Hüsamettin Koçan’s exhibition “Ben Bu” is on view at CerModern in Ankara between 10 March and 29 April. The exhibition can be read as the exhibition form of the artist’s reckoning with himself and his questioning of his own existence. The title “Ben Bu” points less to a message directed outward than to a field of discussion that Koçan opens within himself, while also inviting the viewer to witness an artist’s inner dialogue. At the same time, the exhibition calls for a reconsideration of the relationship that art establishes with space, history, and modes of production.
The Intellectual Backbone of Baksı
To understand Koçan’s art, it is necessary to look at the Baksı Museum, which can be seen as his most comprehensive work. Established on top of a mountain, far from the center and outside conventional architectural approaches, this museum is not only a structure but also the expression of a way of thinking.
In the process of Baksı’s foundation, the story of the local community changing at a human scale becomes decisive. The placement of the television in the seat of honor within the hierarchy of village rooms, the loss of the elders’ authority to speak, and the young people’s search for a future become the symbols of this transformation. Koçan places the human being at the center of his method of problem-solving; this human figure, oscillating between the elderly who have lost their place and the young who are searching for direction, forms the intellectual backbone of Baksı as a “twin model” established between past and future.
From Local Memory to Contemporary Art
Migration, exile, and cultural alienation are the natural extensions of this backbone. Koçan’s production takes shape within a unity that values tradition yet remains in contact with the dreams of the present age. Natural riches and local memory are reconstructed through the language of contemporary art. For this reason, Baksı can be considered not only an institution founded by the artist but also his masterpiece.
Koçan accepts the environment as his own space. In a manner of speaking, he “washes the river with art,” organizes events titled “Conversations on the Stream,” and turns nature into the stage of production through sculpture activities realized in barren landscapes. While continuing this approach with “Utopia Activities,” which bring workshop practices together with the outdoors, he also reinterprets historical and spatial contexts through the language of contemporary art via exhibitions that travel to different locations across Anatolia.
A Language Between Times
The “Ben Bu” exhibition at CerModern can be considered a stop in the long journey of Hüsamettin Koçan. Some of the works come from the Baksı Museum, while others arrive from the artist’s studio in Istanbul. In this sense, the exhibition also marks a kind of moment of convergence within the artist’s world of production.
While the works touch upon different cultural layers ranging from Shamanism to the Seljuk and Ottoman periods, times and techniques come together to establish a multilayered language between past and present.
The fragility seen in reverse-glass paintings transforms into an unbreakable permeability in silicone material, while digital prints, kitsch elements, and flat paper surfaces gain new meanings through the colors of the Anatolian steppe.
In the sculptures, ceramic and metal become bodies for demons and Şahmaran figures; mythological and cultural images regain existence within a contemporary field of representation. Ben Bu presents a multilayered narrative focusing on the representation of the human across different cultural times. As Koçan speaks to the present from the dusty pages of history, he directs a single question to the viewer: Are you this?
In Koçan’s art, technique does not carry a fixed identity; it transforms according to the subject and the period being addressed. Earth merges with pigment and confronts the canvas.
