Turning The Corner That Never Comes

Turning The Corner That Never Comes (studio shot). 110 paintings from the Altes Nationalgalerie photographed from the side and collaged onto Plexiglass foil with laser-cut magnifying sheets. 50 x 200 cm installed into corner.

--- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - ----

____I will be participating in the 21st International Istanbul Art Fair http://www.istanbulsanatfuari.com/

in participation with the non-profit German-Turkish artist group

http://www.rhmix.com/

--- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- - ----.

"When we look at a painting we take the frame to be part of the wall, yet when we look at the wall the frame is taken to be part of the painting."

From the essay Parergon in The Truth in Painting p. 61, Jacques Derrida.

Short Artist Statement Regarding the Work:

Of the 110 photographs of paintings I took at the Altes Nationalegalerie principally only the frames are visible. The standpoint of the camera is perpendicular to the face of the painting, bringing the liminal (the frame) to the fore. I chose to take these photographs in the Altes Nationalgalerie for purely pragmatic reasons. The architectural layout of the museum allows one to photograph a large number of paintings in the collection from an almost perfect perpendicular angle by standing in the entrances in between the small circular galleries. This "side view" reveals the mechanisms of hanging these valuable paintings: alarm-wires, hanging wires, foam cubes and bits of wood to correctly position the paintings, hooks, nails, bolts, masking tape to neatly arrange all the wires and some type of plastic boarding.

My personal and honest impetus for Turning The Corner That Never Comes was to play with a certain denial of vision and doubt regarding the hope of art.

Doubt: I was repeatedly told as a child that "Jesus was right around the corner," a corner I suppose he has been turning for the last 2000 years. This

Nonsensical statement "turning the corner that never comes" connotes two simultaneous physical states, continual turning and secondly something akin to standing still—the engagement in a futile action that leads to nothing (beating a dead horse), a ‘nothingness action’ e.g. "art making." Like I said, this is just a play with these ideas, these fears, which occasionally occupy my mind. Lastly, by bringing the frames and mechanisms of their hanging to the fore, these great works of art by Adolph Menzel and others are reduced to mere wares denying their vision.

Denying Vision: At the outer edges of Turning The Corner That Never Comes the paintings are photographed from a perfect 90º angle to the canvas plane, as the images get closer to the center/ corner, the photographed paintings slowly begin to reveal themselves as if entering a gallery and turning the corner from the side of the painting towards its face. However, just as this unveiling begins it ends abruptly in the crevice of the corner.