Did Shakespeare write Shakespeare? Is sampling appropriate? Though the ages appropriation for inspiration within the arts has been common place. Or is it really just stolen property. Now a hot topic, artist Hüseyin Alptekin wants a debate on re-appropriation and has produced an exhibition to promote the idea.

A show created especially for the gallery space at Dulcinea (Meşelik Sokak, Beyoğlu) is a combination of many factors - past, present, conceptual, plastic - but still very different from the work the artist has attempted in the past.

The main feature in this exhibition is called "Kriz" (Crisis) - the nudes. The image of a naked woman lying in a compromising position was re-appropriated by Alptekin (or maybe stolen?) from Gustave Courbet. The original, "L'origine du Monde," was painted by Courbet in 1868.

Alptekin has taken this image, manipulated it using computer and outputted it again (in two versions) via digital print.

"There are a lot of appropriations in the contemporary art scene. I have re-appropriated this image to instigate debate on this issue," emphasizes Alptekin. "If there is no debate then it is merely stolen."

There are as many stories connected with this famous nude parallel to many themes of Alptekin's latest exhibition. The original painting was hidden, lost, found, has travelled and then resurfaced recently (1995) in the Musee D'Orsay, Paris.

The tale of the painting's conception appealed to our contemporary artist so that he subsequently earmarked it for his own work. It was commissioned from Courbet by an Ottoman ambassador resident in France, whom Courbet referred to as Halil Bey.

Recalls Alptekin, Halil Bey was a great collector of art in the western world, he was a Don Juan type figure, had good taste is art and had special interest in nudes. This history, which Alptekin discovered in a book published in France in 1997, was not a well known story and , although the publication of the book caused debate in the art world, it did not receive a large media response. Alptekin says this is largely due to the fact that it was form of degradation for an oriental, Muslim man to have these tastes.

The original painting that hung in the home of Halil Bey was disguised as a landscape and further concealed behind a curtain only to be shown to his most important guests. The painting was more shocking for the time because it did not have a head nor arms nor legs - how could such a famous artist have done this, was the cry of the day.

While staying in Berlin (and with the book about the nude in his luggage) Alptekin saw a movie advertised with the title "In vino veritas." This expression meaning, "the truth is in the wine," was used by knowledgeable appreciators of wine. In Apltekin's piece of word vino changes to vagina. "I made a collage at that time and said I would use it in an exhibition one day."

Now the painting resurfaces again: re-appropriation. "I have chosen this painting because the painter was asked to paint it and, while he was painting it, the absence of the head, arms and legs suggest he was out of the painting as well, not looking at the model, and so in a sense also appropriating. I appropriated from Courbet as he appropriated from the model." The original is a famous painting now, but few people know that it was commissioned by a Muslim, says Alptekin. He perceives that artists from the Orient, including Turkey, are dictated to by the western world's discourse on art. Alptekin has tried to challenge this. "Most of the work from here deals with politics or ethnological aspects and most artists are responding to this because it sells," he says. "If you are a woman, Kurdish, homosexual, transvestite: it's all great."

Alptekin sees the context of his show as more westernized in itself and therefore he says, "no-one gives a shit about it." "It is a small critique or irony I am attempting," he chuckles. Alptekin chose the exhibition title "Crisis" because when he began to plan for the show, Turkey was at the beginning of a crisis - economic and social. An economic crisis touches everyone including the artist, who found there were limited funds for the show.

The social side of Crisis bubbles to the surface (and is also a recurring theme in Alptekin's work) as the state of depression and other medical mishaps. This he says has led to trendy icons such as Prozac and Viagra. "Prozac is very emblematic in society. It is not only for medical usage but is also consumed as an image/object/icon."

There is a blue and green curtain concealing each nude respectively (as Halil Bey concealed the original). These again infer the modern objects of desire, Viagra blue and Prozac green. Alptekin's friend and colleague, Vasıf Kortun said of the artist: "Throughout the years (of our friendship) it became increasingly difficult for me to abstract his art from his teaching, writing, and other ways of being in the world… In the last seven years, Alptekin has been working, through a process of amalgamations, fragmentations and linkages between things."

His linkages to his life and his previous work continue in this show also. Main pieces aside, the accompanying photos that cover the right hand wall of the gallery feature people, found objects, but here the similarities end. They all have different technical styles, and are conceived in different dimensions, some big, some small, some tall. "I'm tired of seeing the same dimensions of work hanging in galleries," he remarks casually.

There are lots of ideas behind these works - again subjective: actual, pop and conceptual. A woman holds a cheap plastic bag with the word "Elite" written on it - a contradiction in terms already. In another, a boy hold a plastic bag that Alptekin found at a fish market in Bulgaria. On the bag is written the word "dreams." In actual fact the boy is Kurdish and works for a design company called Dream Design.

Alptekin's friend, local musician, Butch Morris features in the next photo. Morris contemplates life and the cigar that lies in the ashtray, while he is actually smoking cheap cigarettes. The photo was originally taken in color, but in the final image only two features remain in color: the band of the cigar and the cigarette packet.

The bright red section of a lifeboat (with recollections to his previous work says "capacity 54 persons," any more and the boat goes down, adds Alptekin. His previous work titled "Capacity" and "Capacity/Capacities" consists of 32 and 36 square format photos of hotel signs placed next to each other in a rectangular format. The first work was produced for the 24 Sao Paulo Biennial. It alluded to two capacities, potentialities of Istanbul and Sao Paolo. The names of the hotels in the photos were derived from names of towns around the world that hardly constitute principal places to go. Most of the photos were taken at the infamous Laleli and Tarlabaşı districts in Istanbul. Laleli is the main hub for baggage travel and a bizarre microcosm of Eastern Europe.

Further down the line of photos is a young Humphrey Bogart wearing Viagra blue flippers and next to him is an image of some cheap Bulgarian cigarettes. Many Turkish viewers immediately claimed the brand as their own forgetting about the different language and different readings available within the image.

The intertwining of Alptekin's life and his art is most evident in the last image in the row of Matti Pelloupaa, a Finnish movie maker who died two years ago of liver cancer. "I took the photo of Pelloupaa, which someone else had taken, from a bar in Moscow." The word Elite (glowing in Prozac green) has been added to the image, says Alptekin, as a reference to the man's favorite restaurant in Helsinki where Alptekin had himself been and sat in Pelloupaa's favorite seat.

Light emitting fibre is the material chosen to complete the show. The words "Loser" (in Prozac green), "Border" (in Viagra blue) and "Boredom" (white on white) are mounted on white tapestry frames (boredom itself says Alptekin). Alptekin followed his hotels (hospitality, hostility, hotel, hospice) with an installation called "Boredom" (living room show 1998). The living room in local Turkish Culture is a place that is hardly visited. In the old days it would almost be under lock and key, as the whole family would be cramped around a smaller intimate space. The living room was used only for momentous occasions, it was not so much the space of hospitality as well-mannered hostility.

This previous "Boredom installation consisted of regular photos of friends, groups, working and dining at home and outside, all pasted side by side to make up a whole wall. Over the photos, the flowing light rope makes the word "Boredom" glow in a joyful yellow. "Boredom" here alluded to domus, domicile, domestic and becomes a spatial concept not limited to one particular space. Alptekin says he values "Losers" (usually in a stage of discovery) as an integral part of society. Many viewers may not have realized that the psychiatrist's couch, which also been a feature of Alptekin's past works, is here cleverly disguised beneath white cloth as the platform for "Loser," "Border" and "Boredom" equals Crisis. The show will be added to and played with over its time in gallery says the artist. There also will be performances, including a live performance by Butch Morris and projections scheduled over the next month to complement the show.

This month at Dulcinea Bar/Gallery it's not for the faint hearted to check out "Kriz" (Crisis), a work in progress from Hüseyin Alptekin.

Louise Johnstone - Turkish Daily News, April 1998