PARIS VILLAGE

FİKRET ATAY

18 SEPTEMBER 2014 - 25 OCTOBER 2014

PARIS VILLAGE

FİKRET ATAY

SEPTEMBER 18 – OCTOBER 25

Opening: 18.09.2014 - 18:30-20:30

Fikret Atay showcases his new works at PILOT after a long break!

Pilot Gallery hosts the exhibition of Fikret Atay’s “Paris Village” between September 18 and October 25. The video artist Atay who lives in Batman focuses on the conflictuous spaces between east-west, tradition-modernity and civil-military. His sincere and simplistic approach enables the audience with a wider apprehension of the smallest local issues. 

Fikret Atay, whose works were presented at variety of venues and institutions such as Tate Modern, New Museum, Lyon Biennial, Alexandria Biennial, Istanbul Biennial, Sidney Biennial and are among valuable collections of Tate Modern, Mudam, Frac, VKV, introduces his most recent productions after a 5-year-break. The works that reckon on memory, trauma and body cling to each other through the appearance of intertwined time cycles. 

At the exhibition, Atay’s videos combine a dual conceptualization: modernity and the story of the ‘other’. Referred stories in the search for conflict and solution simultaneously are carried out by the female characters whose narratives are based on local histories.

Three different stories “The Walking Memories”, “Giants” and “Paris Village” that makes up a series following three different paths coincide at the same dimension. The artist brings multilayered stories with narrative ties together for the first time as an endeavor never experimented before.

The origin of the series “The Walking Memories” is a zombie movie that focuses on the return (life-death) of the women of a village. The movie presents the daily lives of women who turn back to the places they previously left with their memories in a post-apocalyptic setting. Their repetitive behaviors allude to the continuity of time and compulsiveness of memory. On the other hand, the idea of return to village underlies the notion of incompletion. 

The second movie of the series “Giants” is a post-apocalyptic love movie. The artist tries to generate a critical approach to modernity from a non-conventional perspective. The discussion offers reconsideration over a pastoral phantasy that of which the cliché on the East is imbued with. Mundane patterns like urban girl, villager boy, impossible love, endless deserts and the like come together with a view on emptiness.  

The third movie, which shares the same title with the exhibition “Paris Village”, bares a narrative that has absurd and dark humor motifs. It takes place in a village with the same name in Siirt/Eruh, described as ‘purgatory’ by the artist. Atay builds the movie through spatial and cultural jumpcuts. As the symbols concordant with the name of the village are brought up, the Eiffel Tower is prepared for discussion among the members of village community. While the elders of the village refuses its existence, the consensus is set by turning the tower into a minaret equipped with speakers as a hybrid construction. The movie is black and white unlike the colorful atmosphere of Paris. Everything is simple and plain.

Fikret Atay was born in 1976 in Batman. He graduated from Dicle University, Fine Arts department. In 2010, he became a nominee for the biannual Future Generation Art Prize of Viktor Pinchuk Foundation. 

Atay had solo shows at Viafarini Docva (Milano, 2010), Bonner Kunstverein (Germany, 2008), Site Gallery (England, 2007), UCLA Hammer Museum (Los Angeles, 2006), FRAC Ile-de-France-Le Plateau (Paris, 2006), Maison de l’Architecture (Paris, 2005) ve Museo de Arte Contemporáneo di León (Spain, 2005). He also participated in numerous exhibitions in variety of spots such as Istanbul Modern, New Museum and Tate Modern. 

His works were recently shown at “Plurivocality” of Istanbul Modern, Turkey (2014), “Destini/Storie/ Vite”CaMec, Italy (2014), “Manifesta - Unloop Kino”, St Petersburg, Russia(2014), “Attention Economy”, Kunsthalle Wien, Austria (2014),“Lines Made by Walking”, Haifa Museum of Art, Israel (2011), “Future Generation Art Prize@Venice”, Palazzo Papadopoli, Venice(2011) and “Starter, Selected Works from Vehbi Koç’s Contemporary Art Collection”, ARTER, İstanbul (2010). 

Atay’s works were also exhibited at the 10th Lyon Biennial (2009), Alexandria Biennial (2009), 10th ve 8th Istanbul Biennials (2007, 2003) and Sidney Biennial (2006).

Fikret Atay lives and works in Batman.