Egemen Demirci works with a range of media including text, installation, drawing, and video. In his work he investigates the conceptual boundaries of abstraction, space and exhibition making practices. His practice embodies a critical approach to the notion of reality in contemporary information and algorithm-centric world and employs theoretical analysis in order to form new relationships between subject, object and information.
Egemen Demirci received his MFA in “Public Art and New Artistic Strategies” program at Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany (2009). He took part as a researcher / artist at the Jan Van Eyck Academie Residency program during 2014 – 2015, in Maastricht, Netherlands. Demirci lives and works in Berlin, Germany.
Exhibitions:
2022 “Tabula Rasa / Terrain Vague”, Städtische Galerie Nordhorn, Nordhorn, Germany
2022 “Nature and State”, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany
2021 “All and Nothing”, Galerie Van Gelder, Amsterdam, The Netherlands
2021 “Thinking Hands, Touching Each Other”, The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg, Russia
2021 “State and Nature”, Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, Baden-Baden, Germany
2020 “ Mutadis Mutandis”, Giardini Projects, Venice, Italy
2020 "Exclusive Incline“ – Collaboration with Sunette L. Viljoen, Die Raum, Berlin, Germany
2019 “Imaginary Bauhaus Museum”, Schiller Museum, Weimar, Germany
2019 “Mutterzunge”, Solo presentation, Uqbar, Berlin, Germany
2018 “The Influencing Machine”, NgbK, Berlin, Germany
2018 “There is nothing Left_Abstract!”, Screening , Gijon Film Festival, Gijon, Spain
2016 “Rooms / Räume”, Lindenstrasse 20, Berlin, Germany
2015 “Global Art Progamme, Waiting for Expo 2015”, Milano, Italy
2015 “Reunion” Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
2015 “Girl With the Sun in Her Head”, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands
2013 “future past – past future”, Transmediale Partner Exhibition, Berlin, Germany
2013 “Utopien Vermeiden“ , Werkleitz Festival 2013, Halle (Saale), Germany
2012 “Methodical Inquiries, #7”, Polistar, Istanbul, Turkey
2012 “Making Space”, Global Art Progamme, Waiting for Expo 2015 Residency, Milano, Italy
2011 “Registrierung / Kayit / Registration”, Soy Capitan, Berlin, Germany (solo)
2011 “Taksim 2010-2011”, yama, Istanbul, Turkey
2010 “Where is Now?”, Apartment Project, Istanbul, Turkey
2009 “This Side of Weimar” (Thesis Project), Tourist Info Office, Weimar, Germany
2008 “Wanderlust” ,(Temporary artistic interventions in the gardens and parks), Weimar, Germany
2007 “Wackelkontakt” , Jenoptik Gallery and Jena Kunstverein, Germany
Artist Talks & Presentations:
2018 “The Influencing Machine”, Artist Talk and Presentation at NgbK, Berlin, Germany
2015 “Reunion”, Artist Talk at Sabanci Museum, Istanbul, Turkey
2013 “future past – past future”, Artist Talk at Supermarkt, Transmediale Partner Exhibition, Berlin, Germany
2013 “Utopien Vermeiden“ , Artist Talk, Werkleitz Festival 2013, Halle (Saale), Germany
2012 “Methodical Inquiries, #7”, Presentation at Polistar, Istanbul, Turkey
2010 “Where is Now?”, Artist Talk at Apartment Project, Istanbul, Turkey
Publications:
2018 “The Influencing Machine”, exhibition reader, NgbK, Berlin, Germany
2015 “Girl With the Sun in Her Head”, exhibition catalogue, Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, The Netherlands
2013 “Utopien Vermeiden“ , exhibition catalogue, Werkleitz Festival 2013, Halle (Saale), Germany
2012 “Making Space”, Residency Diary, Global Art Progamme, Waiting for Expo 2015 Residency, Milano, Italy
2011 “Sketches”, XOXO Mag October Issue, Istanbul, Turkey
2010 “Correct Me If I'm Critical”, Berlin, Germany, exhibition map design, exhibition catalogue
Prizes and Fellowships:
2014- 15 Participant at Jan van Eyck Akademie, Maastricht, The Netherlands
2012 February- March, Global Art Programme, “Waiting for Expo 2015” Residency, Milano, Italy
In this two part public installation, the iconic constructivist Main Post Office in the city of Yekaterinburg - previously named as “House of Communications”, by architects Konstantin Solomonov and Veniamin Sokolov completed in 1934 - welcomes the visitors and the public with the text “Во все завтра зпт в которые мы предпочитаем не верить тчк” (To all the futures comma we choose not to believe in stop).
While the material used for the text, sequins made of black squares, is a reference to Malevich’s prototypical painting “Black Square” (1915), the adaptation of telegraph punctuation in the text refers to the origins of long distance written communication style from the past century as well as the history of the building as the main telegraph station for of Sverdlovsk.
At first glance the sentence seems as a nostalgic statement about failed possibilities. However one can see the act of believing also as a destructive act, one that sets the course for accelerating the effect of the entropic force on the object of belief, bringing it rapidly to its end. Through the act of disbelief, the futures become not states of failure but potential destinations to be arrived at.
The second part of the work consists of an installation inside the Post Office, a pavilion built with colored PVC stripes, consisting a desk, a chair, a frame and a post box labeled “2121”. This is a room for contemplation and writing and the visitor is invited to write a letter that will be delivered to the preferred address by the Russian Post in 100 years, in 2121. Taking its cue from Soviet Time Capsules, many of which were unearthed on the centenary of the October Revolution in 2017, the work aims to develop the idea by removing the “open to the public” aspect of time capsules and containing it as a service offered by the Russian Post with a delivery address specified by the person writing the letter. The letters will be collected from the Post Box in the installation and will be kept in a museum archive for 100 years, then to be given back to the Post Office for delivery in 2121. Those that are delivered will remain in the private use of the addressee. Only the returning envelopes that could not be delivered will be sent back to the museum for research and exhibiting purposes for the consideration of the museum staff.
By removing the public access of the letters the work remains as a service confining its scope to a private connection of individuals with the addressee, be it other individuals, companies, or institutions. As the text outside aims to reverse the nostalgic relationship between future and belief, this service also creates another turn by allowing a personal communication in the future by replacing the public with private.
Where does a movement, an act, end? An extension of a building, like an awning, is a response to the practical conditions and potential use of the space. It answers to a need that is created through the very architectural decision-making process that formed the space. It is an element that comes after, and is always dependent on previous decisions. It is usually the most vulnerable, as well as easiest to discard, compared with the structure. When it moves further, it creates its own space; as its inclination extends it starts demanding its own needs and conditions. Yet it is up to the inhabitants of the exclusive solitude to determine the authenticity of these demands, while time judges the necessity of them.
Within this private-public canopy, one can think about the motivation in personal and public life that follows a similar path and creates its own needs and spaces. In the axis of guilt and innocence, and by extension victimhood, the deed is a shadow cast by guilt. Guilt can be a privileged position that rarely demands an end to an act, it can become a protective extension for the continuation of an act. Within this temporal contingency, the order of dependency is reversed. As long as the awning is there, the building exists. In this specific case, it makes us turn our backs to the room, to ignore the volume it was supposed to shield.
Photo: © Jan Windszus
Limitation is the key for control. As the internet developed into a primary commercial area of advertising and capital control, Google not only rose as the main player but also took over the infrastructure of how and what we see in the design of this once thought to be an emancipatory field of communication. The real estate of our screens is chopped not only by the people who are designing the web pages but also by Google into commercial spaces. “Ads by Google” come only in specific locations on a website and only in specific sizes and aimed at one thing, receiving “clicks” in order to suck the user into maze like tunnels of multilayered identification as a consumer. This industry developed many jargons one of which plays an important role in the interface of these ads: “Call to Action” which comes either in the form of “fake” buttons or text on an ad, operates on an instinctual level, constantly directing the users to take an “action” in which most of the work will be done by Analytics software or the code, in order to convert the user into an identifiable persona.
In this series of works, which take the name “Call to Action” from this jargon, there are multiple sizes of glass prints each exactly the same size of the screens of the most used mobile devices like phones and tablets. Each image repeats the structure and size of the displays of Google Ads, offering philosophical concepts as action buttons / texts. These works are accompanied by another text installation that references the ontological condition, surfacing from the other side of this network mechanism, “targeting”.