Akbank Sanat is hosting the digital artworks of new media artist Ozan Türkkan with the exhibition titled, " Is nature real, can reality be natural?" at the Akbank Sanat booth at the 12th Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair until Sunday.
Curated by Hasan Bülent Kahraman, the exhibition is a display of the products of long-term research about fractal geometry and is comprised of three parts.
The exhibit includes an installation of Virtual Reality (VR), a concept which allows the spectator to experience a speculative, organic world created by a code-based, generative method encircled by 360 degrees of media, as well as a digital printer installed on a large, high-resolution light box that allows the viewer to observe a geometric perspective of the world. There is also a holographic audio visual installation featuring a three-dimensional (3D) fractal, which turns into a character living from form to form by mutation.
"The exhibition is an algorithm of a creation, of a rejuvenation of nature itself and of a reality that we confront every day, even if it looks like a conceptually complicated one. Sharing the same DNA in our hearts and in our skin and finding a common basis for focusing - no matter how small - is what makes us fractal creatures. We see fractal things on the zigzags of coastlines, in the shapes of leaves, in the lines of mountains, in our neural system and in all things. Therefore, the entire world is actually a fractal kingdom. When we try to draw a graph of the chaos, we are once again confronted by fractal things. Order and pattern are observable everywhere. Perhaps this is why fractal art has a peaceful side. The harmony that reveals itself in the middle of the chaos is what renews our trust in nature," artist Ozan Türkkan said.
Museum curator Hasan Bülent Kahraman implied that reality never ends and is reproduced in every period, while the sources of accessing reality and defining it change according to various cultural and time-related issues, noting: "Nature is not singular. Nature also changes itself. The ‘panta rei' point of view of Heraclitus is true: Everything flows. Mankind has long been searching for reality in nature. Now, in the modern age, we are turning our backs on nature, and what is ‘real' is being produced from another, unnatural reality. However, reality has a dimension that extends beyond the real. Going beyond the finite means going beyond nature.
Consciousness is the source of reality and we comprehend nature by our mindfulness. Cognizance is beyond nature. If we didn't have consciousness, there would be no nature. On the other hand, reality is fictional. There is no pure or absolute truth. Existence doesn't make itself visible and it isn't natural, it is ethereal. The reality of nature, the sensibility derived from nature is just an element of the larger concept of realism. Reality isn't fiction, neither. Existence is existence. Still, the fiction of reality extends beyond what is natural. Mankind has explored the third dimension, but we now wonder what the fourth dimension holds for humanity. We don't know, but we are still searching for it," Kahraman said.
