Sefer Memişoğlu, 5 April — 6 June 2023

Light is everywhere; it surrounds us. But how can we see light if we cannot see without light? A poetic and philosophical approach to an omnipresent phenomenon is central to Sefer Memişoğlu’s solo exhibition curated by Sanneke Huisman at Depo İstanbul, after its first presentation at Bradwolff Projects in Amsterdam.

The title of the exhibition is derived from the essay of the same name by Italo Calvino; in The Eye’s Ray, the Italian writer and journalist describes the eye as the basis of the human brain and therefore of human thinking and acting. Calvino goes back to the origin of scientific thinking about the eye, which is remarkably inventive. Early scientists claimed that the act of seeing was performed by luminous arrows coming from the brain; they described light as a spiritual force that actively illuminated the outside world.

Using these and other possible interpretations as a starting point, Memişoğlu presents an overview of his work on this subject matter over the last few years. Calvino’s visual analysis of sight and light is reminiscent of cinema and photography techniques, allowing light rays to create a print or an illuminated illusion in time. Black and white photography and cinema are preceded by paintings full of light-dark contrast, chiaroscuro, or rock paintings created by firelight. In line with Memişoğlu’s fascination with art history, the myth of Prometheus is also an important source of inspiration for his work. This Titan from Greek mythology descended into a darkened world to bring fire to humanity. Prometheus taught man how to make steel, thus making it possible for civilization to be born. However, fire also brought the possibility of destruction. The resulting civilization that was created from this was also immediately endangered. Where there is light there is darkness too.

The works in The Eye’s Ray hark back to these great stories, but at the same time create a new visual language. Within works in a variety of mediums, ranging from video to drawing and sculpture, light returns as a leading theme. The works in this exhibition appear as expressive and mysterious fragments from an unknown story. It is up to the viewer to let the light shine.

Vision and sight are central in “The Eye’s Ray” by the Italian novelist and essayist Italo Calvino. In this text, he goes back to early scientific theories. For early scientists, vision was both a mental and physical process. According to them, sight started inside the brain and came out of the eyes as beams of light. This illuminating power can nowadays be found in cinema and photography, like the beamers in this exhibition that are beaming light until they find a surface that can make the light concrete - and thus can make something visible. In line with Calvino’s essay, Sefer Memişoğlu’s exhibition “The Eye’s Ray” shows different views on light, sight and the illuminating gaze.

Have for instance a look at portrait of the French philosopher Guy Debord. As the founder of the Situationists, he is most well-known for his book, “The Society of the Spectacle”, an example of Marxist critical theory published in 1967. On this drawing by Memişoğlu, Debord looks at us frontally, as if he is illuminating the spectator to see who is in front of him. Despite the very realistic representation, the drawing has an elusive quality. The face is depicted as a frozen mask; the gaze is somewhat absent. Memişoğlu compiled and combined many photographs of Debord to serve as the model for this drawing. The presented subject is thus not taken from reality, but is a representation of a photographic reality. Debord is transformed into a layered mask, looking at all the artists or photographers that were once in front of him. He is looking at these people, who want to capture his images and his gaze, hiding behind a camera or paper. The drawing of Debord is one of a man looking at so many, that we don’t see him anymore. In “The Society of the Spectacle”, Debord warned us for an overload of the spectacle. We here see a demonstration of what this causes: a permanent state of alienation.

This brings us to another important figure in this exhibition: Medusa. The beams of light that comes out of her eyes don’t only enable her to see, it is a gaze that can turn anyone into stone: the darkest light is spread from the eyes of Medusa. But if Medusa encounters her own gaze, all that is left is darkness. So, where there is light, there is darkness too. Too much light can eventually bring darkness. But don’t be afraid that this will be a merely dark exhibition. “The Eye’s Ray” doesn’t plead for darkness nor light, it mostly shows how much one can’t exist without the other. The trick is not to be scared of the dark, but embrace the beauty of the interplay between light and shadow.

Sanneke Huisman (1985) studied art history and works as a critic and curator. The layered method and the (art) historical consciousness in Memişoğlu’s work speak to her. She lives and works in Amsterdam.

In Greek mythology Medusa is a monster that belongs to the underworld of darkness. Only beheading kills her, but even then her eyes turn gazers into stone. Freud analyzed this figure in his book ‘Medusa’s Head’. For him Medusa provides the image of castration. Another interpretation of the story is that it is about killing and rape resulting from an invasion, a disaster. The traumatized population can not talk about what really happened, the truth causes such unbearable pain that it becomes tabu. Much later the horrendous events of the past are expressed through the embodiment of the Medusa figure in the cultural life of the population. The snakes refer to male sexual organs, her hair represents the pubic female hair and the beheaded head symbolizes the murderous invasion and decapitation. Her petrifying gaze is the impossibility to face the horrible truth. Being turned into stone can be about losing your faith, not feeling anything, anesthesia, facing the truth turns you to darkness. This nihilism and concept of disasters are very much present within our times. The Medusa figure becomes a perfect key stone for The Eye’s Ray. First of all The Laugh of The Medusa is very much in playful relation with the drawing based works. It relates to the concept of haptic vision where the eye and the hand are in coordination to ‘illuminate’ the outside world. The gazing of the artist at the paper in coordination with sensorimotor performative action of the laboring hand is actually also a kind of petrification. As the gaze of Medusa turns the one who looks at her into stone, the mental image is captured in solid form with the mechanical pencil on paper. Another theme is that of facing the truth; within the myth of Medusa, it is located on the face of Medusa, particularly at her eyes. When you dare to gaze at them, they turn you into stone. The artist or intellectual also keeps her/his gaze at the truth. The Medusa head is an embodiment of truth, keeping your gaze on it is facing the senselessness of life and all other unbearable facts of it. Thats makes you melancholic or depressed or oppositely you become immune to all grim things happening in reality and you don’t feel anything anymore. That is being petrified, turning in to stone. The title The laugh of The Medusa is also the title of the manifest by Helene Cixous. She follows an anti-dualist, anti-patriarchial line of ideas. Cixous keeps distant to Freud and Lacan because she says they condemned women to the idea of fallocentrism, where women are lacking. In contrast, she argues about the possibility of dual gender. Click to read the text

Scratching the surface with the mechanical pencil requires many layers to incarnate the mind’s vision. This layering on the surface is creating an intensity that becomes a super-optical element as well as coming closer to the idea of being a sculpture. The petrifying gaze of the laboring artist works here in a parallel way with the head of Medusa. His gaze propelling his hand and the projected mind obtained on the surface through the artists hand. This action is described as resisting time by Deleuze. In the text ’What is the act of creation’, Deleuze was saying that the act of resisting has two faces; it is humanitarian and at the same time an art movement (or action). Only the act of resisting withstands against death, it doesn’t matter if it is in the form of human fight or in the form of an art work. To make a connection between human fight and the art work he applies a saying by Paul Klee: ’We really miss the folks that do not exist yet'. That means, the primer intimacy between yet non-existent folks and the art work is not truly definite and will never be definite. In spite of that, there is no art work that doesn’t call out to yet non-existent folks. So that the artist’s eyes while scratching stares at the same horizon of the sunset as The laugh of the Medusa, to obtain its utopian promise within active inactivity, within being disconnected, within disinterest, within idleness.