AGON
23.05.2017 — 30.06.2017
Galeri Nev Istanbul opens the new season with a group exhibition Agon that will be on view from October 17th to November 22nd. The works in the exhibition are compiled around multiple meanings, associations and a critical reconsideration of the ancient Greek term agon.
In general agon refers to a gathering, struggle, or contest. The term enjoyed a wide range use in ancient Greece from the gathering to watch subsequent contests during Olympic games to the debate between protagonist and antagonist in Classical tragedy resembling dialectic dialogues of Plato. The word is also the root for the political theory of agonism, which should not be confused with antagonism. Chantal Mouffe and Ernesto Laclau point to productive potential of conflict in societies and recapitulate their theory with the term agonistic pluralism. Mouffe&Laclau present agonistic pluralism as a way of countering the rising authoritarian types of discourses and politics in the age of neoliberal hegemony. Claudio Colaguori also discusses the usage of agonism in length. From a sociological point of view Colaguori argues that competitive mode of interaction forms social hierarchies based on competition as a form of exclusion. In that regard cultural ideology of competition operates as a mode of rationality that reinforces the order of domination. These conflicting views about the use of the term in the current political context were the main inspiration behind the idea of putting this show together.
Keeping in mind the distinction between antagonism and agonism, the exhibition aims to offer a venue for contemplating both the productive and destructive capabilities of the conflict. Agon aims to approach the term with a critical distance both through the implications of the works and also in the context of different artistic practices themselves.
Tayfun Erdoğmuş’s water drawings employing Wasserzeichen (Watermark-Fligran) technique playing with the trace and shadow challenges his approach to materiality. Registering the memorial traces within the paper rather than employing them on its surface, the works are presented through a special arrangement of lightning.
Exhibition Views
Artworks
2011
Water paintings
Handmade paper and cotton fiber
68 x 43 cm
Edition of 7
2011
Water paintings
Handmade paper and cotton fiber
68 x 89 cm
Edition of 7