“I Insist”: To Place Wall onto Wall

Written by Çağla Vera and Sedef İlgiç

English translation and visuals if not stated otherwise: Sedef İlgiç

Ayşe Erkmen is an artist who creates site-spesicif works and transforms the spaces by using the material that is already there to make the viewer think about the space.

In 1994, she produced two artworks in the busy public squares of the two metropols she lives in: Tünel’e Heykel (Sculpture to Tünel) in Beyoğlu Tünel Square and Am Haus (In the House) in Kreuzberg Oranienstraße. These artworks become symbols of these spaces today and the dialog they create is ongoing. Erkmen now is exhibiting her works that are in communication with the gallery space in Istanbul.

_{Ayşe Erkmen, Am Haus, Kreuzberg Oranienstraße}

However, the emptiness in gallery spaces makes this communication hard. This exhibition is “insisting” on the artworks that were exhibited at the “Ripple” exhibition at the same space.

_{Ayşe Erkmen, Kıpraşım Ripple © Dirimart}

Erkmen re-interprets the drywalls she cut from the walls and hang down from the girders in 2017 with a new organization at “I Insist”. This time she colours them to be an instalation of monochrome paintings.

There is a black colored one that brings the Black Square painting by Kazimir Malevich, stands apart from the others.

Insisting on using a variety of technique and materials interdiciplinary and to reveal different potentials of the spaces through her long carreer, Erkmen’s exhibition where “construction material, sculpture, painting… or everything is in everything”, is maybe also a message to insist on our values and not give up in the political atmosphere we live in.