The exhibition discusses invisibility as the presence of an absence; as being “under the surface”; as a tactic of withdrawal and obstruction; as a means of dissolving, camouflaging, and mirroring; and as ghostly matter and uncanny specter. Emphasizing the potentialities of invisibility, the project also draws attention to the implications of exclusion from the regime of the visible.
Tactics of Invisibility brings together a variety of artistic positions from almost three decades, including works by pioneering figures such as Sarkis, Füsun Onur, and Ayşe Erkmen, who have influenced the minimalist and conceptual practices of the younger generation and paved the way for contemporary art from Turkey to receive international attention. In particular, the politically and socially engaged artistic practices of the 1990s – a critical period in which discourses such as multiculturalism, identity politics, migration, and minority politics came to the fore – were intensively discussed within the “Western” art world and also focused attention on the sociopolitical context of Turkish art. Even though the artistic practices of İnci Eviner, Kutluğ Ataman, and Hale Tenger have been nourished within this energetic and vibrant context, their work addresses these questions in very specific ways. The exhibition follows this line of postconceptual or minimalist artistic practice, looking at the recent production of the younger generation, represented by Cevdet Erek, Ali Kazma, Esra Ersen, Nilbar Güreş, Nasan Tur, Nevin Aladağ, Ahmet Öğüt, xurban_collective, and the artist initiative Hafriyat.> >

Passages. Travels in Hyperspace is a selection of works drawn from the collection of Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary. Consisting primarily of large-scale sculptural or installation work, the exhibition will be designed so as to foster a contemplative stroll, making the body central to the visitor’s experience of art and offering a journey into a perceptual dimension that activates the physical, the sensory, and the cerebral.

Whereas art has traditionally been a depiction of the world that we inhabit, thus focusing on the visual faculty, artists today tend to restage fragments of our environment, to trigger shifts in our understanding that invoke all the sensory and bodily registers and break down the paradigms of the viewing subject and the object of perception. Exploring new forms of perception, which weave together the “real” with the “virtual,” they produce stimulating experiences, triggering that which is unforeseen and unpredictable, not fully explainable or representable in terms of preexisting concepts or expectations.

This new horizon of experience is the result of processes of acceleration, the adaptability to new technologies, and the ability to negotiate change and innovation. Because our experience of the world is increasingly mediated, our sense of the real is all the more distorted by flows of information–whether images, texts, or sounds–continuously supplied by way of networked devices of every kind. A keen observation of the world no longer suffices to allow us to understand it in its complexity. Less decipherable parameters challenge that notion altogether.
In a way art suggests a new grid for understanding and relating to our environment. Works of art establish a narrative dimension that freely associates reality and fiction, an expanded reality of sorts.> >