whitehot | November 2008, Ayse Erkmen @ Hamburger Bahnhof

Ayse Erkmen
Weggefährten
Hamburger Bahnhof
September 13 through January 11, 2009

Ayse Erkmen’s art can be so subtle that it’s hardly recognizable as such even if it’s beeping right into your ear. Who would have expected that the metal detector at the entrance to the show was not a security measure, but an artistic memento of our precautious, even fearful, time?

The piece, Portipost, is one of Erkmen’s truly conceptual works displayed at her solo exhibition at the Hamburger Bahnhof. The show is called Weggefährten (companions) and that’s what it is: a reinterpretation of selected works that accompanied her through phases of her life and which the 59-year old artist appropriated for the new environment. Erkmen’s art merges with the location making it one of the show’s protagonists. The exhibition starts before you even access the building. Flashing above the entrance of the art gallery is a neon light installation, No time/no flower. Pink lines cross out two elements of the façade, a wall rosette and a clock, which are remains of the days when the building was still used as a station. They highlight its changed purpose: We’re accessing an art gallery. No space for decorum and the limits of time.

After entering the show under the scrutinising scan of Portipost, there is literally no way of escaping Erkmen’s artworks. They are everywhere, meaning: in your way, restricting your movements, they are the ground you walk on and the white-tailed Wildebeest peaking at you from the doorway. The taxidermy gnu belongs to one of Erkmen’s most famous installations, Kuckuck (cuckoo), originally presented at the Museum St. Gallen in 2003. With the precision of a cuckoo clock the animal, set on tracks, glides every ten minutes half way through the room until its side-turned head appears in the doorway to the previous room. Then it slides back. The replacement of the European wooden bird by a real African beast is one of the eye-catching and humorous highlights of the show.

The interaction with space is the most consistent topic of the displayed works. The nature of this interaction, however, varies considerably. A few pieces change the appearance of the room as 9’45” with its moving walls or GM, a thick black carpet that only reveals parts of the original floor. Others deal with issues concerning the art market, for instance Imitating Lines, I-MA-GES, or Wuschel, a big bulk of ribbons carrying Ayse Erkmen’s name. Imitating Lines is made up of barriers usually used for keeping a distance between audience and artwork. In the Hamburger Bahnhof, they separate an oddly shaped lift. I-MA-GES, on the other hand, displays monumental-sized advertising pictures leased from a data bank and thus questions common gallery practices. Its enormous size also blocks the audience’s way not on one, but on two floors.

Who is this woman whose work can only be summarized by its conceptual approach? Ayse Erkmen, born in Istanbul, graduated in sculpture at the local State Academy of Fine Arts in 1977. In 1993/94 the DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) invited her to join a Berlin artists’ programme. Since then she has been commuting between Istanbul and Berlin and taught at the Städelschule in Franktfurt am Main for a few years.

Apart from sculptures and installations, the exhibition also includes Erkmen’s complete video works; among them is PFM-1, her most frequently displayed work. It features a green row of cone-shaped figures hopping through the screen making bouncing noises. The abstract shapes are based on computer-animations of land mines. Although their bumping is at first amusing, the repetitive sound quickly becomes annoying and implicates a hidden danger.

Weggefährten is an intelligent, subtle, yet at times amusing show that reminds of the less provocative side about concept art. Erkmen’s reinterpretation of her ‘companions’ works well in the Hamburger Bahnhof, everything seems well-considered and yet not forced. Although the biggest part of the gallery is closed until October and Weggefährten is the only show on display, it makes the Hamburger Bahnhof certainly worth a visit.