International Blindness exhibition @Galeri Zilberman | Istanbul

Intertional Blindness exhibition @ Galeri Zilberman | Istanbul
January 10–February 22, 2014

image: Liddy Scheffknecht, Crop, lambda print ; 

photo credit : Galeri Zilberman | Istanbul

Galeri Zilberman presented Inattentional Blindness, an exhibition curated by Işın Önol, featuring works by Sophie Dvořák, Şakir Gökçebağ, Berat Işık, Claudia Larcher, Bernd Oppl, Liddy Scheffknecht, and Aylin Tekiner.

The term "inattentional blindness" is coined in psychology and refers to the condition that the subject fails to notice a fully visible but unexpected object because attention has been engaged on another task, event or object. This phenomenon is not the result of visual impair or deficiency.

The exhibition at Galeri Zilberman focuses on how this failure in perception is instrumental in the manipulation of awareness of what is visible in the fields of media, politics, education and advertising. It problematizes the role of vision in this process, from a physical, social, emotional and mental perspective. The artists in the exhibition deploy various strategies in relation to notions of visibility and perception.

The omnipresence of stereotypical political gestures, the violent practices of supressing inverse public opinions and their social consequences as well as the normalization processes of our perception are raised in Sophie Dvořák's triptych drawings: I: Agree/II: Demonstrate/III: Arrest.

Claudia Larcher's video animation Heim challenges our spatial perception, creating a new dimension between photography and cinema. Berat Işık's videos deals with the notion of otherness, focusing on the strong connection between physical and social invisibility: Dancer in the Dark invites the audience to question their participation in social blindness, whereas Eyes Wide Shut concentrates on the mechanisms of keeping masses blind. Apocalypse Please on the other hand imagines a family representing the suppressed other, deciding to abolish their sense of sight.

In his site-specific installation Untitled (biscuits), Şakir Gökçebağ produces an abstract image by inlaying biscuits on the wall, forcing the connection between already existing information and vision, shifting the possible connotations that are embedded in such everyday objects. At his photography work Untitled (leaves), he creates optical illusions by directly manipulating the leaves he shoots, instead of digitally retouching them.

A game of soccer is reduced to the shadows of the players on the field in Liddy Scheffknecht's video Outshine, while her work Crop persuasively connects an otherwise irrelevant shadow and a false object, by shifting the viewers' attention.

With her performative act in her triptych video Exiled / Scent / Sorrow, Aylin Tekiner contributes to information manipulation processes, focusing on three massacres took place in the recent history, and uses the aesthetics of storytelling, college books representing official histories and news reports. Bernd Oppl's version of Angular Field addresses questions on the subjectivity of perception, and the interaction between the virtual space and the autonomous object. While his works Sick Building and Delay Room shift viewers' perception of the architectural space, the work Hotel Room goes a step forward, presenting a subtly and gradually icing hotel room.

The exhibition Inattentional Blindness is accompanied by a catalogue, and will be on view through February 22.

practical info:
Galeri Zilberman
Istiklal Cad. Mısır Apt. 
No:163 K.2 D.5,  34433 
Beyoğlu/Istanbul
Turkey
www.galerizilberman.com