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Ahmet Öğüt:  It Can and Has Been

Dirimart

September 1, 2021 – October 3, 2021


Ahmet Öğüt’s latest solo exhibition at Dirimart, he is focused on the creation of sustainable ideas and the reinterpretation of daily life through art. There are a large variety of performances, drawings, video works, installations and spatial interventions.

Öğüt sets a scene where the viewers become performers through their memories related to recent history. that collectively experienced by people residing in Istanbul are triggered. It can and has been offers an exhibition experience differentiating from the ones the viewers are accustomed to: upon their entrance, they are informed about the fact that they might undergo surprising circumstances. Thus, the viewers naturally become performers in the exhibition. An intercity bus, having once served as a vehicle for 24-hour long journeys across Turkey, welcomes the visitors at the main entrance of the gallery with an unexpected setting inside which offers a journey with no distance covered. The viewers are directed to leave the gallery space and re-enter it from the garden entrance, unlike the usual rotation they follow. Ahmet Öğüt’s work seems hard to be unified within certain characteristics of our ages’ contemporary art understanding. Humour almost always assembles his works as an entity. This frequently used tool by the artist enables the viewer to face brutal facts that are usually avoided during our daily lives. Encountering Öğüt’s work becomes a sort of invitation for a social engagement. Initiating conversations, Ahmet Öğüt, then leaves us with the following thought: All that is odd can happen and it always has been this way.


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