Kicking off the new art season with a selection of works from the Erol Tabanca Collection, OMM – Odunpazarı Modern Museum’s newest exhibition “Under Two Suns” is now open to visit (24 August). Curated by Aslı Seven, “Under Two Suns” offers a journey through refractions of light and shadows. As an exploration of mythological and speculative horizons opened up by the prospect of two suns in the sky. Showcasing works produced in a range of media including painting, photography, sculpture and video installations, the selection shares a sensibility towards optical, thermal, metamorphic, and affective phenomena surrounding sunlight and its atmospheric refractions, exploring the profoundly solar, relational, and mutating nature of our being in the world.
Conceived as a pluralistic sensory device to allow multiple suns to shine through cosmic time, the exhibition presents constellations of works investigating color, shadow, and background-figure relationships as the main ingredients of compositions seeking to capture the very fleeting essence of color perception, in appreciation of the landscape genre, or those where physical light becomes a metaphor for inner light.
Exploring the aesthetic possibilities surrounding mimicry as a biological and cultural impulse, the exhibition features artworks by 45 Turkish and international artists including Abidin Dino, Ahmet Oran, Alpin Arda Bağcık, Aras Seddigh, Azade Köker, Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu, Berkay Buğdan, Burcu Yağcıoğlu, Burhan Uygur, Ebru Uygun, Erdağ Aksel, Erol Akyavaş, Etel Adnan, Fatma Bucak, Ferruh Başağa, Fikret Muallâ, Gizem Akkoyunoğlu, Guido Casaretto, Haluk Akakçe, Hoca Ali Rıza, Hüsamettin Koçan, İlhan Koman, İnci Eviner, Kemal Önsoy, Ken Matsubara, Komet, Mehmet Güleryüz, Murat Akagündüz, Mübin Orhon, Nejad Melih Devrim, Nejat Satı, Nuri Abaç, Nuri İyem, Orhan Peker, Osman Dinç, Rasim Aksan, Sabri Berkel, Sadık Arı, Serhat Kiraz, Seyhun Topuz, Taner Ceylan, Tayfun Erdoğmuş, TUNCA, Yağız Özgen and Zoë Paul.
“Under Two Suns” showcases an imaginative hypothesis and proposes the idea of two suns as a new way to look at works of art through the shifting perspective of an inverted relationship with the Sun in which the source of all light, life and wisdom becomes a potentially threatening force, a darker sun or too much of a sun. In this sense, the exhibition narrates this apocalyptic sublime of a scorched Earth under changing climate conditions, which may also reveal the glowing beams of a re-enchantment of nature.
Tied to the rotation of our planet and our bodies in relation to the sun, the exhibition follows its incremental, permeable relationship to sunlight and the environment through a threefold installment. Taking its inspiration from the architecture of OMM, designed by the acclaimed Kengo Kuma and Associates, “Under Two Suns” can be visited until July 28, 2024.
Press release from Odunpazarı Modern Museum
