Nergiz Yeşil

Paleontology Museum

7 Kasım - 21 Aralık, 2019

 

Pg Art Gallery is pleased to host the artist Nergiz Yeşil, who prioritizes the production/use of biological materials and environmental awareness in art practice, in her first solo exhibition titled “Paleontology Museum” between the dates of 07 November - 07 December 2019.

The artist’s installation-museum exhibition within the series titled Same Origin Different Species “The Other Probable Normals” brings criticism to the relativity of historiography and epistemology by revealing an alternative mental reality with a premise to its cumulative structure.

This installation-museum with its structure including an information book, skin samples, bone references, fossil specimens and genealogy information presents the fictional-probable paleontology of the so-called species. The biological material obtained from a Manchurian mushroom culture and used to simulate the skin sample of the fictional species was produced by the artist in her workshop through fermentation.

Dr. Elif M. Özcan's, a scientist working in the field of regenerative and translational medicine in jaw and facial surgery, exhibition reading notes on Yeşil’s art practice in its relation to the science-art association…

“This exhibition approaches one of the basic thought fields of natural sciences, the concept of the origin of species within the epistemological and scientific critical thinking system and constitutes a paradigm shift in the mind of the audience referencing the invasion of time dimension, chronology and objectivity.

The artist, while forcing the limit of the inability of the human mind to imagine what was never seen before, reveals the grandeur of organizing from mediocrity in an explicit and simple way, and invites the viewer to reflect on the thoughts of deterministic and indeterministic natural processes that result in vague systemic forms.

With the help of the contrast created by the concepts of grandiose and modest, the exhibition provides the audience with an alternative to learning to learn while guiding the audience to advanced work pursuits, the iterative process of artist history and the technique of works of art, and layered readings.”

From the pen of Idil Deniz Türkmen, the art writer and the Director of the Museum of Innocence

“Welcome to the Museum of Paleontology. What you will see in a little while is a part of the miracles of this ancient world that has not yet come to light. Step inside and face the miracles of life. A big bone will welcome you at the entrance. It will be followed by fossils, skin samples, the genealogy of the species and the samples of that species. You think you know all the living things on Earth? Do not be that certain.

…..shows the audience a small fragment of a species that does not exist and arouses in them the necessary curiosity to do their own research. The audience leaves the exhibition with an uncertainty about the reality of what they saw.”

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Nergiz Yeşil (b. 1988, Istanbul) graduated from the Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University, Faculty of Fine Arts, Department of Sculpture in 2014. Since 2017, she has been continuing her graduate studies in the same educational institution and department. In 2018, she resided in Antwerp, Belgium (Artesis Plantijn Hogeshool Antwerpen - The Royal Academy of Fine Arts Antwerp - Sculpture Department with Erasmus Student Exchange Program). She has participated in many group exhibitions in Europe and Turkey. She continues to live and work in Istanbul.