Visitors to the Dulcinea Gallery may find themselves "lost in space" or at least face to face with a severe sense of alienation as they view the photo installation of Ahmet Elhan. At first, perhaps, one may feel only disoriented, like Alice on the other side of the looking glass, until realizing that there is no "Alice" there at all, just the empty gallery interior stretching on into infinity. The proper French term for this disturbing device is "mise en abime" though less pretentious critics also refer to it as the "Vache qui rit" system, referring to the red cow on a popular brand of processed cheese spread who wears an ear-tag of the logo, on which is red cow wearing an ear-tag of the logo and so on.
Likewise, visitors to Yapı Kredi Sanat Gallery's exhibition of Selim Cebeci's paintings may at first easily identify almost photo-realistic views of urban Istanbul, loaded with figures and recognizable buildings, yet themselves, among with the images, trapped within a low hum of horror and foreboding as the figures fail to relate to one another or their environment. This is spooky stuff, a Tarkovsky world of hostile neutrality and human alienation - should you happen to be affected as I did.
Some critics may find both shows nihilistic, dehumanizing - and a strange though coincidental reflection of a world currently in the midst of economic crisis, an over dependency on a technology that is just about to remove a popular political leader over a seedy sex scandal and more white video-game crosses on TV showing direct hits on Baghdad.
Yet both artists, while recognizing their power to dislocate and disturb deny any conscious intention to inflict a threatening atmosphere on viewers. The fact that the shows may have this effect on some could be perhaps related to one's concerns about the coming millennium.
Thus rather than looking at the dark side and turning away, we should find pride in the fact that there are contemporary Turkish artists capable of addressing the world as they see it, and as it is now the "canaries in the coalmine" giving a taste of things to come and perhaps ways of negotiating them. How else can we learn to cope? As it happens, the artists themselves seem to be coping better than most ordinary mortals.
Ahmet Elhan, who is a commercial photographer by profession, denies that his works are nihilistic, though he is aware some critics might make the charge. These photos, which have been digitally produced with great precision (thanks to sponsorship from Cenex, one might add), lead the viewer first into the ominous greenish/fluorescent hues of empty gallery, which were taken in color, but on the walls are more photos in black and white of the empty gallery space that seems to lead off into the void. Not only does the viewer disappear, feeling sucked into infinity of images, but so does the artist, who has effaced himself in the photographic process.
Nihilistic? It's not so dark as all that, says the İzmir-born Elhan. "All I've been trying to do is ask some questions of myself, the process of preparation is very complex, the last-minute color corrections, the fixing and hanging, which took a quite a long time over all. For me this action has love, so for myself I haven't disappeared. But understand that what I have wanted to do is make 'thinkings' as opposed to feelings - my topic is not beauty, but knowledge."
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Elhan says that working as a commercial photographer and filmmaker (mostly on corporate videos), where beauty and the "lie" or authenticity of the image is paramount and rarely challenged, has given him a chance to explore the opposite system; "My question really is whether there is any connection between photography and reality."
The Title of the exhibition is "Time/Space," and the artist's press statement goes some way in explaining his theoretical intention: "…When the formation period of the image, which was begun in a interval of time and space, is completed, a disconnection occurs, because the four dimensions of the and three dimensions of space are reduced down to two dimensions and frozen in the photographic image. At this point, time and space had vanished and 'reality' has fallen outside the frame. However, at the instant in which the reality of time and space has been interrupted, the photographic image enters a new field - the field of transition. This new environment created by what occurs both inside and outside the frame is the field of a constant repelling, pulling and shifting that neither belongs to chaos nor order nor can form its borders or formulate its lie. This is why the photographic image in the midst of transition both worships reality while simultaneously denying it, is a slave to the lie while passionately condemning it…"
In other words, with proper scrutiny, the technique lures with authenticity while undermining it, laying bare the scaffolding on which the lie was constructed, just as Dorothy finds the Wizard of Oz to be just and ordinary guy operating big machines.
Elhan has had few solo shows, none of them commercial; the most recent, entitled "Object/Subject" took place in the Women's Library in 1996. While specialized buyers, even corporate buyers, may be adjusting their environments to incorporate such works abroad, those days are a good few years off in this country and commercial photography, especially advertising, isn't even close.
"I don't want to say that conventional commercial photography shouldn't exists," he says, "but the two things must live together, not as an art but as a medium. I am also using classic photographic means IN art, not AS art. And it's a pity that commercial photographers cannot use their creativity in their field. I would really welcome the chance to be able to apply my ideas to my commercial projects but that hasn't happened yet, people still have very conventional ideas and just come to you with a sketch."
As to working as a professional artist, the problem of Elhan's work is its precision and expense; galleries want work that sells, and looking for sponsorship is always frustrating for artists. I would think, however, that his sponsors at Cenex will have reason to be cheerful.
Molly McAnailly,
Turkish Daily News, Dec 98
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