Direniş / Resistance

To me, the circle form is indispensable: in my monumental suns as well as the unit elements in my wooden kinetic sculpture compositions. Although my creations differ in materials, I am always inspired by nature. Humankind’s helplessness against nature and its irresistible beauty, its mathematic, drive me to become one with nature, let alone resist it. I always observe movements in nature. The essence of my kinetic sculptures are built upon these observations.

The materials used in this work are ordinary daily consumer goods and their packages.

Produced directly to address humankind’s consumption needs, these objects and their packages can inhabit various points within the manufacturing-consumption cycle. Render the objects preservable, identifiable, transportable, and sellable for the manufacturer-consumer, the packaging, having completed its function, then becomes waste to take care of. This creates a new issue: one of market, labor, and profit/loss analysis. Humankind now faces the reality of a new status which must be built upon a natural basis and the principles of ecological interest and raising awareness regarding living in harmony with nature.

Although functional objects have been used as art objects for many years, the human-nature dichotomy raises problems that make the reexamination of these issues inevitable. For centuries there have been artistic approaches that touch on these issues in various ways, with forms born out of visuals’ struggle against themselves, the reinterpretation of objects with predetermined meanings through new forms, the presentation of the readymade object as an art object, and the art object born out of the congregation of functional objects.

This installation approaches the dining table—a concept with many different meanings in all cultures throughout the ages, to authentically present all of its processes in a single moment and a single spread, with all of its common values and its openness. It is a presentation—a table setting—that takes the concept itself, which is the merging of a form and a behavior, to drive the reutilization of objects which have lost their functions through a direct display, thereby exposing the claimed narrative with its other side, even as its whole being through a pattern of its inception, the current moment, and the aftermath.

2015 was a more robotic period where I exposed the mechanisms and motor sections of my statues as I built them. Their body interiors, moving joints, and motor mechanisms are open to view as integral parts of the statues. As with my other pieces like I am bored, Playground, the inclusion of music as an external element, or the ironic arrangement of a mechanism that manually plays with a ball were an indication that I was interested in different subjects. “The Purple Flower of the Machine” introduces a smell to the statue, aiming to actuate the audience’s sense of smell. The combination of three dimensions, action, and smell render the human-machine dichotomy less ordinary. Perhaps the addition of a little playfulness will also make it easier to understand.

Paper wrapping, concrete, thermal paint, and shaped organic sunflowers and wheat over hand woven wire mesh

160 x 93 x 25 cm, 2021

The piece is a study on the importance of producing and productivity. It is a commentary on the queen, touching on the relational similarities between humans and bees, regarding their social structure and political hierarchies, as well as their maintenance and balance.

Copper coils and welding on wire structure

300 x 150 cm, 2022

A piece from the “Power” series, the artist’s symbolic interpretation of wings as a proposal for abandoned spaces rebuilt as natural nests. The piece aims to spark thought about nature’s very human struggle for survival against humankind’s devastation of the ecosystem and its efforts towards coalescence. It acts as a symbol for the communication between bees during their instinctual struggle to maintain the balance and endurance of nature.

Like a century old olive, a balmy pine, and a thousand silent lives… “Burning”, a word that smells charred, hot as a flame, turning things into charcoal, raining down ashes.

“Burning” is the ceramic sculpture I made during the Marmaris forest fires, every moment of which I witnessed in person, and it carries the pain of every single tree that suffocated as their bodies burned around the Aegean village where I live. It is covered with their ashes, carries their charred smell. It contains the hope that these fires will not reoccur, and the char-scented memories within its kiln fired earthen material.

I set off with a story that began somewhere and tell you what happens on the way.

A story I made up, a whisper, the evening sun that wakes you from a dream.

Overcoming all obstacles with a ladder…

Emerging from an alternate reality, heading downhill, linking all these paths together with ladders...

Merging imaginary worlds with reality is possible with a ladder, and so is waking monsters from their slumber, exposing them.

My desire to depict the sounds and the shadows and the branches, all in a single landscape. The audience will explore my story with their eyes, taking the ladders to go from place to place.

Each departure an awakening.

Depart, and

Climb your ladders...

SO FAR, KEMAL TUFAN’S SCULPTURES CONSİST OF SOLİD OR CLOSED VOLUMES, THAT OFTEN ARE OPENED UP TO SHOW OTHER ELEMENTS İNSİDE THAT LEAD TO DEEPER MEANİNGS. IN LATER SERİES OF WORKS, THE SCULPTURES BECOME TRANSPARENT. THEY ARE MADE OF STEEL WİRE İN A GRAPHİCAL, RHYTHMİCAL PATTERN THAT CHANGES AS YOU MOVE AROUND THE SCULPTURE. THE TRANSPARENT FİGURES ACTUALLY FORM CAGES, AS İNDİCATED BY THE LİTTLE DOOR İN EACH OF THEM. ON THE ONE HAND THEY ARE OPEN TO SPACE, ON THE OTHER CLOSED LİKE A PRİSON. KEMAL USES CONTRAST AND CONTRADİCTİON TO GET TO THE POİNT. A CLOUD SHAPE MAY SYMBOLİZE FREEDOM, BUT ON CLOSER İNSPECTİON İT TURNS OUT TO BE A CAGE.

KEMAL TUFAN'S İNSTALLATİON MADE WİTH RİVER STONES AND VİDEO SCREENS THAT HE CARVED İNTO, MAKES A DİRECT REFERENCE TO THE DESTRUCTİON OF NATURE CAUSED BY HUMAN BEİNGS, AND WARNS ABOUT THE DİSASTERS THAT AWAİT US İN THE FUTURE. TAKİNG REFERENCES FROM NATURE İN HİS PREVİOUS WORKS, THE ARTİST'S İNSTALLATİON OF NATURAL RİVER STONES AND TECHNOLOGY (VİDEO SCREENS) REMİNDS US OF THESE DELİCATE BALANCES İRONİCALLY.

The basis of the artist’s practice consists of concepts like fragility, transience, and desperation. Tok plays with the limitations that exist between humans, nature, and culture. The artist uses mediums like sculpture, painting, animation, and ceramics to create atmospheres full of subtle details. Tok’s production process involves research, interpretation, discovery, collection, accumulation, note-taking, drawing, and assembly. The symbols of knowledge she uses in her work, such as encyclopedias and books, are transformed and juxtaposed with historical narratives to provoke subjectivity.

Consisting of ??? book sculptures, the installation titled ??? is built out of encyclopedias, the most iconic symbol of the enlightenment. As the encyclopedias present systematic information about science, art, and crafts, they also underline the visuals which represent them. By eroding, erasing, cutting and ripping the encyclopedias, the artist suggests a “close look” that rejects exact and precise information and rather chooses to feel life itself, to replace modern thought which aims to rule over and instrumentalize nature. The presence of encyclopedias point to the burden of data information, while the figurines and miniature living spaces they contain invite us to come closer and form a subjective story. The microcosm the artist creates inside these encyclopedias are presented almost like an interspacial or interhistorical archaeological site, or a natural cross-section where humanity remains small. These sites, which the artist has created by digging into the pages like an archaeologist with earth, display various artworks such as sculptures, monuments, reliefs, etc. and their remains, belonging to different eras of history. These elements are brought together on the columns on the pages of the encyclopedias. In addition to the sculptures and materials the artist produces herself, she also uses organic materials such as lichen and bryophytes. By tacking the encyclopedia, which is a symbol of a culture and a language, as well as one of the building stones of pre-digitalization research culture, the artist transports the knowledge of the past into the current day, using the natural phenomena and biological processes beyond humanity’s control as a metaphor, and creates her own topography and microcosm.