first in a series that invites international artists to participate in transnational conversations ongoing in Delhi.
Emre Hüner's most recent film, Diving Man Diamond Head,, 2012, 16mm transferred to video, projected on a leaning board, further develops his interwoven archive of parts that give way to form. This specific work comprises the decaying original model for Doris Duke's estate, Shangri La, in Honolulu, Hawaii; organic ceramics made by Hüner reminiscent of the volcanic tropical island where the estate is located; a seemingly de-contextualized blue screen backdrop, representing the element of time inherent in film; and the physicality of the board on which the film is projected. The work deals with entropy and architecture, as well as the narrative aspect of the space. The underlying humanity reflected in his use of models, make the larger questions of life seemingly manageable to comprehend.
Lisi Raskin's latest work, Untitled (Not For Lack of Wanting), is a 13-minute digital video featuring excerpts from a recent trip to Afghanistan, facilitated by Creative Time's Global Residency program. With the assistance of fixer and translator Hikmatullah Zahid, Raskin visited several Soviet infrastructural projects, war museums, and monuments in Herat and Kabul. Raskin's ongoing interest in the layered legacies of the Cold War-era profoundly informed her travel, and for this work she stitches together dialogue, sound, and motion to create a highly particular and impressionistic artwork. The narrative of overlapping perceptions and the subjectivity of Raskin's experience is the driving force behind the piece. Installed at the Saat Saath Foundation, Untitled (Not For Lack of Wanting) is viewed from a couch on a small monitor with headphones to encourage an intimate viewing experience.
The Way Out is The Way Two, 2012, is Cauleen Smith's recent experimental psychogeographic film on Sun Ra, improvisation, and creative music. Smith describes, "Sun Ra, and his cohorts found ample evidence in primary sources that African thought and spirituality was central to all modern thought and science; and they aimed to prove it through research, through writings, and through art. My recent work is a celebration of Sun Ra's success in this endeavor as well as a way of expanding his legacy to include his deep and abiding love and commitment to African-American youth, to the underdog, and to the outsider."
Saat Saath Arts Foundation (former Seven Art Space) in Greater Kailash II
Invited by each grant recipient, an exhibition of single channel video works: Cauleen Smith, selected by Dieter Roelstraete ; Emre Hüner, selected by Mari Spirito; and Lisi Raskin, selected by Laura Raicovich.
Emre Hüner, 1977 Istanbul, Turkey, lives and works in Istanbul. Recent one person exhibitions include MAM Project 019, Mori Art Museum, Tokyo, 2013; SALT 6, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, 2012; Adverse Stability, Extra City, Antwerp, 2010. His work has been included a groups exhibitions including Approximately Infinite Universe, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, San Diego and Signs Taken in Wonder, MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna, both in 2013; Manifesta 9, European Biennale of Contemporary Art, Genk, 2012; Out of Here,Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven and Paradise Lost, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul both in 2011; The Future of Tradition, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2010; Younger Than Jesus, New Museum, New York, 2009. Hüner has participateed in residencies at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten, Amsterdam, 2010; as well as ApexArt, New York and Platform Garanti Contemporary Art Center, Istanbul in 2009. He holds a BFA from Brera Academy of Fine Arts, Milano. Since 1998, Brooklyn-based artist Lisi Raskin has traveled to the Arctic Circle, former East German and Yugoslav Atomic bunkers, and through the American west exploring the intersection of nuclear-age fears and utopian mythologies as they manifest in oral histories and the architectures of the Cold War. Raskin's on-site research has informed the making of paintings, drawings, objects, videos, and large, constructed environments that she has exhibited internationally at institutions including Kunsthaus Graz, Casino Luxembourg, the Frankfurter Kunstverein, the Contemporary Art Center Vilnius, PS1/MoMA, the Blanton Museum of Art, and the Center for Curatorial Studies/Hessel Museum at Bard College. In 2013, Raskin was the recipient of a Creative Time Global Residency grant. This body of research was focused on the exploration of Soviet infrastructural projects, war museums, and monuments in Kabul and Herat in Afghanistan. Artwork influenced by this research will be exhibited in the spring of 2014 at Art in General and Churner and Churner in New York. Raskin was born in Miami, Florida. She received her BA in Fine Arts from Brandeis University in 1996 and her MFA from Columbia University in 2003. Raskin is currently an Associate Professor at Tyler School of Art, Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.
Cauleen Smith received a BA from San Francisco State University and a MFA from UCLA's School of Theater-Television-Film. Smith presented simultaneous exhibitions at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and ThreeWalls in 2012. She has received grants from the Film Arts Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and Creative Capital. Recent awards include "Outstanding Artists" by the National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture and "Someone to Watch Award" from the Independent Spirit Awards. Her art works have been exhibited at The Kitchen, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, LA County Museum of Art, Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles, Nelson Atkins Museum of Art. She was an resident artist at the Black Metropolis Research Consortium and the Experimental Sound Studio and was on faculty at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Currently, Smith is a visiting artist at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and an Arts + Public Life/Center for the Study of Race Politics and Culture Artist-in-Residence at the University of Chicago.
Special Thanks to: Aparajita Jain; Diana Campbell Betancourt; Supriya Bajaj + entire team; Rodeo Gallery, Istanbul; Shangri La Center for Islamic Arts and Cultures; Corbett vs. Dempsey, Chicago;