ERSAN DEVECI'S "HOLY MACHINE" EXHIBITION AT MERKUR 

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Ersan Deveci's second solo exhibition “The Sacred Machine” opens on Wednesday, March 12, 2014 at MERKUR.

Ersan Deveci uses a graphic and illustrative aesthetic language to produce his works mostly through object images; determines the thematic framework of his artistic practice by referring to their symbolic, imaginary, ideological and cultural codes. Militarism wanders in heterogeneous and transitive areas of many concepts and phenomena that are intertwined today, such as violence, pleasure, personal / collective memory, identity, public / privacy, popular culture.

In this exhibition titled “The Sacred Machine”, the artist focuses on the tools, machines and systems of technological and industrial civilization. According to him, these images, despite their aesthetic and functional values, imply the uneasy relationship between human and technology; It also reflects an ambivalence towards our technologically improved lifestyles. The concept of technology, which was initially accepted as an intervention in the divine realm, was later seen as the key that opens the door to fantastic worlds with an optimistic,  utopian approach; turned into tools of power.  For this reason, the detail, agglomeration and chaotic structures in these tools and equipment, which evoke dystopian objects, ironically call up an almost irrational void.

 

The special technique used by the artist in the production of painting strangely transforms the painting itself into an industrial production object.  The vivid glossy surfaces he creates make the viewer a part of a technology-centered show and loosen the connections with the real, allowing the image to become fetishized.

 

The artist's desire to hide the trace of hand production as much as possible with the Airbrush technique he uses in his works, in which he emphasizes the concern of surface aesthetics, and the fact that the production process itself is a performative activity indicates a photorealist attitude.