Whenever: Can Sayınlı, Jørgen Evil Ekvoll

Following the vivid exhibition of ‘Whatever’ in 2007, Galerist presents the sequel ‘Whenever’ with three astonishing works by Can Sayınlı and Jørgen Evil Ekvoll. Drifting away from the world of war and politics, easy gratification and twisted structures presented in ‘Whatever’, they now weave us into a mystic universe in Death, Heaven and Hell, and back again to the flesh of life, through Resurrection.   

The work of ‘Whenever’ explores the delicacy of life and our fears and hopes of what lies beyond. Our certainty in life and its truncation into death give us comfort, but our certainty is a myth. While each rug knots a question in our core of what we think we know, glossing a religious vision through its silky innocent feel, it also leaves us to ponder whether all our intuition and knowledge actually do foreshadow what awaits each and everyone of us, whenever that may be. Their art transcends the issue of what separates man from man, towards what separates life from death.   

Having met in London, the collaboration between Can Sayınlı (Turkey) and Jørgen Evil Ekvoll (Norway) began in 2003 through unique works that merged two styles, two traditions into one image. When does two become one? When does confusion become clarity? When does resistance become resonance? Together, their works highlight dichotomies and the chaos conventional to day-to-day life. While emphasizing these truths symbolically and with tokenistic motifs, they intensify the experience through a fusion of each other’s perspectives.

‘Whatever’ was an exploratory voyage through the worldly doses of drugs, music, war and hedonism dedicated to the ongoing cycle of life we have seen and heard about through generations. How to live / How not to live versus how we do live. ‘Whenever’, the next cycle of existence, demonstrates the artists’ evolution into a spiritualism detached from the childlike play of material indulgences. It carries us through the cycle of ourselves, the individual, and into the cycle of living and dying, life and death.

 

Can Sayınlı lives and works in London, while Jørgen Ekvoll is now based in Oslo. The exhibition is presented from 19 April – 21 May 2011 at Galerist / Akaretler (Istanbul) and will be showcasing 3 Hereke rugs designed and commissioned by the artists over a 3 year period.