Can art sweep a person off their feet? What about love?
Following successful exhibitions last year in Milan, Zagreb, Paris, and Seoul, Genco Gülan’s exhibition titled “I Love You” meets viewers at Pg Art Gallery on February 14, Valentine’s Day.
Gülan’s “I Love You” series is a continuation of his earlier exhibition “Dream,” previously shown at Pg Art Gallery. In “Dream,” the artist produced digital works through computer modeling. This time, however, he has captured athletes in moments of free fall in the sky through photography and video. With these new works — in which computer intervention is kept to a minimum — Gülan demonstrates that human beings can fly.
For this project, the artist worked for two years with champion “Platform and Springboard Diving” athletes affiliated with the Turkish Swimming Federation. The shoots, carried out in İzmir, involved numerous athletes and coaches of different ages and categories. In the few seconds of free fall after leaping from a ten-meter platform, all the athletes — particularly Erinç Kuzucu and Çağla Tokat — delivered remarkable performances.
The exhibition’s title, “I Love You,” plays with both metaphorical and literal meanings. The phrase reminds us that in Old Turkish the word “uçmak” (to fly) also meant paradise. While visualizing humanity’s eternal dream, Gülan’s works also directly reference Yves Klein’s 1960 performance photograph Le Saut dans le Vide (Leap into the Void).
Selected by Juan Santos, editor of the Paris-based magazine Idoménée, and presented with an introduction by Marcus Graf, the works — for which a special section has been dedicated — can be viewed at Pg Art Gallery until March 7, 2009.
