Galerie Max Hetzler is pleased to present in both spaces, in Zimmerstrasse and Holzmarktstrasse, an exhibition of the Turkish artist Haluk Akakçe. In Zimmerstrasse the artist will present a series of new drawings, while in Holzmarktstrasse a recent video, Shadow Machine, will be on display.
"To me the magical part of drawing is when the forms gain depth through the relation between themselves; through that relationship scale and distance is created, and light and shadow suggest depth and perspective." (Haluk Akakçe)
In this new series of drawings, as in the recent video, appears the same musical quality in rhythmic displays of shapes. In both mediums cherished by Akakçe, forms, light and colours float or rotate in a visionary space, while a remarkable sense of light emanates and the weightlessness of forms radiates. A correlation of music and visual effect creates a choreographical microsom. Within abstraction and through a geometrical vocabulary, colours and shapes blend into others in a rhythmic display. The scale of his video installations absorbs the viewer into a visionary space, which frequently folds back on itself. The forms find their definition in motion, seeming to suggest a space to inhabit. Akakçe’s work tackles the issues of abstraction and virtual reality. Trained as an architect, henceforth the architecture of optical rhythms and his sense of perspective.
Shadow Machine is an abstract animated film. A line up of imaginary objects parading before the viewer present a transforming mise-en-scene that is in constant flow. Like a carousel moving on a continuous loop, the plot, is a transient stage that hosts a metaphysical landscape. Each object is the artist’s reflection of a various state of being. With the help of music, objects gain life and reflect emotions. Some calm and some restless and deconstructed, they all need each other to rest their shadows on. Trapped in a revolving universe the objects act as orbits of an invisible inner mechanism. The soundtrack of the piece, from the ballet Coppélia composed by Léo Delibes, has a sentimental value for Akakçe. The artist’s father played the role of the mad toy maker Dr. Coppelius on stage dancing to this melody, when the artist was only six years old, leaving him with the earliest memory of watching his father dance. It was his favourite music piece until he was seven. The soundtrack is supervised by the British composer Dan Donovan. "It’s like a puzzle, a diagram, a scribble in space, more like an architecture than an organism". Martin Clark on Akakçe in This storm is what we call progress (Catalogue Arnolfini, Bristol 2005).
Haluk Akakçe was born in Ankara, Turkey in 1970. He lives and works in London. Selected exhibitions include British Art Show 6, Hayward Gallery (2006), Nature Attitudes, TB A 21, Vienna (2006), This Storm is what we call progress, Arnolfini (2005), Museo Tamayo Arte Contemporaneo, Mexico City (2005), Art Now/Lightbox , Tate Britain (2004), Animate Me N°3, Museum fur Gegenwartskunst, Basel (2003), The Moderns, Castello di Rivoli (2003), Animations, KunstWerke, Berlin (2003), Out of Site, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York (2002), Un Equilibrio Delicato, Centro Nazionale per le Arti Contemporanee, Rome (2002). His work is to be found in the following public collections: MoMA, New York, Musée d’Art Moderne du Luxembourg, MAXXI, Rome.
On the occasion of the exhibition a catalog with an essay by Allegra Pesenti is being published.
For further information please contact the gallery at + 49 30 229 2437.
Upcoming exhibition: Sept 8 – Oct 14: André Butzer
