In the cultural hub of Istanbul, the art gallery Vision Art Platform in Beşiktaş's Akaretler is hosting an evoking exhibition titled "Horror Vacui," which is a term that refers to the fear of emptiness, manifesting in art by filling all surfaces with details and ornaments in a stifling manner and leaving no gaps. In physics, horror vacui reflects Aristotle's idea that "nature abhors an empty space."
The void is chaos, the abyss of meaninglessness. Presence can be protected from chaos only as long as it hangs in the web of meaning. Emptiness or fullness, nothingness or being. The void is the other of the being and can only create itself as it fills the void. The void is terrifying.
An American anthropologist who is known for his practice of symbolic anthropology, Clifford J. Geertz defines a human as “man is an animal suspended in webs of significance he has spun.” These webs can rot over time yet need to be repaired or replaced with new ones when they become so weak that they can no longer carry significance. For that reason, humankind's effort is endless. Also, the effort brought by suspension and surviving within these webs may require a new design of networks. Otherwise, one can fall into the void, losing balance or the nets can rupture at any moment.
The theme of Çağrı Saray's latest exhibition called "Horror Vacui" is a concept that is borrowed from Peter Handke's novel "A Sorrow Beyond Dreams." In his exhibition, Saray reminds the visitors of the awareness of the falling moment.
"It is a unique moment before the end-fall. It includes abandoning, abandonment and loss," Saray explained. It is the adventure of existence despite the emptiness of a being that is falling but never gives up on trying to hold on and always hangs in that brief moment before the eventual fall. Within that frame, Çağrı Saray, as an entity, narrates his own experience around the theme with drawings, installations and images.
Emphasizing that the void can never be completed, the necessity and difficulty of living with and despite the void, and that the void is also necessary for creation, his works revolve around the world of meanings called "home." Home is memory, collects and stores our memories, possessions, connections, and habits and witnesses our childhood. The house is the cosmos that protects you from nothingness as Gaston Bachelard mentioned "in its countless alveoli space contains compressed time. That space is for," in his "The Poetics of Space."
While Çağrı Saray places the compressed time stuck in the domestic objects into the space of the gallery, he also reveals the Bergsonian relationship between memory and time – as French philosopher Henri Bergson linked memory to creative duration.
In the drawings and paintings of Saray, memory spreads in waves and covers the whole artwork. As the invisible waves emanate from the domestic objects, he placed in the gallery's space; he encourages the viewers to establish connections between the existing experience and the future, encouraging them to make connections that don't exist yet. The work also makes you feel that specific moment of falling, hinting at the thin and fragile connection between existence and nothingness and that the concept of horror vacui is a creative emotion. According to the artist, it is impossible to create unless that fragile connection between being and nothingness is felt.
The "Horror Vacui" exhibition places the audience in the gallery's void, forcing them to weave their web of meaning and replace the rotten ones with new ones as one can only survive if one can create networks of meaning.
Spread over three floors of Vision Art Platform's building at Akaretler, the exhibition can be visited until Jan. 10.
