The Sequential

SALT | Istanbul, Turkey

SAHA provided support for five independent presentations by Barış Doğrusöz, Deniz Gül, Volkan Aslan, Aykan Safoğlu, and the duo Fatma Belkıs & Onur Gökmen at SALT throughout 2021. Supported by SAHA, "The Sequential" included in the 2021-2022 public programs of three member institutions of L’Internationale—Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid), Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie (Warsaw) and M HKA, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Antwerp)—following the initial presentations at SALT Galata. 

The works in “The Sequential” look into the notion of “symbolic power” through the exploration of historiography, language, public sphere, symbolic capital, and modernization, respectively. The program aims to provide a wider space for expression for each artist, rather than adopting the traditional setting of a collective exhibition and comparison space. 

Following Barış Doğrusöz’s exhibition in January-March 2021, the second presentation "Scratch and Surface" by Deniz Gül exhibited at SALT Galata Istanbul until 13 June.  In her works in Scratch and Surface, the second exhibition of The Sequential program, Gül moves away from visual media, and uses words to oppose the definition of language as little more than a means of communication. In Stay Safe, the third exhibition of SALT’s The Sequential program, artist Volkan Aslan refers to the challenges facing Istanbul, and the volatile moods shaped by the contemporary political climate. 
The exhibition Belkıs Hanım and Onur Efendi revolves around the identity of an “intellectual” that emerged with the process of modernization, and the turbulent states of mind that it brought about. Fatma Belkıs and Onur Gökmen question the possibility that the elitist avant-garde attitude attributed to the intelligentsia is inherited across generations from the Tanzimat era. In Recess, which is the last of SALT’s The Sequentialprogram, the artist draws on notions of indebtedness and asset borrowed from economics and looks at the reverberations of these terms in his own life story. Aykan Safoğlu’s practice is based on investigations of the formal and conceptual possibilities within the transitions between still and moving images. The exhibition will be shown at SALT Galata until April 24.

SALT, together with the Reina Sofia team, selected five videos from The Sequential, a series of independent exhibitions initiated as part of the institution’s 10th anniversary. The works scrutinize respectively the politics of excavation through a re-reading of the colonial discourse in Sandstorm and the Oblivion (2017) by Barış Doğrusöz, conceptual play on the use of language in Kartpostal [Postcard] (2017–2020) by Deniz Gül, a critical approach to everyday violence in Volkan Aslan’s Best Wishes (2019), the struggles of modernization, reflected upon in Fatma Belkıs and Onur Gökmen’s dark comedy Alakadar [The Connected] (2021), and identity politics brought into the open in Aykan Safoğlu’s Hundsstern steigt ab[Dog Star Descending] (2020). Bringing these works together, the screening aims to deal with issues of symbolic power through the conceptual vocabulary emerging in the artists’ practice.

Following the screening program on November 19-20, 2021, at Museo Reina Sofía, The Sequential included in the 2022 public programs of two other member institutions of L’Internationale—Muzeum Sztuki Nowoczesnej w Warszawie (Warsaw) and M HKA, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Antwerp). 

PROGRAM
November 19–20, 2021, 18.00
Sabatini Auditorium, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (Madrid)

Barış Doğrusöz, 

Sandstorm and the Oblivion, 2017, 8’

Deniz Gül, Kartpostal [Postcard], 2017–2020, 4.5’

Volkan Aslan, En İyi Dileklerimle [Best Wishes], 2019, 9’

Fatma Belkıs & Onur Gökmen, Alakadar [The Connected], 2021, 23’

Aykan Safoğlu, Hundsstern steigt ab [Dog Star descending], 2020, 12’