We live in a visual age. Our pastimes are often dictated by those things we like to observe, in art galleries, at the cinema, at the zoo. In this surveillance-heavy era, our desire to watch often goes unchecked. Cameras dictate our day-to-day existence, we chase after images that fit our expectations and concepts of beauty, of nature, of gaze-worthiness. Our eyes are trained to seek out, capture, and fix on that which has meaning to us and could be potentially shared.

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But are we critical enough of that which we look at and the position from which we look at it? We set definitions for the subject and the object, we break down the constructs of viewing in the hopes that we don’t fall into a pre-manipulated, voyeuristic trap. Men should not objectify women, tourists should seek the unbeaten path, no one should remain in the position of “the other”. It’s rude to stare. more »

For a long time, contemporary art was strictly a national phenomenon in Turkey and was therefore, to a large extent, ignored internationally. This has changed. In the 1970s and 80s, artists such as Füsun Onur, Ayse Erkmen, Gülsün Karamustafa, Hale Tenger have begun to break through traditional and national orientations and to bring in international influences. As international attention grew stronger in the 90s and the Istanbul Biennales offered venues of presentation and publicity to the more progressive contemporary art of Turkey, awareness of the value of this art and its development was promoted locally. The recent generation of Turkish artists profited from these changes both thematically and professionally.

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One of the internationally renowned Turkish artists of the post-2000 generation is Ahmet Ögüt. The past twelve months of the 27-year-old artist, who lives and works in Istanbul and Amsterdam, have been densely packed: his work has been featured in group exhibitions in San Francisco, Berlin, Sydney, Athens, Eindhoven, Seoul, Helsinki, Santa Fe, Nimes, Malmö, Stockholm, Zagreb, London, Banja Luka, and Stuttgart. In addition, he has had solo exhibitions in Basel and Barcelona, three Biennales, as well as numerous online and print contributions. more »

Lastplak, a Netherlands word for the last “gang” and the ultimate pest, call themselves the Graffiti Collective and hail from the Dutch port city, Rotterdam. Lastplak, internationally reknown in the graffiti scene, consists of a group of ten young artists. They work in the collective individually and in interchanging constellations. They are united by their love of the work, their openness with one another, and the freedom to regard art as their common project. On the occasion of their exhibition in the Galerie Inoperable in Vienna, we welcomed Lastplak with a grey shutter in front of a shop, twenty spray-paint cans, and just as many cans of Ottakringer beer. The results of that combination can be seen on this CastYourArt podcast, accompanied by music contributed by the Dutch rapper, DuvelDuvel. (wh/jn)

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