Istanbul Modern is holding an exhibition devoted to Sahin Kaygun. Kaygun played an important role in the development of Turkish photography in the 1980s. Refusing to take a political stance at a time of turmoil in the country, Kaygun focused solely on the artistic possibilities of the medium, and his approach quickly began to incorporate other disciplines. In 1977, he created FOTOS, a kind of think tank devoted to photography, and a few years later began using Polaroid. Despite his established position in the artistic milieu—in the early ‘80s, Kaygun took a series of portraits of the local arts scene—he drew the wrath of the bien-pensant crowd, who refused to see his work as photography.
He soon began exploring phases of the photographic process outside the photo shoot. He recolored his black-and-white Polaroids with an emulsion and performed other chemical experiments, scraping the images and adding touches of paint to make the surfaces of the photographs grainy and sculptural. After crossing the once-holy border of photography, Kaygun was making surrealist collages when he died at age 41.
The exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in Istanbul is primarily focused on one aspect of Kaygun’s protean body of work: nudes. Scratched, distorted, painted, they speak of desire and of our perception of a photograph, and the ways in which time and human intervention alter even our most vivid memories. For some of the images, the different variations and steps in the process are displayed side by side. Texts, not always related to the image, appear throughout the exhibition, transforming the place into a space of reflection, more than a space to revisit this neglected oeuvre. Many of the texts were written by Murathan Mungan, a political poet and writer. They shed light on the political dimension which Kaygun only timidly addressed.
EXHIBITION
Sahin Kaygun
Through February 15th2015
Istanbul Modern
Sanat Müzesi
Meclis-i Mebusan
Cad. Liman İşletmeleri
Sahası Antrepo 4
34433
Karaköy,
Istanbul, Turquie
http://www.istanbulmodern.org/tr/sergiler/guncel-sergiler/sahin-kaygun_1488.html
