Superfluous

In this solo exhibition, which will be held in the gallery’s project space, the artist Pınar Yoldaş combines sound and synthetic aesthetic to build a connection between mythology, the future of life and philosopher Elizabeth Grosz’s theories of aesthetics.

In her book Chaos, Territory, Art: Deleuze and the Framing of the Earth (2008), Grosz claims that Charles Darwin is the first feminist according to his lesser known theory of ‘sexual selection’. His theory highlights the fact that it is females that drive the sexual characteristics of male animals. Darwin gives the example of male birds, with their beautiful colours and ornamented bodies, and their sonorous call for the female. Accordingly, Grosz argues that our notion of beauty comes from the animal world.

Grosz elaborates: ‘Art is the revelry in the excess of nature, but also revelry in the excess of the energy in our bodies. So we’re not the first artists and we’re perhaps not even the greatest artists, we humans; we take our cue from the animal world. So what is it that appeals to us? It’s the striking beauty of flowers, it’s the amazing colour of birds, it’s the song of birds. In a way, it’s that excess which, I think, is linked to sexuality rather than to creation or production directly.’