Beyond is Before
installation

Beyond is Before is a sculptural manifestation of Deniz Uster's film of the same name. It presents several themes in the film's narrative as a physical object, contained inside a fenced enclosure.

Just as the film's protagonist discovers a chest that can regress material to a past state, the eye of the gallery visitor ascends from a garden of sand that forms into small pebbles, gradually increasing in size to large stones, until forming into a great outcrop of furrowed rock.

Embedded within this strange monolith is the film itself, whereby further clues are given as to the presence of other objects in the installation. Surrounding the garden is a fence bursting with gnarly tree roots ­ a parallel to the film's overgrown chest, a source of an incredible power, whose own structure is not immune to material regression.

Half­  buried in the sand are seven glass cubes, otherworldly envoys of a different material. In the final stages of the film the protagonist climbs inside the chest, an attempt to rid himself of physical ailments and to return to a state of vitality. Instead he regresses to earth, the basic matter of life. Contained within the cubes are bodies of earth, or perhaps the bodies of isolated, hopeful individuals from an obliterated world not far from our own.

Text by Tom Harrup
Special thanks to Emrah Uster and Tom Harrup

510X340X235cm, stone, earth, glass, wood, cement, TV screen, speakers, moss, 2015