The first solo exhibition of the artist, who started her artistic career with an interdisciplinary approach in New York in the mid-2000s, includes mainly oil on canvas polyptych paintings, as well as mixed-media relief sculptures made of glycerin and soap base and a sound installation titled ‘Jars Reading Poetry to Each Other’. Due to pandemic measures, perhaps you will not be able to spend a long time with the artifacts. Don’t forget to take the catalog of the exhibition with you when you leave. The detailed texts prepared by artist Bihter Yasemin Adalı and art historian Yekhan Pınarlıgil about the exhibition open the door to the inner world of the works.
As we look at Bihter Yasemin Adalı’s landscape paintings between 2011 and 2020, we come across the recurrence of various reservoir images. Pots, baskets, pots, pans, colanders, jam jars, jugs and cubes of all shapes appear in unexpected places in nature. A fruit basket suspended in the middle of a badminton net, a pot climbing a mountain slope, a cherry pie served on a table set on the side of a highway meet our eyes suspended in the midst of action. Like ancient Greek vases, these containers not only hold the liquids they are designed to store, but also carry memories, stories and myths through the paintings on them, transcending the time and context in which they were made.
The artist sees these reservoirs as limbs or external organs that come to the rescue when the internal organs are not enough. Some of these containers function as an additional stomach for digestion, some as an additional brain for good memories, some as an additional heart for wishes that have not yet had their turn, and finally the artist designs a pantry where the living things in all the containers – like relatives living in the same apartment – will stay together and keep their freshness.
What’s in A Pantry Full of Good Feelings? Poems that make jam out of savory moments, Lakoff’s images and stories pouring out of the embodied mind, in Masters and Johnson’s The Cycle of Human Sexuality. In the pantry you will find landscapes of experiences that are as essential and vital to human beings as staple foods such as salt, sugar and flour. Get ready to discover the sacredness hidden in everyday life in the exhibition where you will encounter topographic depictions of sexuality, family and memory.
