"The aesthetic regimes and imaginary of 19th century Europe are indeed a prominent feature in the exhibition through two modalities: the dynamic relationship between finitude, as in enclosed spaces; and infinite possibilities of proliferation on one hand, and a mirror-game of projections between organic movement (life) and mechanical animation (artefact) on the other. The glass dome structures which encapsulate Deniz Uster’s imagined worlds where multiple scales of time and space coexist, can be likened to pre-cinematic 19th century visual technologies such as the diorama or tableaux vivants which used human artifice and technology to achieve a semblance of organic movement through juxtapositions of light, color and matter. Only a few decades later, aquariums were invented, this time, displaying truly animated organic movement through a technical invention which achieved the visualization of underwater life forms behind transparent glasses. The distinction between the automaton and the technically sustained organic life started to blur. Throughout these inventions and onto the 21st century, the Duchampian desire to reproduce with the mechanical bride, and now probably the artificial mind, remains an anthropological constant. The history of space exploration has been marked by attempts to export life outside of planet Earth, endeavors gathered nowadays under the general title of “exo-ecology”. As one sculpture in the exhibition, “Monument to Laika” commemorates, alongside the remnants of the Moon Sycamore, the enclosed architectures of the hermetically sealed glasshouses and oxygenated aquariums of the 19th century are also at the origin of space suits and the hermetically sealed spacecraft which carried not only Laika, but also Albert II the macaque monkey (1949); Russian stray dogs Dezik and Tsygan (1951); the rabbit Marfusha (1959) and countless unnamed guinea pigs, frogs and mice to understand how their bodies would react to space travel. Same question was asked and observations made regarding the body of a woman – a female human – much later than the animal species, in 1962, when Valentina Tereshkova became the first female cosmonaut to fly solo in outer space. "
Excerpt from exhibition text by Asli Seven
Excerpt from exhibition text by Asli Seven
Photo credit for the above exhibition photos: Nazli Erdemirel
monument to laika
Monument to Laika, 2023. 35x14x14cm, glass dome, glass dome, steel, glass, lightweight filler, acrylic paint, mahagony wood, modelling materials.
at the purgatory
At the Purgatory, 2023. 33x14x14cm, glass dome, brass, steel, lightweight filler, acrylic paint, mahagony wood, stones
rum
Rum, 2023. 22x14x14cm, glass dome, ancient stone from the remote Isle of Rum. Taken fromthe bery same boulder that Nasa sampled for their Jezrto Crater mission in Mars, brass, mahagony wood, modelling materials.
The epic of Abiogenesis
The Epic of Abiogenesis, 2023. 45x14x14cm, steel, velvet fibres, lightweight filler, modelling water, acrylic paint, mahagony wood, resin putty.