Füsun Onur’s first solo exhibition at Galeri Nev Istanbul titled “Chamber Music” opens on Friday November 1st, 2019. For this exhibition, the artist realizes a new arrangement in which she builds on the relation between music, time and space with the everyday objects that she places on the floor of the gallery space.
Füsun Onur wraps found objects and toys that she has freed from their conventional functions with paper and arranges them within the gallery space. The objects, which can only be recognized from their visible tips and corners, resemble small stains on the floor. Rather like low-pitched music heard from afar, the notes of the score appear on the ground faintly in the forms and colors of the objects themselves. Colored pencils randomly dispersed on the floor are no longer functional but paint the ground in a scheme of color with their presence. One may catch a glimpse of the artist’s handwriting and drawings on the crumpled pieces of paper. In Füsun Onur’s “Chamber Music”, the artist not only isolates the objects from their common functions as in her past works, but also covers and conceals them to ensure that they exist merely as elements of a composition in space. The gallery space becomes a visual score within, with rhythmic extensions of forms and colour.
As in the artist’s earlier works “Prelude” and “Opus II- Fantasia”, in “Chamber Music” Füsun Onur divides the sculpture into modules, altering its perception in time and space. The work is no longer static but becomes temporal as it takes time for the viewer to perceive the individual elements installed within the space and their relationship to one another.
In order to perceive the elements of Füsun Onur’s score, the audience is invited to engage in a game of discovery within the gallery space. “Chamber Music” leaves the audience in plight of the presence or absence of the work; the elements becoming familiar and aloof, and the audience is left to ponder whether the installation is spontaneous or in order.
“I am trying to adjust time and space. I divide sculptures into modules because you cannot adjust time in painting or sculpture, but in music you can. With a painting or a sculpture, you wouldn’t even spend two minutes in front of it. But with music, you have to adjust time, whether you like it or not. (…)”
