"I find it fascinating when my works surprise me."
Ayse
Erkmen's Temporary Interventions
Ayse
Erkmen realized her most ambitious project to date for Deutsche Bank's
"Moment" art series. For "Shipped Ships," the Turkish artist had three
passenger ferries with their crews shipped by freighter from Venice,
Istanbul, and Japan to Frankfurt. In Frankfurt, she teaches at the Städel
School where she has had an influence on such different artists as
Michaela Meise and Villa Romana Fellow Dani Gal. Tim Ackermann met
Ayse Erkmen in Berlin prior to her large-scale retrospective
"Weggefährten" at the Hamburger Bahnhof.
Ayse
Erkmen, Shipped Ships, 2001,
for"Moment",
Deutsche Bank's series of temporary art projects,
Transport
of one of the ferries to Frankfurt am Main
Maybe
it happened this way, maybe not: the Turkish language has a verb tense
that does not exist in any other language. It is the tense of hearsay, of
fables and dreams. It expresses the speaker's uncertainty in a wide
variety of syllable combinations that tag along behind the verb like
guilty schoolboys. "It could be." "Perhaps." In his book Istanbul,
Orhan Pamuk wrote
that the "mis" past tense is "the appropriate tense for expressing
everything we've experienced in the cradle, in the baby stroller, or
during the first wobbly steps we took." It is the tense for vague memories.
Ayse
Erkmen, Am Haus,
permanent
installation in Berlin, 1994,
Courtesy
Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
A
residential building stands on the lively Heinrichplatz in
Berlin-Kreuzberg; adhered to its façade are the end syllables of the "mis"
tense, cut out of black Plexiglas. A large number of ethnic Turks cross
this plaza every day and read Erkmen's gigantic grammar of the approximate
installed over the very concrete stones of the tenant building. Perhaps
they become aware of a cultural loss, because for some time now, many of
the migrant children born in Berlin no longer have a command of the "mis"
tense, a standard part of the everyday language of the educated class.
On
the House is the title of this work, which Ayse
Erkmen made in 1994; using relatively simple means, it illustrates
highly complex relationships of belonging and alienation, migration and
change. As a permanent installation, the work is now an unofficial part of
the major Ayse Erkmen retrospective opening soon in Hamburger
Bahnhof in Berlin. The exhibition traces the most important artistic
developments in the Turkish artist's work. The title of the show, Weggefährten
(Travel Companions), does not, in fact, refer to collaborating with
colleagues at all. "I usually work alone," explains Erkmen in an interview
in the Barbara Weiss gallery.
She liked the title Weggefährten because of its associations:
"I think it's a good word, because it contains the idea of travel and the
road."
Ayse
Erkmen, Sculptures on Air, 1997
Skulpturprojekte
Münster 1997
Photo: Ayse
Erkmen
Courtesy Galerie Barbara
Weiss, Berlin
The image of a path is a
leitmotif running throughout Erkmen's work. Travel and motion are
important components in many of her works. She had live tigers set out in
the Zeche
Zollverein in Essen; 19th-century sandstone figures flown with a
helicopter onto the roof of the Westfälische
Landesmuseum. Her most ambitious project to date was incontestably the
action Shipped Ships of 2001, in which she had three passenger
ferries from Venice, Istanbul, and Japan shipped complete with their
original crews to the Main River in Frankfurt. Erkmen's work marked the
beginning of Deutsche
Bank's project series Moment,
for which temporary art actions are carried out in public space. After
being transported on the backs of huge container ships first to Rotterdam
and then up the Rhine, they resumed their regular service on the Main
River for a predetermined length of time. "The part of the project that
excited me most was when the ferries were allowed to travel on the other
ships," says Erkmen. "It was the only time when they could take a break,
step out of their daily routine."
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Ayse Erkmen, Shipped Ships, 2001,
for"Moment",
Deutsche Bank's series of temporary art projects
Courtesy
Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
In this
vein, traveling has something subversive about it. It is a form of refusal
to feel part of a particular place or group — a possibility to escape all
those things that are usually expected of one. The artist often sets her
abstract works of art in motion, as well: her empty, sheet-metal-plated
freight elevator that moved constantly up and down between two floors at
the 4th
Biennale in Istanbul in 1995, for instance, or the monochrome banners
of fabric that rose and fell at regular intervals at the Sculpture
Center in Long Island City, New York in 2005. Minimalism, augmented by
the element of time—in effect, a break with Minimal Art and its claim to a
timeless, universal validity.
Ayse
Erkmen, Busy Colors, 2005
Sculpture
Center, Long Island City
Photo:
Oren Slor
Courtesy Sculpture
Center und
Galerie Barbara
Weiss, Berlin
Minimalism's reduced
formal language fascinated her already as a young artist, Erkmen says.
Born 1949 in Istanbul, where she began studying art in 1969, she was
initially trained as a classical sculptress, although she was far more
interested in contemporary artists like Robert
Morris and Richard
Serra. As soon as her professors graded them, she got rid of the
sculptures she made. "I had no room to store them anywhere," Erkmen
recalls. "Because the studio was situated directly by the sea, I threw the
works into the water. Perhaps the fact of having to discard the sculptures
resulted in permanence becoming less and less important to me. I don't
really know anymore." In any case, she learned to distance herself from
the materiality of her art.
Ayse
Erkmen, Ohne Titel, 2003
Deutsche
Bank Collection, © Ayse Erkmen/Courtesy Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin
Today,
following numerous participations in biennials, exhibitions in Europe, the
US, and New Zealand, Ayse Erkmen is one of the most important contemporary
artists around — and certainly one of the most underestimated. Young
artists like Ceal
Floyer and Jeppe Hein appear
to draw on her work. Yet the public often reacts in a rather distanced way
to her "difficult" room interventions. And despite her biography, Erkmen
is anything but a media star. "I think it has something to do with coming
from Turkey," she says. "From the very beginning, no one had any
expectations of me, and so I grew accustomed to not having any
expectations myself. It's a form of freedom I've attained and that I'd
like to hold onto. I find it fascinating when my works surprise me."
Ayse
Erkmen, Jalousie / blind, 2007
installation
view Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin, 2007
Photo:
Jens Ziehe,
Courtesy Galerie
Barbara Weiss, Berlin
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