Drawing together Şakir Gökçebağ’s installations, sculptures and photographs produced across different time periods and adapting them to Arter’s second floor gallery, As It Seems presents a comprehensive exploration of the artist’s approach of using formal manipulations to transport ordinary objects and familiar images into the realm of the extraordinary. Beginning with the associations sparked by the items we frequently encounter in everyday life, or the formal similarities and contrasts they evoke, Gökçebağ reorganises objects in a deconstructive manner by dismantling, repeating and reassembling them to create works that transcend mere intervention or fragmentation. These works lift objects out of their familiar contexts, revealing novel and unexpected possibilities in relation to our perception of the world and its contents. Constructed with elements at first glance strangely familiar to the viewer and still connected to their original forms with an abstract thread, Gökçebağ’s installations reinterpret the mundane and commonplace through creative and playful compositions, bringing about a poetic realm where things are liberated from their primary attributes and functionalities.
The artist’s practice is guided by principles such as simplicity, universality and accessibility; as he believes within every object there resides the seeds of creativity, ready to fire up our imagination, and that the most powerful messages can be expressed through the simplest of things. Umbrellas, garden hoses, clothes hangers, belts, clothespins, shirts, water scales, folding meters, carpets, even toilet paper rolls and lentil grains, which the artist often includes in his works, are transformed into three-dimensional puzzles and geometric forms with a surprising spatial impact. The object ceases to be a persistent reference point for artistic representation with this approach, which imbues the form with its own identity, creating an elegant and playful universe, convincing in its own right. Metamorphosed through contrasting interventions and playful gestures orchestrated by the artist, such as subtraction-duplication, emptying-filling, cutting-combining, lengthening-shortening, it manifests itself in unexpected forms that foster fresh interpretations and expand the boundaries of perception.
Reinterpreted works
Comprised of works previously displayed in different settings now rescaled and reinterpreted for the gallery space at Arter, As It Seems offers a captivating glimpse into Şakir Gökçebağ’s diverse body of work through a multitude of materials. Gökçebağ sets out by questioning not only the distinctive features of the object which he picks in order to transform an idea into a reality, but also the possibilities of rearranging these features. His practice revolves around an interest in alternative perceptions
of the everyday reality, and the triggering of the viewer’s imagination through clusters of works based on a particular object. He often applies cuts on the surfaces of different materials, attempts new experiments with the objects, taking them apart like jigsaw puzzles, or sometimes simply proposes alternative ways of perceiving the things, which he re-organizes in systematic arrangements and leaves almost untouched. These items, whose utility is canceled by being brought into the artistic field and reconfigured through a poetic approach, keep appearing over time, expanding their respective repertoires.
