Game Nullifies Game
Artists: Genco Gülan, Mehmet Ali Uysal
Curator: Hasan Bülent Kahraman
Freud developed one of his seminal theories by observing children at play. His grandchild, after her her mother left the room, would toss a toy away, saying fort (it’s gone), and then exclaim da (there it is) when it returned. The toy and the act of play became tools for the child to grapple with their sense of loss.
Creativity is a game. It is a toy. Each creative act seeks to heal a deprivation. Following Schopenhauer, humanity is a bearer of the perpetual agony that arises between desire and boredom following the fulfillment of the desire. In deprivation, it yearns and suffers. When it finds what it seeks, satisfaction is fleeting, making way for the torment of boredom and longing.
Creativity is the act of restoring the void, the absent, back to its place: da.
Yet, every creative act ignites a longing for something new. The satisfaction of creativity is soon overtaken by the power of yearning. Each new creation fills the void left by the previous act of creativity but leaves behind a fresh emptiness. Images reaching us since they were first created in the antiquity, altered realities, distorted, and reshaped perceptions, abstraction- they are all extensions of the game we call art. Seriousness is not an obstacle either to play or to the game.
Each new artwork disrupts the game of the one before.
Art: the agony between desire and its fulfillment.
Game: another name for art.
Hasan Bülent Kahraman
Artworks:
Mehmet Ali Uysal
Sunken Wreck, 2024
Metal, dimensions variable
Public collection of Municipality of Bobigny, Paris
Genco Gülan
Dark Side of the Moon, 2024
Chocolate (African origin), polymers and metal, 225 x 100 x 60cm
Reference: Artemis of Ephesus, Roman Period. Ephesus Archaeological Museum, Izmir, TR
* Fair tickets can be purchased from bilet.ci website.