Genco Gulan

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Genco Gulan

Genco Gulan with 4 eyes. Oil on Canvas. Fethi Pekin Collection.
Born 01/13/1969
Nationality Turkish
Field Contemporary Art,
Training The New School,
Awards BP, Lions, EMAF

Genco Gulan (born 1969 in Turkey) is a contemporary conceptual artist and theorist, who lives and works in Istanbul. His transmedia contextual work involves painting, found objects, new media, drawings, sculpture, photography, performance and video.[1] His work often carries political, social and/ or cultural messages but never transform into propaganda. He rejects to be modern or minimal.

Genco Gulan, "Hermès Walker", 2009. 50* 50*90cm. Ozil Collection

Genco Gulan studied Media at The New School, New York.[2] His art has appeared at Pera Museum, Museu de Arte Moderna do Rio de Janeiro, ZKM Karlsruhe, Triennale di Milano, Biennial of Tehran and Pompidou Center Paris. Gulan's made solo shows at Gallery Artist in Berlin, Istanbul; State Painting and Sculpture Museums in Ankara, Izmir; Foto Gallery Lang, Zagreb and Artda Gallery, Seoul among other places.

He has received prizes from EMAF, BP, Lions, and was nominated for and selected as a finalist for the Sovereign Art Foundation European Art Prize in 2011. His net-art pieces have been listed in required reading lists at the City University, New York, Rice University and U.C. Santa Barbara. Gülan has given conferences at Yale, School of Visual Arts, Köln University, Incheon University and the New York Institute of Technology among others. He is in public art collections such as Proje4L / Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul Modern, Museum Ostwall, Davis Museum and The Thessaloniki State Museum of Contemporary Art.

Art

"Twin Project", 2011. Performance by twin sisters; Yeliz and Deniz Çelebi.
“

“Ikiz” (twins) are a working preoccupation of Genco Gülan’s. His interest in secondariness and doubling, as well as his propensity for revealing/discovering multiple personalities and identities, attracts us for this particular project. At times claiming to be Kurdish, or possibly Armenian, Gülan simultaneously shies away from these (possibly self-invented but probably not) designations—explaining them as pointless. What Gülan is is a well-established artist working in disciplines and circumstances that are undeveloped in Turkey. The singularness of his position as a media/performance/visual artist in a place where each of these descriptors is understandable on its own, but not together, stands out for us as important. Istanbul has the problem of a lack of continuity in the art world. Every thing must be reinvented again and again, which means that the art-going audience must watch while artist after artist repeats the same tedious experiment over and over. Genco, however, is the exception. For the past 20 years, his work continues to innovate and stand apart from the young artists of Istanbul today, who all look to trendsetters outside of Turkey for references and cues—trying to become relevant and collected in this recently overly commercialized scene. Genco, however, creates work inside the semi-permeable bubble he has created, and therefore, his work remains free of the influence of passing whims and trends and true to his vision. While at the same time, his work with new media demands that he stay current with what is happening in the rest of the world. Gülan maintains an excellent balance between relevance and innovation.[3]

 ”

Genco uses text, codes and even his own DNA with his art. He is a conceptual, contextual new media artist, developing theory as well as practice.[4] He specializes in not knowing what everybody else knows. Genco Gulan believes in the artistic future of bio-technology, artificial intelligence, and digital communication.[5] In a video piece called “Grundig”, he filmed a female swim team playing rugby underwater with a TV monitor.[6]

"If it's not new, it's just media," says Gulan in regards to the importance of novelty. His experimental works[7] include net-art, web art, A.I.gen (generated) images, Robot Games, SCIgen papers and online videos.[8] Genco uses boron in his sculptures.[9]

Curatorial

As an artist Genco Gulan worked with curators such as Marcus Graf, Derya Yucel, Peter Weibel, Suzanne van Hagen, Firat Arapoglu, Margerethe Makovec & Anton Lederer, Necmi Sönmez, Gülsen Bal, Ege Berensel, Roger Connover and Eda Cufer. He worked with art historians/ writers such as Zeynep Yasa Yaman, Nilgun Ozayten, Goknur Gurcan, Baris Acar, Aysegul Sonmez, Burcu Pelvanoglu; As a curator he curated and co-curated shows in New York, Seul, Karlsruhe, Istanbul, Thessaloniki and on the Web.

Museum

"Nemesis with 2 Heads", Istanbul Modern Collection

As an art project in 1997, Genco Gulan established the first “Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum.”[10]

"At first the Istanbul Contemporary Art Museum developed as an art series in the manner of Duchamp and Broodthaers until the end of the 1990s. Later it evolved when it was transferred to the Internet. It turned into a new age institution that organized exhibitions, workshops and provided logistic support on cyber space." [11]

For almost a decade, the museum ran an unorthodox residency program called "I live in a Museum" and hosted artists from the U.S., Holland, Spain, and China at its the Galata location.[12] After the Istanbul location closed, Genco Gulan, in Berlin, manifested himself as a Museum.[13]

Gulan's monograph; "Conceptual Colors" edited by Dr. Marcus Graf, is co-published by Revolver Publishing in Berlin in collaboration with Artist Istanbul. His books are available at libraries such as the German National Library, SALT Istanbul, Metropolitan Museum of Art, Thomas J. Watson Library and the Haas Family Arts Library at Yale University. Gulan founded the Web Biennial[14] at the turn of the century, served on the Board of Balkan Biennial in Thessaloniki, International Programming Committee of ISEA Singapore in 2008 and was a guest editor for Second Nature: International Journal of Creative Media. He was in the jury for Turgut Pura Art Prize in Izmir and teaches at Mimar Sinan Academy and Bogazici University.

Selected Images

  • Pompidou, From the "I love You series", C-print, Paris, 2007

  • 'Magic Beans' 2013. Sculpture with 600 used neckties and a crane, 150m.

  • Scream, 2005. Interactive DVD, Rio de Janeiro & Istanbul.

  • Art (Blue), ready-made, 2013.

  • 22.2 QR Code poem, 2010

References

  1. ↑ Foroohar, Rana and Matthews, Owen. (Aug 28, 2005). Turkish Delight. Newsweek. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
  2. ↑ Weshinskey, Anne. (25.08.2011) With Fish or Without. Lab Kultur. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
  3. ↑ Weshinskey, Anne (May 27th, 2013) IKINCILIK: THE STATE OF BEING SECONDARY The Naked. Retrieved 2013-13-04.
  4. ↑ .Vito Campanelli e Danilo Capasso (a cura di), Cultura e nuovi media. Cinque interrogativi di Lev Manovich, Edizioni MAO, Napoli, 2011. [ISBN 978-88-95869-00-1]
  5. ↑ Gulan, Genco. (2004) 'Camerica, Puppy Art'. Artefact GLOCALOGUE. 2012-06-05.
  6. ↑ Atakan, Nancy (Spring 2006)FROM NEW MEDIA FROM THE PERIPHERY. Journal of the New Media Caucus. Retrieved 2012-07-11.
  7. ↑ Reil, Alexandra. (25.08.2011) Art Following the Trend?. Retrieved 2012-06-05
  8. ↑ Landi, Ann (09/01/09 )What they see in Van Gogh's ear. ARTnews. Retrieved 2012-06-23.
  9. ↑ Utku, Ahsen (23/04/11)Genco Gulan sends messages to the future through art. Today's Zaman. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
  10. ↑ Gibbons, Fiachra. (2006-06-13) Istanbul set to stamp its culture credentials - Arts & Leisure. The New York Times (International Herald Tribune). Retrieved 2012-06-01.
  11. ↑ Graf, Marcus. Concepual Colors of Genco Gulan, Revolver Publishing, 2012. ISBN 978-3868952049
  12. ↑ Lubelski, Abraham. (December 22, 2006) Contemporary Istanbul Art Fairs International. Retrieved 2012-06-01.
  13. ↑ Arikonmaz, Piril Gulesci (2012-02-02)'Ben bir müzeyim’ Haberturk (In Turkish). Retrieved 2012-06-01
  14. ↑ Lev, Julia. (27 January 2011) Plato’s new exhibition brings net-art to the fore. Today's Zaman. Retrieved 2012-06-06.

External links

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Bibliography

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