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Vanessa Beecroft, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Donald Moffet, Aydan Murtezaoglu, Serkan Özkaya, Tadasu Takamine, Maciej Toporowicz Curator: Vasif Kortun “Confessions of a Voyeur"

The title of this exhibition Confessions of a Voyeur is borrowed from b-books where a "reformed" protagonist tells in titillating detail, the evils s/he has been in. The unspeakable finds voice through the distance provided by abstinence, and the notion of revelation becomes a pretext to tell stories that the protagonist would otherwise be castigated for articulating. The exhibition also attempts to bring into view, the operations of desire, frustration of the gaze, setups where the voyeur finds him/herself as prey, and confession as a curatorial activity. The artists in the exhibition are Vanessa Beecroft, Noritoshi Hirakawa, Donald Mofett, Aydan Murtezaoglu, Serkan Özkaya, Tadasu Takamine, and Maciej Toporowicz. Vanessa Beecroft's 1996 video, "Piano Americano" of her Deitch Projects (New York) performance marked a critical turn in her performative works. In a closed we space, one sees a large group of women in various states of ennui. They all wear the same clothes, shoes and wigs. Some look at the camera blankly. This reduces the viewer to complete insignificance due to the absence of any communicative desire. In return they accept their commodification. One recalls Edouard Manet's "Bar at the Folie Bergeres" where the woman the bar, greeting the client/viewer looks similarly aloof… Noritoshi Hirakawa's double photograph is from his 1998 "The Reason of Life" series that he realized in different cities. In one of the prints, one sees a young woman in a crowded street with a camera on the ground between her legs. The second print is also of the same woman, but it an up the legs shot that ends at her underwear. The first photograph, innocent and helpless is by Hirakawa; the second, is taken by the woman in the picture. The power of representation has changed hands, and the voyeur is no longer the photographer. While the work is participatory —result of a contract between the woman and the photographer— it conflates notions of public and private, prudent, and imprudent, social regulatory, and personal fantasy. Donald Moffett's 1992 "I kiss all the wrong holes over and over again" is a lit wall-installation. It confesses to thoroughly natural desires deemed both illicit, and even abject. It is a strong political/personal declaration/confession produced during the most devastating times of the AIDS crisis in the USA that seemed like the government had declared war on marked segments of its population. Like an earlier work of the artist, "Kiss me hard and long before I forget what is going on around here" it marks a moment when even the most private and intimate moment is perforated and attacked by the political structure. Aydan Murtezaoglu's "Untitled," 2000 is a manipulated photograph of a woman from the back on the edge of a roof top. She seems violently to pull out a television antenna as if she is fishing things out. We don't know why she is there really, or what has pushed her take this enigmatic action. In front of her the crooked mess of a view of Istanbul looms. Her skirt sways in the wind, and there is something violent and erotic about the fact that we see her without her acknowledgement. Serkan Özkaya's photograph "The artist as fountain", 2000 shows a young man sitting by a window. In front of him, in black leather pants, is a woman who seems to perform oral sex on him. The man's expression is gleefully idiotic, almost scary. Özkaya predicates the work on Bruce Nauman's "self-portrait as a fountain" where the elegant eroticism of Nauman —(referring to Duchamp's urinal) as a public sculpture, a living work of art, and a fountain of inspiration by way of the rhetoric of creation through an outpour from the orifice— becomes down right ridiculous. Tadasu Takamine's 1999 "Inertia," is a video projection. It follows a woman lying on top of a very fast Japanese train. The wind is very strong and she tries constantly and unsuccessfully to cover her legs, but her skirt is thrown open by the wind. The futile cycle continues in the unlikely meeting of the woman and the machine. Maciej Toporowicz's 2000 "Untitled" is a large black and white photograph taken in the Tokyo subway train. It shows two girls putting make-up while a single man across the aisle is leafing through the pages of a porno magazine. "Confessions of a Voyeur" is curated by Vasif Kortun. He has recently organized Genç Sanat-3" in Ankara, is the curator of "unlimited #4" at De Appel in Amsterdam (January, 2001), and a co-curator of "Racconti di identita" for "La Fabbrica del vapore" in Milan (April, 2001).

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