Burçak Bingöl
MINOR VIBRATIONS ON EARTH
September 20 – October 26, 2024
Burçak Bingöl’s solo show, Minor Vibrations on Earth, opens at Galeri Nev İstanbul, its latest stop after Tate St Ives and Ka Ankara. Seven years after her 2017 exhibition, Mythos and Utopia, the artist returns to Istanbul with a new solo show. Taking place from 20 September to 26 October 2024, the exhibition will feature Bingöl’s ceramic works in a new installation exclusive to the gallery space. Additionally, a book detailing the four-year project will be published during the same period.
In March 2022, Bingöl spent a month at Tate St Ives Porthmeor Studios with the support of the SAHA Association. During her stay, she explored the Bernard Leach Pottery, the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, and the modernist artistic heritage of the Penwith Peninsula in Cornwall. This visit inspired an exhibition that combines ceramic materials and methods with the history of modernism, focusing on the themes of memory, forgetting, and transformation. Although the exhibition is rooted in St Ives, it begins with a memory from Bingöl’s past in Ankara. During the demolition of the Ankara State Conservatory building, where she spent her childhood and youth and from which she graduated, the moment when a demolition crane struck the ground to remove debris had a powerful impact on Bingöl. This act of destruction allowed her to explore individual and social losses and transformations. In this context, 'vibration' serves both literal and metaphorical purposes: the physical sensation of a building’s destruction and, on a broader scale, the reverberations caused by the erasure of culture and collective memory. The project evolves through cities, spaces, communities, and values that are constantly changing, transforming, or disappearing due to modernity’s push for acceleration and renewal. It merges Bingöl’s narrative from Ankara with the modernist influences of St Ives. After exhibitions and events in both cities, the project comes back to Istanbul, where Bingöl's studio is located, completing its cycle with this exhibition.
Bingöl’s installation of seven stack-pieces transfers the interior layout of an imaginary kiln, where the firing is still in progress, into the gallery space. During this transformation, the artist introduces various elements from her memory, including images, found objects, and new life sprouting after extinctions; plants are interspersed on, between or around the melting, seemingly unfinished or glazed ceramic forms. The artist reinterprets the kiln’s interior and construction principles into a series of scenes, drawing on and simultaneously preserving, disrupting, blending, and transforming elements from both Turkish and British histories and cultures. Ottoman şah vazo's meet flowers from Barbara Hepworth’s garden, as well as images of the destruction of modern buildings in Turkey, creating forms imbued with metaphors. These pieces reflect how modernity alters the identity of spaces and reshapes experiences of belonging.
The ceramic display is accompanied by a five-part poem written by the artist. These verses, distilled from a larger text, are reflections that reference Bingöl’s journey, her works, and her approach to expressing and interpreting various spaces across different cities. Just as each set of works complements the others, these poems interlink to present the audience with small narratives drawn from the artist’s personal memory and micro-history.
*The book accompanying the exhibition documents the process of this four-year project from its initial stages to its presentation in Istanbul, featuring texts by Burçak Bingöl and Özgür Ceren Can. The book includes selections from the artist’s works, sketches, notes, and photographs, and is designed by Dilara Sezgin.
**Bingöl’s project was first exhibited in 2022 at Tate St Ives with support from SAHA. In 2023, the project has been exhibited in Ka Ankara, along with an installation displayed at the British Embassy in Ankara with the support of the British Council.
Burçak Bingöl (b. 1976, Görele) completed her doctoral studies in fine arts at Hacettepe University in 2008. She also studied music at the Ankara State Conservatory from 1985 to 1991 and completed a photography program at The New School in New York in 2009. Bingöl has held eleven solo exhibitions in cities such as New York, Ankara, Istanbul, Berlin, and Tate St Ives. Her works have been featured in numerous group exhibitions, including Dialogues at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the 15th Istanbul Biennial, a good neighbour. In addition to her exhibitions, Bingöl has curated various shows in Ankara and Istanbul. She has participated in artist residency programs at Porthmeor Studios in Cornwall, IASPIS in Stockholm, Cité des Arts in Paris, Hunter College in New York, and Gate 27 in Ayvalık. Her works are included in public collections such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; 21C Museum, Kentucky; Salsali Private Museum, Dubai; MOCAK Museum of Contemporary Art, Krakow, Poland; Odunpazarı Modern Museum (OMM), Eskisehir; and Baksı Museum, Bayburt, as well as private collections across Turkey, Europe, the Americas, and the Middle and Far East. Bingöl is a member of the Advisory Board of the Fine Arts Institute at Hacettepe University and currently lives and works in Istanbul.
*Minor Vibrations on Earth can be visited from Tuesday to Friday, 11:00 AM – 6:30 PM, and on Saturdays from 12:00 PM – 6:30 PM.
For more information or inquiries, please contact: info@galerinevistanbul.com