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Ahu Akgün

September 09 - October 15, 2022

Opening: September 09, Friday, 6pm-8pm

Mixer is proud to present Ahu Akgün’s solo exhibition Voids. The artist’s second solo exhibition at Mixer, Voids can be visited between September 9 and October 15.

The exhibition, focuses on the intangible gaps created by the emotional states following the losses experienced by artist Ahu Akgün. The exhibition presents the audience with canvas works painted by the artist as if writing compassionate and poetic prose and an installation comprising bouquets of withering flowers.

The exhibition examines the “things” transformed by the sense of mourning that arises and keeps changing in wake of people, emotions, venues, and objects that have left a mark on the artist’s life and shares her healing process with the audience. The artist, in her paintings, wanders around the losses and presents, instead of the original subjects, the voids left by them and the new versions they have assumed. She reinvestigates the change of these voids over time and reflects the emotions caused by this transformation in her practice. Meanwhile, she includes the objects that witness either the whole process or just that instance. Each object in the artist’s paintings stands to prove not only a substantial reason for existence but also the transformation after mourning in addition to their own.

The artist’s work “I Want Them to Live” from her exhibition Sebeb-i Ziyaret at Mixer in 2020 makes for the origin of the exhibition Voids. Throughout the exhibition, the withered flowers, depicted as if raising one’s glass to each lost moment, accompany other instances. The painting “Voids” which lends its name to the exhibition is a purple scarf which had been all around the house for décor when she was a child and serves no importance to her mother but is of great value to the artist. The audience is faced with the metaphor of how each lost knot reminds us of lost time. The “Out of Play” series offers us the sequence of moments where the artist is fighting the subject lost under titles of defense, attack, and parry. Hinting at the fact that the process of settling with the past is still ongoing, the series is presented as the state of studying the possibility of seeing those who are drawing farther from a different perspective.

Ahu Akgün’s second solo exhibition Voids is shaped by the theme of transformation, focusing on the mental twist experienced by the subject in the face of loss and how they come to accept this and make it a part of their life. The exhibition also displays an installation that fills Mixer’s project room with living flowers and encompasses the entire show as a sign of re-finding life after getting lost and phasing out.

Ahu Akgün’s second solo exhibition Voids can be visited at Mixer between September 9 and October 15, 2022.