çepeçerçeve: Cevdet Erek

Cevdet Erek's first solo gallery exhibition in Turkey, "çepeçerçeve", takes place at Galeri Nev İstanbul between October 27 - December 2, 2023. The title of the exhibition, which brings together the group of works from Erek's exhibition "in circulation" at neugerriemschneider in Berlin with his new try-outs developed and produced within Galeri Nev İstanbul, is derived from the combination of the Turkish words ‘çerçeve’ (frame) and ‘çepeçevre’ (all around). The exhibition aims to create a multi-layered conceptual space through the interplay of objects and their relationship with visitors.

 

Located at the centre of the display, The Mother Ear is the first figurative work in the artist’s practice. The starting point of the artwork is the dummy-head microphone (known as “Kunst-kopf” in German), which is used to record sound in the closest way to human perception and is based on the dimensions of an average human head, typically of a Western and masculine appearance. Erek customizes and adds movement to the form of the head which was produced using a three-dimensional model obtained through the photo-scanning of his mother. The movement of this gently swaying figure originates from two sources: the voluntary or involuntary head shaking that people make in rhythm with music, and the reflexive head twitching (tremor), especially experienced by the elderly due to neurological and similar reasons. Erek intersects this condition in his mother with whom he has spent an intense period of time since the pandemic and the delicate relationship between them, with the rhythm-space-body axis he has been working on for a long time. Initially looking as headphones, the binaural microphones nestled in the sculpture’s ears become a reference point for the arrangement of the other objects in the exhibition space, creating a sort of stage. To the right, left, and in front of the sculpture, Erek’s Daf series, developed in collaboration with the daf player and instrument maker Sami Hosseini, is positioned. Shaped by removing the skin of the traditional daf instrument and keeping only the frame and metal rings, the Daf without Skin is suspended in the air and the object allows for different interactions without ignoring the traditional use of the instrument. Larger Daf without Skin is a magnified counterpart of the former, creating a space that can be entered, almost eliminating the distance between performer-experiencer and instrument and providing a form of acoustic immersion for the listener. One can walk among these dafs, grasping and moving the circles from both sides and listening to the rustling of the metal rings as they touch each other and the hoop, while another can stand inside the large circle and be surrounded by the sounds and rhythms or watch them float through the space. Opposite the sculpture, the work that looks like a ruler at a distance but which we recognize as a variation of the daf with its ring arrangement once we get closer, can be considered as an intermediate form between the artist’s rulers and the dafs. Ruler Daf without Skin is a straightened-out version of the wooden hoop that visually translates cylical time to linear, and a simple system of visual notation also emerges through the arrangement of its hoops in diminishing order.

 

Erek’s series of frames (çepeçerçeve series), which he conceived and produced in the gallery, collides the display method of traditional painting with an over-reduced version of the architecture of a rectangular stadium.[1] The objects positioned on the surfaces of the space that originate from this idea, aim to make different contributions to the experiential area of the exhibition with small variations. The frame at the entrance of the show, çepeçerçeve- Away Terrace, emphasizes the guest spectator section squeezed to the edge of a backstage tribune with a classical gold leaf application. The artist attempts to relate the transformation he has observed in the rivalry of Istanbul’s football teams over the last decades to countries, borders, identities, and the willing or dominated segregation of groups. On the other hand, çepeçerçeve-Mono! is an artwork of the same size that imitates the tone of the slogans chanted consecutively by the stands in football stadiums with the artist’s voice, creating a “polyphonic mono” environment. In çepeçerçeve- Stadium with Rings, the frame of the stadium rises and transforms into a sound generator by lining up metal rings inside it and hybridizes with the dafs. The word “çerçeve” (frame) that comes to Turkish from the Farsi word “çar-çube” meaning “four sticks”, also implies the enclosure of four sides with lines.

 

The ruler, as a measuring tool derived from the metric system and structured linearly, essentially serves as one of the four sticks that constitute the frame. It is even known that the prototype of the meter created by Henri Tresca in 1889 was referred to as the “Tresca stick.” However, just like the rectangle, the ruler cannot be limited to a single function. In addition to enabling measurement, it is also possible to talk about the ruler's relationship with power and borders, which aligns and controls a line that deviates from its path and floats in space. On the occasion of the centennial of the Republic of Turkey, which coincides with the dates of this exhibition, Erek's 2011 work Ruler 100 Years (with Calendar and Alphabet Revolution) is transformed into two new rulers, this time pointing backward and forward from 2023. Combining the power of dates with personal memory, writing, calendars and imaginings of the future, these works make it possible to move back and forth between the known and the unknown, the lived and the unlived. Looking as if it is about to grasp a painting but is left alone by the separation of the other edges, the Eastern Daf repeats the frame of a painting in the gallery's storage, arranges the metal daf rings in a vertical direction and meets them vertically with horizontal representations of time.

 

*The artist's recordings made during the installation of the exhibition "in circulation" at neugerriemschneider and at ITU MIAM Studio using dafs and binaural microphones can be listened to and downloaded as an online album via Bandcamp through tablets and headphones on the table in the gallery space during the exhibition.