Ayşe Erkmen’s Half of for Frieze Seoul 2025 is a site-specific installation reflecting her deep engagement with spatial perception and cultural narratives. “The less I bring to the given space, the more successful I feel,” says Erkmen. Renowned for her thought-provoking site-specific works, Erkmen uses the social and physical environment as a starting point, and by repositioning existing structures in her distinct style, she prompts viewers to reconsider space.

First created for Galerie Deux, Tokyo (1999), Half of highlights Erkmen’s skill in transforming architectural and cultural contexts into immersive experiences.

The installation features delicate maquettes of rice paper and wooden sticks, suspended from the ceiling. Each model is half the size of the previous one, inspired by Japanese origami techniques to translate architectural plans into tangible forms.

For Frieze Seoul 2025, Half of in a 49 m² booth designed to encapsulate Erkmen’s conceptual vision and sensitivity to space. This iteration includes two maquettes: the first at half the size of the actual space, and the second at half the size of the first. It offers a harmonious yet thought-provoking interplay between scale and perception.

Ayşe Erkmen’s project Left Overs 2 explores the site-specific potential of biennials by repurposing sculptural wooden panels sourced from local workshops specializing in wood, metal, and textiles. These leftover materials, with their distinctive shapes, caught Erkmen’s attention and were reimagined within the grid structure of a former military hangar—now transformed into an exhibition space. To enhance their presence and situate them within a contemporary context, Erkmen applied the Pantone Colors of 2024—an annually selected, globally recognized palette. In this way, the work creates a dialogue between past and present, material and meaning, tracing a shift from military history to contemporary artistic expression.

Wooden panels, variable dimensions

Installation; three white rubber balls

⌀ 2 m (each)

Site-spesific installation, white fabric and rock
Dimensions variable

2023, Stone, copper and moss, h: 5 m; Ø 60 cm

Located in Akşemsettin Park between Balat Hospital and the ferry dock, Golden Horn in the Golden Horn resembles a floating island that glimmers like gold, reflecting The Golden Horn in the setting sun. Positioned at a certain distance from the shore, within the field of view of passing ships and the shipyard, the sculpture invites us to contemplate the roles of water, geography, production and the memory of urban spaces within our daily lives.

"Is this already the exhibition or is it still being prepared? Ayşe Erkmen has conceived an installation for Marie 10 that could not be simpler and at the same time gets to the heart of an important starting point for any initiative for contemporary art: the space itself, its shape, its quality. In it, a single element rises up, takes measure and connects floor and ceiling. What might appear to be an archetype of a column is, however, nothing but a large roll of bubble wrap, sealed and tightened to the space by adhesive tape. Everyday packing materials of the art business have, as it were, "taken on a life of their own" and morphed into sculpture and installation.

As is so often the case in Ayşe Erkmen's work, the given location, its spatial as well as its social or other characteristics are the starting point and motif. Her intervention in the situation is often minimal and perhaps even "invisible" at first glance. What she adds is self-evident but nevertheless borders on the miraculous. With Hochstapler, improvisation seems to be the director. The packaging roll is simply placed vertically - but at a precisely calculated point. The adhesive tape holds it together as usual - but it is bright red and "fixes" it in the room as well.

Ayşe Erkmen has staged a prelude with a light hand but confident gesture. The work marks a transition from empty space to exhibition space. Without putting herself in the foreground, but with an ironic touch, she plays around in the delicate moment when nothing more than a little material becomes something that could be called art. At the same time, she gives Marie 10 something of a motto to follow: concentration and casualness, ambition and accessibility, concept and sensuality." (Julian Heynen)

Photo credit: Nick Ash 

Exhibition: I Insist, Dirimart, Istanbul (Turkey), 24 February - 27 March 2022

As thinkers often interweave concepts to give them novel borders that allow new perceptions, Ayşe Erkmen dismantles the space and its constituents, insistent on exploring its multiform potential. In her first solo show Kıpraşım Ripple at Dirimart in 2017, Erkmen took down the white drywalls of the gallery in varying lengths and hung them from the beams on its ceiling displaying them as memory tablets. The otherwise hidden wooden panels riddled by its veiling drywalls had become the constitutive elements of this installation-exhibition.

Exhibition: Hummings - An Exhibition of Art in Public Domain in Køge, KØS Museum of Art in Public Spaces, Copenhagen (Denmark), 14.08. - 26.09.2021 

Press Release

Galerie Barbara Weiss is pleased to present a solo exhibition with new works by Ayşe Erkmen. The show’s title — scrolling — alludes to an all too frequent activity in our everyday lives. Comparably, the works that make up the exhibition frequently touch on the nature and pervasiveness of digital media. Erkmen approaches these topics with a sense of lighthearted skepticism, pointing to both the capacity and limits of technology.

The room-scaled installation Itself (green), 2011/2021 is made up of hundreds of images collected by Erkmen through googling her name. In this instance, Erkmen filtered her image search by color. Otherwise disregarding the quality and relevance to her, Erkmen brings these images together as one portrait. In doing so, she reveals the way in which we come to understand ourselves through algorithms that are outside of our control. In this non-hierarchical landscape, portraits of the artist are given the same weight as documentation of her artworks, promotional material for exhibitions, or, stranger still, images that do not immediately seem to relate to her at all.

In the next room, Scroll Movie, 2020, narrows the focus. The video scrolls through assorted projects of Erkmen’s. In its 15 minute run time, this work collapses some three decades of the artist’s career, gliding past projects that took months or years to plan and realize and wholly excluding contextual and temporal details. In Capable, 2019, on the opposite wall, Erkmen’s Bitmoji avatar jumps rope, frowns at the weather, gets stuck in traffic and springs out of a slice of birthday cake. These formats of easy consumption are almost soothing in their superficiality. In collecting them, Erkmen demonstrates the new ways that technology can foster understanding — and misunderstanding.

Placed on the gallery floor, two sculptures, both titled not the color it is/not the size it is, 2021, depict an inverse, or negative space. Each was created by digging a hole in a sandbox and subsequently filling the irregular cavity with molten bronze. These little hills form a topology that is informed by what was previously a void, making a presence in place of an absence. The casting and glazing process that Erkmen has selected transforms the tactile — and often temporary — act of digging into another type of documentation.

Erkmen's practice has long examined the social and political implications of physical space — including infrastructure, urban planning and architecture. As our lived experience increasingly takes place in digital space, Erkmen’s artistic inquiry has followed. With an approach that privileges subtlety, Erkmen’s works across all mediums inspire charged and revelatory encounters with what might otherwise seem familiar.

Ayşe Erkmen created Lonesome George upon the invitation to the 10th edition of the KölnSkulptur biannual exhibition of contemporary outdoor sculpture at the Skulpturenpark Köln. The Sculpture is a replica of Lonely George – the Hawaiian tree snail and last of its species, which died in 2019 after scientists spent fourteen years unsuccessfully trying to find it a mate.

Beethoven is there to greet us already on the museum’s front steps. Recalling the strings over the soundbox of a string instrument, a colored ribbon is stretched across the façade, as if the building itself were an instrument. Like the clappers on the bells in a belfry, two loudspeakers hang from the turrets, at the same level as the sculptures to the left and right of the entrance that represent Painting and Sculpture. Ayşe Erkmen’s creation thereby emphasizes that the visual arts and music express, by different means, the very same human emotions. It also conveys something of Beethoven’s individuality. To that end, our artist selected Beethoven’s famous piano piece Für Elise (1810). However, by having the well-known notes played backward, she generates provoking new patterns. The music sounds unfamiliar, yet the sequence of tones is still melodious. We are thus able to experience a phenomenon that preoccupied Beethoven throughout his life, namely, that hearing – and seeing, too, of course – is very much linked to remembering.

Sound installation, 2'49''

Exhibition: Beethoven Moves, Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 13 September 2020 - 24 January 2021

Sculpture: Scaffolding metal bars, metal links, 200 x 280 x 55 cm

STOA169
Artist Columned Hall in Polling

Carrara Marble

Stoa 169 Stiftung,
Kirchplatz 2, Polling

Whitish brings together works from Ayşe Erkmen's uninterrupted artistic production since 1970s and new pieces she has produced specially for this exhibition. Devised with a retrospective approach, the exhibition recontextualises 17 works from Erkmen's work oeuvre two of which are part of the Arter collection in close dialogue with Arter's new building, as a survey exhibition, Whitish attemps to give an insight on the diversity of physical and intellectual gestures Erkmen maintains in her working process, the multiplicity of the materials and media she employs, the sensations she aims to express, her ability to put architectural features into play, and her modus operandi while incorporating space and time into her works.

The Majority of Ayşe Erkmen's projects are closely tied to the space, situation, and time they occupy; the place and environmental context she is working in always become part of the work; they start belonging to each other, as though something borrowed form that place a measure, a form, a motif, a story, a possibility... has been restored to the place from which it was taken, in order to adapt themselves into their new environment. Works included in Whitsh are moving, standing, hanging, mumbling, reflecting on the walls, sticking onto the floor, climbing the windows, peeking in from the outside; thus settling themselves in the ups and downs of the gallery space, creating altogether a distinct, spatial experience, Whitish offers an indepth overview of Ayşe Erkmen's practice spanning fifty years and is the first institutional solo exhibition of the artist in Turkey.

Exhibition: Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

You may notice that numberless ropes hang under the arcade across from Endoji shopping street to Endoji Honmachi shopping street. The ropes are used for hanging decorations made by local residents for their famous "Endoji Tanabata Festival", which has a history dating back more than 60 years. The artist focused on the ropes and replaced them with pink ones as a new work for the Aichi Triennale. The pink color is called "Living Coral (PANTONE 16-1546)", which has been announced as the Color of the Year 2019 by Pantone LLC, best known for its color chart. You may also notice people in town carrying shopping bags colored in the same pink. The artist asked stores in both shopping streets to replace their usual shopping bags with the ones she made with this particular pink. The bags also have drawings by the artist depicting characteristics of each store. Such approaches intend to make the audience realize things overlooked in a community by introducing a new point of view that is unique to the artist.

Exhibition: Taming Y/Our Passion, Aichi Triennale 2019, curated by Tsuda Daisuke, Endoji Hommachi Shopping Arcades, 01 August - 14 October 2019

Exhibition: Yorkshire Sculpture International 2019, Leeds Art Gallery, Leeds (United Kingdom), 22 June – 29 October 2019

The installation transforms a touristic attraction into a “cultural” site, and at the same time, critiques the commercialization of art. The stunning landscape becomes a means for the audience to question and reassess their knowledge about Thailand.
Erkmen herself went through such a process. As one of the few artists who did not join the site visit in Krabi, she developed her proposal and extended the concept of wonderland through online images and her own imagination. Interweaving the digital resources with her own insights on the region and its exotic features, she proposed a work to encourage the production of individual narratives about Thailand which defy the dominating touristic and exotic myths. However, due to safety and environmental reasons, it was not possible to realize the installation in situ.
The impossible materialization of the artwork was the starting point for the artist to paradoxically revisit her idea and present a computer-generated image on billboards in Krabi. Marking the invisibility of the unrealizable installation, her new work initiates a new adventure to test and conceptualize the artistic idea in our contemporary society.

Site-specific installation: billboards across Thailand beyond Krabi, various dimensions (Only one billboard was exhibited.)

Exhibition: Edge of the Wonderland?, The First Thailand Biennale – Krabi (G) (C) (curated by Jiang Jiehong et al.). Krabi and other locations (Thailand) 02.11.2018 – 28.02.2019

Sculpture: Welded aluminum tubes, colored anodic oxidation coating

Exhibitions: Møenlight Sonata – A homage to the starry sky of Møn, curated by René Block, Kunsthal 44 Moen, Askeby (Denmark), 03.06. – 09.09. 2018

Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18 November 2017 - 18 February 2018

Ayşe Erkmen’s lettering is placed in the former ice factory at the harbour in Sinop. The words Ice Cold seem like a direct intervention to this space. But actualy the term benefits from the venue’s inherent semantic and architectural features and from the multi layered readings of the term ice cold itself. It is a dictum and thus it creates its own space of polysemous interferences.

Exhibitions:   Transposition/Aktarım, curated by Melih Görgün, Nike Bätzner and Jonatan Habib Engqvist, 6^th Sinopale, Former Ice Factory at the harbor, Sinop (Turkey), 19.08. – 17.09.2017

Sculpture: 20 meters high, gold-plated metal

Concrete and virtual at one and the same time, Erkmen’s structure speaks of the real and the potential, the historic and futuristic in one breath. Borrowing the words of philosopher Gilles Deleuze, we could understand her as expressing a “real virtuality.” This is to say that her project does much more than just interpret what the Korenmarkt might represent. It articulates what, in actual fact, this place has (always had) the potential to be. It shows and amplifies the power of an urban square to be the site where paths cross and whatever is brought there from wherever (goods, words, feelings, ideas) is set in motion together, so it spins and dances the dance that makes a city a city.

                                                Jan Verwoert, “Civic Forms and Urban Intuitions – Dedicated to Ayşe Erkmen’s Project for the Korenmarkt in Ghent,” in A – Ayşe Erkmen & Ann Veronica Janssens, ed. Guillaume D.sanges, Philippe Van Cauteren and Jan Verwoert (Ghent: S.M.A.K. & MER. Paper Kunsthalle, 2015), 15.

Exhibitions:   Broche, curated by Astrid Vaningelgom, Commissioned by Ghent City Council, Korenmarkt Square, Ghent (Belgium), 28.09.2017

Installation: textile 300 x 700 cm 

Exhibitions:   Murmuring, curated by Ali Akay, Mestna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana (Slovenia), 20.04. – 04.06.2017

Site specific installation: ocean cargo containers, steel beams, steel grates, 6400 x 640 cm walkway

Exhibitions:   Skulpture Projekte Münster 2017, curated by Kasper König, Britta Peters, Marianne Wagner, Stadthafen 1, North side: Hafenweg 24, South side: Am Mittelhafen 20, Münster (Germany), 10.06. – 01.10.2017

Site-specific intervention: already existing railings gold coated

Exhibitions:   Luther und die Avantgarde. Zeitgenössische Kunst in Wittenberg, Berlin und Kassel / Luther and the Avantgarde. Contemporary Art in Wittenberg, Berlin and Kassel, curated by Walter Smerling, Kay Heymer, Susanne Kleine, Dimitri Ozerkov, Peter Weibel, Dan Xu, Wittenberg Old Prison, Wittenberg, et al. (Germany), 19.05. – 17.09.2017

19 aluminium sculptures: variable dimensions

Description:  Sculptures made out of floor plan of the gallery space

Exhibitions:  Kıpraşım Ripple, Dirimart Gallery, Istanbul (Turkey), 05.04. – 14.05.2017

Acrylic on canvas mounted on cardboard, 33 cardboards, each 20 x 20 cm

Exhibitions:    Ayse Erkmen – Unlikely, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich (Germany), 28.10.2016 – 14.01.2017

Room installation: tiles with silkscreen prints.

Description:   In Alkoven, an installation recalling the traditional niches in the architecture of Ottoman houses, Ayșe Erkmen plays with the motifs of Orientalism, the ornamental and the ceramic. Yet something terrible lurks beneath the appearance of the “beautiful”. The motifs are based on reproductions of landmines, referencing the political fault lines which not only run through the border areas in Eastern Turkey, but also globally

Exhibitions:   Uncertain States – Künstlerisches Handeln in Ausnahmezuständen / Uncertain States. Artistic Strategies in States of Emergency, curated by Anke Hervol, Johannes Odenthal in cooperation with Katerina Gregos, Diana Wechsler, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Germany), 15.10.2016 – 15.01.2017

                      Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018

Site-specific installation: already existing pond in site, connected to pool constructed out of wood, concrete, mortar, water and connecting pipes, cleansing and pumping machines

Exhibitions:   Art Projects at 8 Shrines and Temples – Travelling over 1300 Years of Time and Space, curated by Toshio Kondo, Art Front Gallery Tokyo, Culture City of East Asia 2016, Nara, Saidaiji Temple, Nara (Japan), 03.09. – 23.10.2016

Site-specific installation: Red plastic ring filled with air going through the hole of an already existing fairy chimney

Exhibitions:   Let us Cultivate our Garden / Gelin Bahçemizi Ekelim, curated by Fulya Erdemci and Kevser Güler, Cappadox Festival II, Cappadocia (Turkey), 19.05. – 12.06.2016

Site-specific installation: three different colored rubber balls in red, blue and yellow installed in three holes of an already existing fairy chimney

Exhibitions:   Kapadokya Çarpması / Cappadocia Struck, curated by Fulya Erdemci, Cappadox Festival I, Cappadocia (Turkey), 16.05. – 31.05.2015

Installation: stainless steel reinforced concrete with glass mosaic tile, dimensions variable

Description:   Ayşe Erkmen’s first permanent public art project completed in the United States. This site-specific installation, completed in 2015 as part of Washington University’s Art on Campus program, is comprised of nine large-scale geometric monoliths covered in small glass mosaic tiles

Exhibitions:   Places, curated by Leslie Markle / Kemper Art Museum, Kemper Art Museum, Washington University Campus, St. Louis (USA), May 2015

Textile installation: 8.23 x 12.34 x 14.43 m

Exhibitions:   Strange Pilgrims, organized by Heather Pesanti, The Contemporary Austin, Austin (USA), 27.09.2015 – 24.01.2016

Exhibited works: City Bird, 2015; Acid 1, 2015; Air, 2015; Down and Below, 1993/2015 Das Haus), Jungle, 2015; Altogether, 2015

Site-specific installation: lowering of already existing lights with various shaped and colored glass sheets under

Exhibitions:   Glassworks, curated by Matthias Winzen, Cadhame Halle Verrière, Meisenthal (France), 28.06. – 30.08.2015

              Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018 

Exhibited works: Bronze Acid Green, 2014; small golden pompom, 2012; 49 works of not the color it is, 2014-2015

sculpture: 49 bronze works of various colored patina, each 30 x 20 x 10 cm

mandarin orange/not the color it is, 2014
bright pink/not the color it is, 2014
greenish blue/not the color it is, 2014
sand brown/not the color it is, 2014
blush pink/not the color it is, 2014
beach blue/not the color it is, 2014
apricot orange/not the color it is, 2014
very white/not the color it is, 2014
light black/not the color it is, 2014
rose pink/not the color it is, 2014
dusty yellow/not the color it is, 2014
beige brown/not the color it is, 2014
golden green/not the color it is, 2014
deep violet/not the color it is, 2014
splash blue/not the color it is, 2014
jade blue/not the color it is, 2014
golden yellow/not the color it is, 2014
chocolate brown/not the color it is, 2014
light turquoise/not the color it is, 2014
grass green/not the color it is, 2014
deep sea blue/not the color it is, 2014
warm orange/not the color it is, 2014
sky white/not the color it is, 2014
sweet orange/not the color it is, 2014
greyish violet/not the color it is, 2014
rosa/not the color it is, 2014
bright yellow/not the color it is, 2014
spicy orange/not the color it is, 2014
deep white/not the color it is, 2014
dark blue/not the color it is, 2014
patina blue/not the color it is, 2014
hot pink/not the color it is, 2014
earth brown/not the color it is, 2015
black/not the color it is, 2015
dark violet/not the color it is, 2015
yellow/not the color it is, 2015
grayish white/not the color it is, 2015
dusty white/not the color it is, 2015
light green/not the color it is, 2015
very green/not the color it is, 2015
light brown/not the color it is, 2015
light violet/not the color it is, 2015
green/not the color it is, 2015
whitish white/not the color it is, 2015
dark grey/not the color it is, 2015
ocean blue/not the color it is, 2015
violet/not the color it is, 2015
grey/not the color it is, 2015
sea blue/not the color it is, 2015

Description: Individually patinated in bright colors, the sculptures are dispersed in an open arrangement on the black industrial parquet of the gallery, forming a landscape of little hills in strong contrast with the floor. The title of each sculpture is assembled via a color code from the Pantone system and the ancillary “not the color it is”. This addition refers to the process in which the bronzes are given their final appearance, passing through different shades and leaving the outcome in limbo until the final station. Therefore each sculpture stands on its own, while being held part of the whole ensemble by the shared part of the title.

Exhibitions:   Fingerspitzengefühl, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 07.11.2015 – 06.01.2016

                     Ayse Erkmen, Tamara Grcic, Janice Kerbel, Karin Sander, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich (Germany), 13.05. – 18.06.2016
(7 of them had been exhibited on this show)

                     Ayse Erkmen – Unlikely, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich (Germany), 28.10.2016 – 14.01.2017
(2 of them had been exhibited on this show)

                     Flair, curated by Gregory Volk, Fridman Gallery, New York (USA), 01.06. – 21.07.2017
(5 of them had been exhibited on this show)

                     Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018
(3 of them had been exhibited on this show)

Video installation: 00:03:00 min., loop

Description:   Film is depicting a location from their manufacturing process – an acid basin. Slowly a colorful liquid sways from one edge of the image to the other, reflecting neon lights give a vague impression of an industrial setting. Erkmen here creates an abstract image and playfully elaborates on the space between ordinary technical processes and the realm of art.

Exhibitions:   Fingerspitzengefühl, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 07.11.2015 – 06.01.2016

                      Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018

Installation: steel pipes of scaffolding material and hinges, 300 x 200 cm

Exhibitions:   The Unanswered Question. Iskele 2, curated by René Block, Neuer Berliner Kunstverein, in cooperation with TANAS Berlin, Berlin (Germany), 08.09. – 03.11.2013

Video: colour, 00:12:08 min., loop

Exhibitions:   Vanille, chocolat et roue de bicyclette, curated by Samuel Gross, Speerstra Foundation, Apples (Switzerland), 05.10. – 23.12.2013

Site-specific installation: 11 theatre style backdrops that raise and lower via an automated system, blocking and then unblocking the route onwards. Each backdrop is designed to a different style of theatre ranging from a garden scene to the traditional red curtains.

Description:   In speaking about her Curve space exhibition Erkmen explains: ‘I wanted to make something which is usually hidden backstage visible, bringing scenic backdrops into The Curve and setting them into action. By moving them up and down with a fly system the exhibition space will be continually changing, creating ideas of interval both in space and narration.’

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen: Intervals, The Curve, Barbican Centre, London (United Kingdom), 24.09.2013 – 05.01.2014

Intervention / Installation: a green ball suspended from a crane on a long cable and swings and touches the building at random intervals

Exhibitions:   Mom, Am I Barbarian? / Anne Ben Barbar mıyım?, curated by Fulya Erdemci, 13^th Istanbul Biennial, Antrepo No. 3, Istanbul (Turkey), 14.09. – 10.11.2013

90 ceramic landmines with shelves

Exhibitions:   Modernity? Perspectives from France and Turkey / Modernlik? Fransa ve Türkiye’den Manzaralar, curated by Çelenk Bafra and Levent Çalıkoğlu, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.01. – 16.05.2013

                      Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018

10 wall sculptures:
Emerald 17-5641, 2013, 85 x 85 cm
Mykonos Blue 18-4434, 2013, 94 x 80 cm
Linden Green 15-0533, 2013, 86 x 88 cm
Samba 19-1662, 2013, 85 x 85 cm
Koi 17-1452, 2013, 76 x 85 cm
Deep Lichen Green 18-0312, 2013, 90 x 78 cm
Vivacious 19-2045, 2013, 85 x 85 cm
Turbulence 19-4215, 2013, 85 x 98 cm
Carafe 19-1116, 2013, 86 x 86 cm

sculptures: aluminium, car lacquer

Description: On the gallery walls, ten, carefully coloured wall sculptures will be mounted spaciously around the exhibition space. These radiant and multifaceted colours as well as their congruent shapes correspond to the Pantone Fashion Colour Report of fall 2013, a ‘global authority’ on textile colours.

Like in earlier shows, the artist appropriates and examines existing forms and use of materials in architecture and design hinting at eminent questions of the value of the useless ahead of the useful, and simultaneously gives an insight into the Wesenszug (essence) of things; the different perspectives of how they could be used, and how they are made. _ Press Release Christina Green

Exhibitions:   Wesenszug, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 26.04. – 15.06.2013

Exhibited work: Imitating Lines, 1985/2012

Installation: water purification system, pipes, pumps, cleansing machines painted in specific colors according to their function

Exhibitions:   Plan B, curated by Fulya Erdemci, 54^th Venice Biennale, The Pavilion of Turkey, Artigliere, Arsenale, Venice (Italy), 04.06. – 27.11.2011

installation: three plexiglass boxes with 33 animal figurines

Exhibitions:   Sürekli Çeşitlenmeler / Continuous Variations, curated by Ali Akay, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 18.05. – 18.06.2011

sculpture: sound, soundtube shower speaker, 00:01:11 min. 

Exhibitions:   Kendi Kendine / On Its Own, Rampa, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.02. – 26.03.2011

                      Two birds, a stone and a horse (G) (C) (curated by Henk Visch). Wako Works of Art, Tokyo (Japan), 08.09. – 13.10.2012

                      Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.2.2018

Installation: 970 archival pigment prints on dibond, each 29.7 x 21 cm, Later on: Itself

Exhibitions:   Kendi Kendine / On Its Own, Rampa, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.02. – 26.03.2011

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Itself, Magazin 4, Bregenzer Kunstverein, Bregenz (Austria), 03.12.2011 – 19.02.2012
[Details of this version: Installation: archival pigment print on Dibond, 29.7 x 21 cm (ca. 1320), single dia projection (Itself was previously called On its Own when exhibited at Rampa, Istanbul in February 2011.)]

                     Two birds, a stone and a horse, curated by Henk Visch, Wako Works of Art, Tokyo (Japan), 08.09. – 13.10.2012

                     A – Ayse Erkmen & Ann Veronica Janssens, curated by Ann Hoste and Philippe Van Cauteren, S.M.A.K., Ghent (Belgium), 31.10.2015 – 14.02.2016

sculpture: ball, ø 103 cm., label ribbon with artist’s name woven

Exhibitions:   Surface and Beyond / Yüzey ve Ötesi, curated by Heinz Peter Schwerfel, Dirimart Dolapdere, Istanbul (Turkey), 26.05. – 30.07.2016

Installation: 52 hats, stills from the six-second sequence from Miracle in Milan by Vittorio de Sica

Description: “J, K & H” is a piece that marks three people’s lives that might have but did not necessarily cross at the time; it draws an invisible triangle over Beyoğlu and transforms the art space through the trail of its past. The title “J, K & H” derives from the initial letters of the names of these three people who are the keys to the triangle: Katya, Jules and Hermine. Katya Kiracı who currently owns a hat shop in Hacopulo Arcade, is the daughter of Eva Bucin, who also was a milliner; Jules ran a hat shop called Fait Jules between 1914 and 1920 on the ground floor of the building where ARTER is currently located; and Hermine Sedat is Ayşe Erkmen’s grandmother, who ran a haute couture dress-making shop at the Simpatyan apartment building. Erkmen brings these three people together by having a memento of her grandmother, a hat, reproduced by Katya Kiracı and displayed in remembrance of the shop once run by Fait Jules. – Fatoş Üstek, İkinci Sergi kataloğu, bkz. http: / /docplayer.biz.tr /5265157-12-ikinci-sergi-kitap-2-2.html

Exhibitions:   Second Exhibition / İkinci Sergi, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul (Turkey), 28.11.2010 – 27.02.2011

                      Tu m’arcel, conceptual framework by Norgunk). Ariel, Istanbul (Turkey), 20.01. – 04.03.2017
(21 hats in various colours were hanged on the wall)

Site-specific intervention: nylon

Description: 15-5519 is the new site-specific public intervention by artist Ayşe Erkmen that playfully engages with the tactile characteristics of Witte de With's architecture. Erkmen will add a temporary coat to Witte de With's building by partially covering it with a monochrome composition reminiscent of a nylon winter jacket. The work's title, 15-5519, is the color code representing Pantone Color Institute's proposed color of 2010. The source of the stitched pattern composition is Theo van Doesberg's painting Contra-Composition XVI (1925). Instead of the primary and non-colors propagated by the Dutch De Stijl movement, Erkmen's work adopts a contemporary tint of turquoise. Through Erkmen's translation, Doesberg's iconic work is given an alternative sculptural form, functioning as a second skin of protection for the building. 15-5519 animates the architecture and offers an uncommon physical experience for passersby and for the institution.

Exhibitions:   Between You and I – Intervention 4. Witte de With, Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (Netherlands), 09.11.2010 – 09.01.2011

Exhibited works: Pieces of Colour, 2010; sixtyfive percent, 2010; Hearts and Circles, 2009

Site-specific intervention: Gold coating on already existing rails of a coal tower

Exhibitions:   Emscherkunst.2010, curated by Florian Matzner, Essen (Germany), 29.05. – 05.09.2010

Audio and light installation: 9 shower speakers, 12 lamps, 00:29:00 min., loop

Description:   Ayse Erkmen’s site specific works respond to the physical nature and hidden histories of architectural spaces. Her sound installation, Ghost, was originally created for the Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary in Vienna, formerly the Palais Erdödy-Furstenberg, where centuries ago Ludwig Van Beethoven spent many months. It is said that Beethoven had developed a special friendship with the heiress and countess Anna Maria Erdödy, to whom he dedicated the canon Gluck, gluckzum neuen Jahr (wo0176). Within Erkmen’s installation, the canon composition is sung by a single soprano, representing the voice of a young girl whose ghost is rumored to live at the palace. The sounds are luminated by minimal hanging lamps throughout the space, but remain as immaterial as the stories of which they tell.

Exhibitions:   Tactics of Invisibility / Görünmezlik Taktikleri, curated by Emre Baykal and Daniela Zyman, Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna (Austria), 16.04. – 15.08.2010; Tanas, Berlin (Germany), 11.09.2010 – 14.01.2011; Arter, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.04. – 05.06.2011

                     More Than Sound, curated by Theodor Ringborg, Bonniers Konsthall, Stockholm (Sweden), 05.09. – 02.12.2012

Installation: 62 m², ceramic tiles

Exhibitions:   Segment #3. Borusan Çağdaş Sanat Koleksiyonu’ndan Seçki / A Selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection, curated by Necmi Sönmez, Borusan Contemporary, Perili Köşk, Istanbul (Turkey), 24.11.2012 – 01.09.2013

                     Ortak Zemin: Toprak. Borusan Çağdaş Sanat Koleksiyonu’ndan Seçki / Common Ground: Earth. A Selection from the Borusan Contemporary Art Collection (G) (curated by Nazlı Gürlek). Borusan Contemporary, Perili Köşk, Istanbul (Turkey), 01.03. – 01.06.2014

site-specific installation: steel in two parts, 1 x 5.6 m, 1 x 9.34 m

Exhibitions:   Variations Continues (Continuous Variations), curated by Ali Akay, Centre d'Art contemporain d'Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris (France), 19.11.2009 – 17.01.2010

site-specific installation: paint on laminated wood in the shape of staircase in two parts, 1 x 15.30 m

Exhibitions:   Variations Continues (Continuous Variations), curated by Ali Akay, Centre d'Art contemporain d'Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris (France), 19.11.2009 – 17.01.2010

Animation video: colour, 00:12:40 min., loop, DVD, 5+1 A.P

Exhibitions:   Variations Continues (Continuous Variations), curated by Ali Akay, Centre d'Art contemporain d'Ivry – le Crédac, Ivry-sur-Seine, Paris (France), 19.11.2009 – 17.01.2010

                      Compilation, Bernhard Knaus Fine Art GmbH, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 11.02. – 14.04.2010

                      Doppelhaushälfte, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 04.09. – 23.10.2010

                      Kendi Kendine / On Its Own, Rampa, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.02. – 26.03.2011

                      Arşiv III: Canlandırılmış Hareketler / Archive III: Animated Movements, curated by Ali Akay, Şekerbank Açıkekran, Istanbul (Turkey), 12.09. – 29.10.2011

                     Beyaz Ekran Kara Delik / White Screen Black Hole, conceptual framework by Norgunk, Ariel, Istanbul (Turkey), 15.12.2015 - 23.01.2016

Slide projection: carousel for slides, ca. 80 slides, projector

Description:   Drawings and sketches of earlier works and installations from Erkmen’s notebooks were photographed and shown in a slide projection.

Exhibitions:   Access All Areas, A Drawing Exhibition, curated by Arturo Herrera and Tanja Wagner, Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin (Germany), 25.09. – 07.11.2009

Installation: textile ribbons, already existing column

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Entwined, Art Unlimited, Basel (Switzerland), 10. – 14.06.2009

                      Text Textile Texture, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 10.03. – 18.04.2012
(Details of this version; Site-specific installation: label ribbon with the word “limited” woven around the column, textile ribbons, knotted together by hand, format variable)

Wet to Dry, 2009

video: colour, sound, 00:00:13 min

Exhibitions:   Bluish, curated by Caroline Käding). Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (Germany), 05.06. – 02.08.2009

                      Sürekli Çeşitlenmeler / Continuous Variations, curated by Ali Akay, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 18.05. – 18.06.2011

                      Murmuring, curated by Ali Akay, Mestna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana (Slovenia), 20.04. – 04.06.2017

Site-specific installation: nylon, carbon fiber tube, glass fiber tube, rope, copper, 237 x 1475 x 490 cm

Exhibitions:   Bluish, curated by Caroline Käding). Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (Germany), 05.06. – 02.08.2009

10 installations: aluminium composite panels, lacquered, exhibited in Karmeliterplatz, Burggasse /Dom, Künstlerhaus underground car park ventilation, Jakominiplatz, Schloßbergplatz, Schloßberg clocktower, Südtiroler Platz, Mariahilferplatz, Esperantoplatz, Volksgarten

Exhibitions:   Utopia and Monument I, On the Validity of Art Between Privatisation
and the Public Sphere / Utopie und Monument I, Über die Gültigkeit von Kunst zwischen Privatisierung und Öffentlichkeit, curated by Sabine Breitwieser, Steirischer Herbst, Graz (Austria), 24.09. – 18.10.2009

                      Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18 November 2017 - 18 February 2018

                      Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

site-specific installation: handwritten text on builders’ helmets

Exhibitions:    Beyond These Walls, curated by Margot Heller, South London Art Gallery, London (United Kingdom), 24.07. –20.09.2009

Site-specific installation: coloured plastic (the plastic in the skylight); site-specific installation: existing light fittings, cable (the lowered light in the corridor)

Exhibitions:   Beyond These Walls, curated by Margot Heller, South London Art Gallery, London (United Kingdom), 24.07. –20.09.2009

Site-specific installation: coloured plastic (the plastic in the skylight)

Exhibitions:    Beyond These Walls, curated by Margot Heller, South London Art Gallery, London (United Kingdom), 24.07. –20.09.2009

                       A – Ayse Erkmen & Ann Veronica Janssens (G) (C) (curated by Ann Hoste and Philippe Van Cauteren, S.M.A.K., Ghent (Belgium), 31.10.2015 – 14.02.2016
(coloured plastic sheets)

installation: textile ribbons on already existing column

Exhibitions:   What Else?, curated by Karine Vonna, Villa du Parc, Annemasse (France), 29.05. – 20.09.2009

Exhibited works: Colours, 2009; Typed Words, 2009; Lazy Dog, 2009

label ribbon with artist’s name woven, knotted together by hand, dimensions variable

Exhibitions:   Hep Aynı Şarkı / On Connaît La Chanson / Same Old Song, curated by Ali Akay, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 13.05. – 10.06.2009

                      A – Ayse Erkmen & Ann Veronica Janssens, curated by Ann Hoste and Philippe Van Cauteren, S.M.A.K., Ghent (Belgium), 31.10.2015 – 14.02.2016

                     Ayse Erkmen – Unlikely, Barbara Gross Galerie, Munich (Germany), 28.10.2016 – 14.01.2017

Installation: gypsum, lightning track

Description: A geometrically ‘corrected’ room within a room, where the walls and ceiling of an exhibition space were rebuilt to reflect the slope of the ramp that leads viewers through the museum. The reconstructed space is Erkmen's work, but the subtle changes forced viewers to reconsider their expectations both of the museum space itself and the works of art that are contained within.

Exhibitions:   Provisions for the Future and Past of the Coming Days, curated by Isabel Carlos and Tarek Abou El Fetouh, 9^th Sharjah Biennial, Sharjah Contemporary Arab Art Museum, Sharjah (United Arab Emirates), 16.03. – 16.05.2009

Installation: Steel pipes of scaffolding material and hinges

Exhibitions: A, B, C, D, ABC Art Fair, Berlin (Germany), 05.09. – 07.09.2008

sculpture: stainless steel, motor powered mechanics, 150 x 375 x 200 cm

Description:   permanent work installed at the NRW.BANK, Düsseldorf

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Hausgenossen, curated by Julian Heynen). K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (Germany), 08.11.2008 – 01.17.2010

Installation: 8 metallic-coloured fabrics, Soltis, 86, hung into the inner roof construction, 2 parts dark aluminum, 6500 x 70 cm, 2 parts copper, 5400 x 100 cm, 2 parts gold, 4000 x 75 cm, 2 parts light aluminum, 3500 x 80 cm, 2 parts gold, 1800 x 90 cm, 2 parts dark aluminum, 1600 x 95 cm, 2 parts copper, 1000 x 85 cm, 2 parts very light aluminum, 1000 x 85 cm

Exhibitions: Ayşe Erkmen – Hausgenossen, curated by Julian Heynen, K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf (Germany), 08.11.2008 – 01.17.2010

Site-specific intervention: question marks and exclamation marks on some windows of the building

Exhibitions:   AKKUNSTPROJEKTE, curated by Daniel Baumann, Kerstin Engholm, Verena Formanek and Maren Lübbke-Tidow, AK / Arbeiterkammer Wien, Siebdruck Beratungspavillons, 22.10.2008

Carier bags

Description:   Ayşe Erkmen’s artworks are site-specific and often exist only for the duration of the exhibition. Her spectacular public projects and subtle architectural interventions engage with the architectural, historical, and cultural context of the site she is working with. Erkmen has chosen a group of inner-city Christchurch retail outlets to map the city by distributing her “golden cashier bags.” By replacing the stores’ usual shopping bags with bags bearing statements that relate to the function of the business, she creates a subtle intervention that becomes a kind of mobile sculpture as the bags are carried throughout the city by customers – tracing the routes of shoppers just as the title of the exhibition Wandering Lines suggests

Exhibitions:   Wandering Lines: Towards a New Culture of Space, curated by Fulya Erdemci and Danae Mossman, SCAPE 2008 Christchurch Biennial of Art in Public Space, Christchurch (New Zealand), 19.09. – 02.11.2008

Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

Video: sound, colour, 00:24:38 min.

Description:   Shot during an Air Singapore flight, the film shows the screen integrated into the backrest of the seat, which itself is showing an entertainment television programme from Shanghai.

Exhibitions:   7^th Shanghai Biennial, curated by Julian Heynen et al., Biennial Exhibition Hall, Shanghai (China), 13.09.2008 – 11.01.2009

                     Seyahat Etmek ve Yaşamak / Travelling and Living, curated by Ali Akay, Şekerbank Açıkekran, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.04. – 14.06.2014

installation: existing shaft, plastic materials, dimensions unknown

Description:   Three widths of plastic in red, orange and yellow accentuated a shaft on the ceiling and floor usually concealed from visitors; the shaft is used as a lift serving all floors of the museum.

Exhibitions:   Above The Fold. Ayşe Erkmen, Ceal Floyer, David Lamelas, curated by Nikola Dietrich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (Switzerland), 01.06. – 12.10.2008

installation: existing shaft, plastic materials, dimensions unknown

Description:   Three widths of plastic in red, orange and yellow accentuated a shaft on the ceiling and floor usually concealed from visitors; the shaft is used as a lift serving all floors of the museum.

Exhibitions:   Above The Fold. Ayşe Erkmen, Ceal Floyer, David Lamelas, curated by Nikola Dietrich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (Switzerland), 01.06. – 12.10.2008

Installation: carpet, dimensions unknown

Description:   Three carpets in yellow, pink and blue were cut into lengths matching half of the dimensions of the museum’s ground plan. Their form thus had the same jagged contours of the building.

Exhibitions:   Above The Fold. Ayşe Erkmen, Ceal Floyer, David Lamelas, curated by Nikola Dietrich, Kunstmuseum Basel, Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Basel (Switzerland), 01.06. – 12.10.2008

Installation: intermeshed injection-moulded plastic in green, red and white, ‘Algue’: designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, 2004, existing tower, tower dimensions: ca. 10 x 13.40 m, used plastic modules: ca. 17,000 elements, each 3.2 x 2.6 x 0.4 m

Exhibitions:   Folkestone Sculpture Triennial, curated by Andrea Schlieker, Folkestone: Near Wear Bay Road, Kent (United Kingdom), 14.06. – 14.09.2008

Installation: carpet, concrete, metal pipes, laminate, castor rolls, dimensions unknown

Description:   A carpet cut to fit the dimensions of the ground floor was laid out in the smaller upper floor of the gallery and thus bulged up along the sides. The upper floor with its balustrade of metal piping and the laminate floor were reproduced, divided into several sections and presented on pedestals fitted with castor rolls on the lower floor. Erkmen adopted the figure of Humpty Dumpty from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland as the motto for the exhibition.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Aşağı Yukarı / Ups and Downs (S) (C) (curated by René Block). Kazım Taşkent Art Gallery, Yapı Kredi Cultural Activities Arts and Publishing Inc., Istanbul (Turkey), 16.05. – 15.07.2008

Exhibited works: Bir Yer / A Place, 1992/2007; Das Haus / Ev / The House, 1993/2008; Am Haus (On the House), 1994/2008; PFM-1 and others, 1997; Kuşbakışı Manzaralar / Scenic Overlooks, 2004

Poster action: four posters in offset print for double-sided advertising boards, each 171 x 115 cm

Exhibitions:   Sanat Sokağa Taştı!, initiated by “Radikal Art”, Taksim Cumhuriyet Meydanı, Vali Konağı Caddesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.10. – 15.10.2007

Installation: golden fabric, elastic band draped over already existing lettering on the façade of the museum Istanbul Modern, 110 x 1,366 cm

Exhibitions:   Şimdiki Zaman Geçmiş Zaman. 20 Yılda Uluslararası İstanbul Bienali’nden İz Bırakanlar / Time Present Time Past. Highlights from 20 Years of the International Istanbul Biennial, curated by David Elliott and Rosa Martínez, Istanbul Modern (Turkey), 06.09.2007 – 02.12.2007

Installation: intermeshed injection-moulded plastic in white, ‘Algue’: designed by Ronan & Erwan Bouroullec, 2004, 330 x 900 cm (each 3.2 x 2.6 x 0.4 cm)

Exhibitions:   Drei Farben – Weiss (XIV. Rohkunstbau), curated by Mark Gisbourne, Schloss Sacrow, Potsdam (Germany), 15.07. – 26.08.2007

                      Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Video: HD (Beta SP), transferred to DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:25:00 min., loop, edition 5+1 A.P.

Description:   Coffee is a remake of Ardarda İki Kahve (Two Coffees Back to Back) from 2003. Subtitled in English and set in a café, Coffee is a film about reading coffee grounds.

Exhibitions:   Forum expanded (57. Internationale Filmfestspiele Berlin),  Kino Arsenal 1, Berlin (Germany), 08.02. – 18.02.2007

                     Special Project – Ayşe Erkmen: Coffee, Extra City. Centrum voor hedendaagse kunst, Antwerpen (Belgium), 29.06. – 23.09.2007

                     Kunst Film Biennale Köln, Kölnischer Kunstverein, Cologne (Germany), 18. – 24.10.2007; 19.10.2007

                     20th International Documentary Film Festival, Tuschinski 6 /5, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 22.11. – 02.12.2007

                    54th Internationale Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Cinema Star, Oberhausen (Germany), 01.05. – 06.05.2008

                   For the blind man in the dark room looking for the black cat that isn’t there, curated by Anthony Huberman, Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri (USA), 11.09.2009 – 03.01.2010; ICA, London (UK), 03.12.2009 – 01.31.2010; MOCAD /Museum of Contemporary Art, Detroit (USA), 05.02. – 04.04.2010; de Appel, Amsterdam (Netherlands), 13.02. – 28.03.2010; Kulturgest, Lisbon (Portugal), 29.05. – 29.08.2010

                 Video Program / Tanas, curated by Barbara Heinrich, Marta-Herford Museum, Herford (Germany), 22. – 23.01.2011

                Hayal ve Hakikat / Dream and Reality, curated by Fatmagül Berktay, Levent Çalıkoğlu, Zeynep İnankur and Burcu Pelvanoğlu, Istanbul Modern Museum, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.09.2011 – 22.01.2012

               Imaginary Audience Scale, curated by Misal Adnan Yıldız, Artspace, Auckland (New Zealand), 27.03. – 23.05.2015

               Feminismen. The Video Art Collection of Neuer Berliner Kunstverein at Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, curated by Marius Babias and Kathrin Becker, Nordstern Videokunstzentrum, Gelsenkirchen (Germany), 28.03. – 20.12.2015

Exhibited works: Typed Tables, 2001; Flat White [F, M, B], 2006; Die Farben der Buchstaben / Colors of Letters, 2006; Netz (Net), 2006; Blinds, 2004/2006

Drawing: two heliogravures, edition of 20, each 140 x 100 cm; sculpture: three carpets made of wool, hand woven, 1,300 x 42 cm; sculpture: 23 letters and 10 figures made of plexiglass, punched, edition of seven sets; sculpture: clothing labels made of cotton, knotted together by hand, two nails, ca. 220 x 30 cm; sculpture: blinds made of fabric and/or plastic, dimensions variable.

sculpture: carpet made of wool, hand woven, 1,300 x 42 cm

Description: Flat White has three versions: F: Fine, M: Medium, B: Bold.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – awesome, curated by Danae Mossman, The Physics Room. A contemporary Art Project Space, Christchurch (New Zealand), 01.04. – 29.04.2006 [F]

                     Ayşe Erkmen – Habenichts, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 16.01. – 03.03.2007 [F, M, B]

Intervention: existing speaker, computer, sensor, two CDs

Description:   As each train pulled into the platform of line U8, dramatic-sounding music was played for the time it took the train to come to a stop. Two pieces were played, both in the fashion of trailer melodies used for television series.

Exhibitions:   U2 Alexanderplatz, curated by “Arbeitsgruppe U2 Alexanderplatz”, Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst e.V. [NGBK]: Christoph Bannat, Uwe Jonas, Annette Maechtel, Tine Neumann, Barbara Rüth and Birgit Anna Schumacher). Alexanderplatz, Berlin (Germany), 27.09. – 29.10.2006

Installation: planks made of wood, dimensions unknown

Description:   The area where the triennial is held was hit by a severe earthquake in 2004. The planks were laid out in a building damaged by the quake, enabling the rooms to be entered again

Exhibitions:   3^rd Echigo-Tsumari Art Triennial, curated by Fram Kitagawa, Nigata (Japan), 23.07. – 10.09.2006

Intervention: three spheres out of plexiglass (blue, yellow, red), dimensions unknown

Description:   The three spheres were installed above the smallest house in the city, wedged in between two buildings.

Exhibitions:   KONTRACOM 06. Contemporary Festival Salzburg, curated by Max Hollein et al., Alter Markt et al., Salzburg (Austria), 12.05. – 16.07.2006

Leaflet distribution: paper, embossed colour print, edition: 10,000, 23.5 x 22.5 cm

Exhibitions:   İstanbul Yaya Sergileri 2: Tünel/Karaköy / Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions 2: Tünel/Karaköy, curated by Emre Baykal and Fulya Erdemci, Info Centers Karaköy, Promenade, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.09. – 22.10.2005

installation: vinyl (PVC) with digital print on wood, 302 x 101 cm

Description:   A floor covering in blue and golden yellow, upon which the iridescent green motifs from PFM-1 and others were reproduced, was laid out in the entrance area to the museum

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Busy Colors, curated by Mary Ceruti, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York (USA), 10.09. – 27.11.2005

Installation: existing crane, two widths of fabric out polysilk and nylon, 20.7 x 11.3 m

Description:   Widths of fabric in turquoise and pink were set in motion automatically by a heavy and noisy crane some 8 metres over the ground.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Busy Colors, curated by Mary Ceruti, Sculpture Center, Long Island City, New York (USA), 10.09. – 27.11.2005

Installation: silicon thread in pink, green and yellow, wooden boards, steel bars, fixations, size of rooms (length x width): 1,000 x 700 cm, 600 x 600 cm, 1,300 x 600 cm, length of threads: 88,000 m

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Under the Roof, curated by Nigel Prince with assistance of Anna Pike, Ikon Gallery, Birmingham (United Kingdom), 09.04. – 30.05.2005

Installation: five hollow cubes made of rice paper, caned carbon fibre, constructions, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions:   Raum. Prolog, curated by Matthias Flügge, Robert Kudielka and Angela Lammert, Akademie der Künste, Berlin (Germany), 03.04. – 04.06.2005

Sculpture: three balls of milk, dark and white chocolate, diameter of each: 12 cm

Description:   Three hollow chocolate balls were produced in a mould from 1900 used by the renowned Dresden confectioner Anton Reiche; the mould was purchased at an internet auction.

Exhibitions:   Kunst in Schokolade / Chocolate Art, curated by Kasper König, Julia Friedrich, Museum Ludwig and Imhoff-Stollwerck-Museum, Cologne (Germany), 17.03. – 19.06.2005

fabric banner, 246 x 319.5 cm, wall for existing room

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Habseligkeiten, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 13.02. – 16.03.2005

Installation: digital print on fibreboard panel, 300 x 500 cm

Description:   The pictorial image of Hohentwiel (2000) was enlarged to match the height of the room, affixed to fibreboard panels and positioned at the entrance to the gallery. Cut out along its contours, elephant seemed as if it was entering the gallery room.

Exhibitions:   Doğayla Bulaşmak / Contaging with Nature, curated by Ali Akay, Levent Çalıkoğlu, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.02. – 19.03.2005

video projection: digital images, transferred onto DVD, colour, 00:45:00 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P.

Description:   The work giving the exhibition its title. Kuşbakışı Manzaralar / Scenic Overlooks, comprises 84 different landscape scenes. Taken from an image downloaded from the internet, namely from the top down. The white starting image unveils more and more of the respective landscape, the shots frequently taken from a worm’s-eye view.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Kuşbakışı Manzaralar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 11.01. – 12.02.2005

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Habseligkeiten, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 13.02. – 16.03.2005

                      Ayşe Erkmen – awesome, curated by Danae Mossman, The Physics Room. A contemporary Art Project Space, Christchurch (New Zealand), 01.04. – 29.04.2006

                      Collection ’05, curated by Nathalie Ergino, Institut d’art contemporain – Frac Rhône-Alpes, Villeurbanne (France), 15.06. – 15.10.2006

                      Modern and Beyond, curated by Fulya Erdemci et al., Santralistanbul, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.09.2007 – 29.02.2008

                      Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008 (projection surface ca. 450 cm²)

                      Bluish, curated by Caroline Käding, Kunstverein Freiburg, Freiburg (Germany), 05.06. – 02.08.2009

                      Scénographies: de Dan Graham à Hubert Robert, curated by Nathalie Ergino & Dorothée Deyriès-Henry, Lux Scène nationale Valence, Art3 Valence, La comédie de Valence, Lycée Le Valentin Bourg-lès-Valence, Palais Delphinal, Ville de Saint-Donat-Sur-l’Herbasse (France), 14.03. – 28.06.2009

Limerick Biennial / Imagine Limerick, Limerick, Ireland,
March 13-May 23, 2004

Wandzeichnung: PVC-Folie, ca. 300 ≈ 600 cm (Maße variabel) / Wall drawing: adhesive vinyl, ca. 300 ≈ 600 cm (dimensions variable)

Limerick is not only the venue of the biannually held OPEN e v+ a, the annual exhibition of visual+art, but also of INVITED, where internationally renowned artists are invited by the incumbent curator to exhibit their work. The plus-sign in the title and the logo of the Limerick exhibition sets an explicit signal that art (both the product and its process) not only involves our sense of sight but all of our senses. The striking typography together with the logo presumably inspired Erkmen to develop a work for this exhibition featuring a font.

The artist had a technician transpose onto a wall a drawing comprised of font letters and produced in adhesive vinyl. This kind of typed typeface goes back to Erkmen’s experiments on paper from 1997, where she arranged the typed characters of an electronic typewriter into visual drawings, the Typed Tables, for the first time. Further works, Typed Square and Typed Words, featuring phrases like “Thanks For calling” or “good Luck,” followed, so too the transference into other techniques, for example the heliogravure. In Ireland she additionally used a so-called pangram: “The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog” is a sentence containing every letter of the alphabet and is standard use in typesetting handbooks as an example for the various fonts. Widely used as early as the end of the 19th century, this pangram is mentioned in Sir Robert Baden-Powell’s book Scouting for Boys (1908) as a signalling exercise. In Limerick Erkmen alternated the sentence with the alphabet from A to Z and followed the traditional Western direction of reading from upper left to lower right. The font created by the artist featured both upper and lower case letters. It varied in shape, at times rounder, at others angular, now broader, then narrower. Gaps between the elements forming the letters complicated their reading. At the same time though, this provided them with their own free space, lending them a hint of individuality. In the typed area the letters thus seemed to skip or jump, illustrating what the fox does in the example sentence. The drawing was comprised of seven lines whose letters gradually decreased in size. Resulting in a shifting of the sentence’s beginning, this evoked a sense of acceleration, as if the lines were gaining in speed. Taking a step back and viewing the typeface as a whole, the characters looked like a river or a flood of data, without stability and in upheaval. In contrast, attentively reading the sequence of letters generated, along with the aforementioned dynamic, the impression that the fox had jumped off and ‘escaped’ at the end, as if the diminishing size expressed a distancing from an imaginary or seen object. In this way the writing became an image. For the magazine RR_02 Erkmen indeed combined this sentence with an image, a desert scene from the video work Kuşbakışı Manzaralar / Scenic Overlooks (2005).

A direct forerunner of the work for Limerick was shown in the Müßiggang exhibitions in Berlin and Istanbul (2002). Turkish letters were inserted into the gaps in the letters of the Latin alphabet, and instead of the pangram, ten numbers from zero to nine were appended. The fact that the city of Limerick shares its name with the short, witty poetry form of the ‘limerick’ may well have animated Erkmen to this variation.

Installation: removal of the paving-stone floor, removal of the soil layer underneath, tarpaulin, loam-gravel mix, water, surface area: ca. 13 m², mass: ca. 13.5 m³

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – durchnässt, curated by Matthias Ulrich, Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 15.10. – 31.10.2004

Sculpture: rings made of 950 silver

Description:   Silver rings were produced based on designs by Istanbul jewellers Raffi and Levon Şadya. Together the rings formed a chain that could be taken apart. The rings were sold as single items during the exhibition.

Exhibitions:   :mentalKLINIK-04. [ ~self], curated by Mental Klinik [Yasemin Baydar and Birol Demir], Marie-Claude Beaud, Mudam Camp de Base (Luxembourg), 06.10. –11.12.2004

Installation: black carpet, covered area: 294 m²

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – GM, curated by Sophie Lauwers; part of the Turkish Festival, Palais des Beaux-Arts: Victor Horta Hall, Brussels (Belgium), 06.10.2004 – 16.01.2005

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; installation: black carpet, covered area: 137 m²)

Installation: two existing walls, safety belts, metal tighteners, walls: each 500 x 700 cm, video (Circle), dimensions unknown

Description:   Mobile exhibition walls of the museum were positioned at a distance of a metre to one another and bound together with grey safety belts. The video Circle ‘pulsated’ in the narrow space between them.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – gebunden an / bound to, curated by Hannelore Kersting, Städtisches Museum Abteiberg, Mönchengladbach (Germany), 20.06. – 31.10.2004

Installation: twelve buoys made of plastic, ropes made of nylon, twelve balls made of rubber

Description:   Red buoys on the Weser River, which runs near the institution staging the exhibiton, were connected by ropes through the windows to stability balls positioned in an exhibition spaces covering 450 m². The transparent balls in the interior moved in response to the water movements outside.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – BIS AUGUST, curated by Eva Schmidt, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst, Bremen (Germany), 12.06. – 01.08.2004

Installation: generator, video (Circle)

Exhibitions:   Reappearance: The Author’s Look for a Reappearance of The Event, organised by Contemporary Art Institute Péc/Pëje, Kosovo, Kosovo Museum, Prishtina (Serbia, today Rebuplic of Kosovo), 26.04. – 02.05.2004

Slide Projection: carousel for slides, ca. 80 slides, projector

Description:   Drawings and sketches of earlier works and installations from Erkmen’s notebooks were photographed and shown in a slide projection.

Exhibitions:   Hayalet Çizgi / The Ghost Line, curated by Ali Akay and Levent Çalıkoğlu, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 23.01. – 28.02.2004

Installation: six existing pillars, ice-blue grey safety belts made of polyester, metal tighteners, eight pillars (welded square tubes) made of steel, each in three parts, size of room: ca. 330 m², height of existing pillars: 500 cm; height of metal pillars: ca. 490 cm

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Tidvatten, curated by Richard Julin, Konsthall Magasin 3, Stockholm (Sweden), 20.09.2003 – 08.02.2004

Leaflet distribution: paper, four images, edition: ca. 30,000, 15 x 21 cm

Description:   Alluding to the fairytale The Town Musicians of Bremen by the Grimm Brothers, leaflets with images of animals – a donkey, a dog, a cat and a rooster – living in poor conditions, which Erkmen had photographed in and around Istanbul, were distributed to the public. The back of the leaflets were printed with various patterns.

Exhibitions:   Niemand ist eine Insel. 16 kooperative Kunstprojekte in Bremen / No Man is an Island. 16 cooperative art projects in Bremen, curated by Eva Schmidt and Horst Griese, Gesellschaft für Aktuelle Kunst: Sögestraße, Obernstraße, Unser Lieben Frauen Kirchhof, Bremen (Germany), 13.09. – 26.10.2003, daily from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m.

Installation: limestone, three steel ropes, chain, steel beam, counterweights, existing glass roof, existing concrete wall, weight of boulder: 2,250 kg, length of beam: 645 cm, counter weight: 9,000 kg, surface of glass roof (length x width): 1,296 x 1,130 cm, height of concrete wall: 240 cm

Exhibitions:   Performative Installation I “Gegeben sind…”. Konstruktion und Situation / The Performative Installation I “The givens are…”. Construction and Situation, curated by Angelika Nollert and Silvia Eiblmayr, Galerie im Taxispalais, Innsbruck (Austria), 06.09. – 19.10.2003

cake project

Description:   During the exhibition in Kassel a special cake called “Balkanık” was on sale in the gallery’s café

Exhibitions:   In den Schluchten des Balkan. Eine Reportage, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 30.08. – 23.11.2003

Sculpture: two objects made of concrete (pink, yellow), glass panes, each ca. 273 x 230 x 680 cm

Description:   The work comprises two observation decks positioned at two locations along a tributary of the Somme River, each with a view of the water. A set of stairs comprised of five steps provides access and the platforms are flanked by walls on the left and right. Joined together, the sculptures would form a bridge.

Exhibitions:   Points de vue – Ayşe Erkmen, curated by Alain Snyers et al., [within the scope of Au fil de l’eau, Projet No. 5] Parc Saint-Pierre, Amiens (France), March 2003 (unveiling)

Installation: six taxidermy models on pedestals, track system, wheels, timers, various dimensions

Exhibitions:   Kuckuck, curated by Konrad Bitterli, Kunstmuseum St. Gallen (Switzerland), 01.03. – 11.05.2003

                      Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
[Weißschwanzgnu (White-Tailed Wildebeest) (sculpture: one taxidermy model on pedestal, track system, wheels, timer, 172 x 97 x 192 cm, three tracks: each 300 cm) from Kuckuck, 2003]

video: DVD (PAL), colour, sound, variable length (long-term project)

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Müßiggang, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 24.09. – 30.11.2002
(For the show Erkmen juxtaposed the long-term film project Müßiggang (Free Time/Idleness) with the Deutsche Bahn film)

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Boş Zamanlar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 24.10. – 30.11.2002

                      No Art = No City! Stadtutopien in der zeitgenössischen Kunst / Urban Utopias in Contemporary Art, curated by Florian Matzner, Städtische Galerie im Buntentor, Bremen (Germany), 20.09. – 26.10.2003

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; video: DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:33:18 min., loop, variable length: long-term project)

                     Seyahat Etmek ve Yaşamak / Travelling and Living (S) (curated by Ali Akay). Şekerbank Açıkekran, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.04. – 14.06.2014

computer animations, transferred to DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:00:11 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Müßiggang, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 24.09. – 30.11.2002
(For the show Erkmen juxtaposed the long-term film project Müßiggang (Free Time/Idleness) with the Deutsche Bahn film)

                     Die Neue Kunsthalle III: materiell – immateriell (G) (curated by Rolf Lauter). Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany), 17.03. – 12.09.2004

Leaflet distribution: paper, embossed colour print, edition: 10,000, 23.5 x 22.5 cm

Exhibitions:   İstanbul Yaya Sergileri 1: Nişantaşı, Kişisel Coğrafyalar, Küresel Haritalar / Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions 1: Nişantaşı, Personal Geographies, Global Maps, curated by Fulya Erdemci, Abdi İpekçi Caddesi, Vali Konağı Caddesi, (2x) Teşvikiye Caddesi; Maçka Caddesi (2x), Teşvikiye Caddesi (2x), Istanbul (Turkey), 29.09. – 28.10.2002

Drawing by perforation on paper, edition of 15.000, 70 x 70 cm

Description:   Holes etched into paper formed the motif of an Indian elephant. The model for the technique and the motif were charts for lace embroidery purchasable in Bruges. The size of the edition matched the population of Bruges. Any resident of the city was entitled to pick up one of the artworks stacked on pallets free of charge.

Exhibitions:    Onderstromen – Bovenstromen. Interventions in Public Spaces, organized by Niew International Cultureel Centrum, Bauhaus et al., Brügge (Belgium), 06.06. – 15.09.2002; 19.09. – 17.11.2002

                      Logo! No Logo?, curated by Hans Eneman and Jan Verhaeghe, Hogeschool West-Vlaanderen, Brügge (Belgium), 27.09. – 09.11.2003

Intervention: existing room with fountain, tiles, cables, bubble-blowing machine, shelves, shower gel (multiple), dimensions unknown

Description:   The art nouveau fountain around the three lilies spring was in a desolate state in 2002: tiles were missing and the room, closed to the public, was flooded. The room was dried for the intervention, the gaps were filled with standard turquoise tiles and the fountain reactivated. A turquoise-coloured shower gel with the scent of lilies, bearing the artist’s name, was used to produce soap bubbles, which were channelled into the room by a machine.

Exhibitions:   Kunstsommer 2002 – 40 Jahre: Fluxus und die Folgen, curated by René Block and Regina Bärthel, Drei-Lilien-Brunnen, at the Drei-Lilien-Quelle, Wiesbaden 01.09. – 13.10.2002, Sundays between midday and 6 p.m.

                      Multiplizieren ist menschlich – 45 Jahre Edition Block 1966-2011 / To Multiply is Human – Edition Block 45 Years 1966- 2011, curated by Barbara Heinrich, Edition Block, Berlin (Germany), 10.09. – 26.11.2011 (sculpture: 12 bottles of shower gel, 32.5 x 8 cm)

                      Von Sinnen. Wahrnehmung in der zeitgenössischen Kunst / The Human Senses and Perception in Contemporary Art, curated by Anette Hüsch; co-curators: Natascha Driever and Susanne Petersen, Kunsthalle zu Kiel, Kiel (Germany), 14.07. – 21.10.2012

                      Es liegt was in der Luft! – Duft in der Kunst / There's Something in the Air! – Scent in Art, curated by Caro Verbeek and Stefanie Dathe, Museum Villa Rot, Burgrieden-Rot (Germany), 22.03. – 02.08.2015
(She was commissioned to design a public space in 2002 and, for this project, was confronted with the history and significance of the so-called Three Lilies Source (Drei-Lilien-Bad) in Wiesbaden. Ayşe Erkmen found the source house in ruinous condition. The artist dried up the rooms and repaired the defective tiled walls. Mineral water as hot as 70°C hot mineral water could once again flow into the basin. Ayşe Erkmen filled the entire interior with steam and soap bubbles, produced by a small machine using a specially created shower gel. The beholder perceived a playful, poetic and dreamy atmosphere and could imagine the past splendor of the spa town of Wiesbaden)

                     İsimsiz Edition Block'tan bir seçki / Ohne Titel a selection by Edition Block, curated by René Block, Zilberman Gallery, İstanbul, (Turkey) and Edition Block, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 04.11.2017

Tiger project: two tigers, steel bars, podium, wood chips, total area: ca. 700 m²

Description:   In a former mixing plant Erkmen had an enclosure built for two tigers called Ketty and Assam which the veterinary inspection office passed as appropriate. The tiger project was located on the so-called bunker level, on the second floor. Visitors could only view two of the five rooms through steel bars.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Ketty und Assam [Annual Project Campus 2002], curated by Florian Waldvogel and Marius Babias). Kokerei Zollverein, Essen (Germany), 29.06. – 01.09.2002

Slide projection: carousel for slides, ca. 80 round covered up slides, projector, existing rosette, diameter of surface: ca. 340 cm; installation: two existing cleaning vehicles and assembly lifts with motor control unit, random generator, vehicles equipped with rectangular units and several fluorescent tubes, two microphones, speakers, surface of illuminated areas from below: each ca. 516 ≈ 134 cm; two videos (Circle), transferred to DVD, each black and white, ca. 00:03:00 min., loop, two beamers, diameter of illuminated surface areas from below: each ca. 180 cm

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Kein gutes Zeichen, curated by Matthias Herrmann, Secession, Wien (Austria), 25.04. – 23.06.2002

                     Anstoss Berlin. Kunst macht Welt / Art makes the world, curated by Katja Blomberg, Haus am Waldsee, Berlin (Germany), 22.06. – 17.09.2006

Installation: existing ramp, ca. 30 banners, ca. 70 x 200 cm, partly realized

Description:   For the spiral ramp, built by Oscar Niemeyer, of the exhibition building Erkmen planned to hang nothing but banners. There were to be printed with statements given by people from the favelas near Santana, where they were to be produced. As the work could not be shown at the planned site, Erkmen withdrew her project.

Exhibitions:   25. Bienal de São Paulo, curated by Alfons Hug, Fundação de São Paulo (Brazil), 24.03. – 02.06.2002

mural text: typewriter characters as software on CD, edition of 20, realized in adhesive vinyl, 200 x 300 cm

Description:   The mural texts known as Typed Types go back to experiments with typewriter characters from 1997.

Exhibitions:    Ayşe Erkmen – Müßiggang, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 24.09. – 30.11.2002

                       Ayşe Erkmen – Boş Zamanlar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 24.10. – 30.11.2002

                      OPEN / INVITED e v+ 2004 Imagine Limerick, curated by Zdenka Badovinac, City Hall, Exhibition Area et al., Limerick (Republic of Ireland), 13.03. – 23.05.2004
(The dimension of this version: ca. 300 x 600 cm)

                      Her tercih diğer ihtimaller için bir dışlamadır / Every inclusion is an exclusion of other possibilities (G), curated by November Paynter, SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.06. – 02.08.2015
(These versions had been produced for this exhibition; Typed Types / Tanıştığımıza Memnun Oldum, 2005; Typed Types / Çok Çok Teşekkürler, 2005 
Work on paper: paper, typeface created by typewriter characters, marker, each 29.7 x 21 cm)

                     Art and Alphabet (G)(C) (curated by Brigitte Kölle). Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (Germany), 21.07. – 29.10.2017 (Dimensions of this version: 4 x 7,75 m)

Installation: existing tombstone with pedestal, steel substructure for a motor, electrical control system, 238 x 150 x 56 cm

Description:   The copy of the tomb of Henry the Lion and his wife Matilda, daughter of Henry II of England, located in the Kassel Museum for Sepulchral Culture, was rotated together with the pedestal slowly ca. 20 degrees in a southeast direction before returning to its original position.

Exhibitions:   SALTO MORTALE, curated by Florian Matzner, Museum für Sepulkralkultur, Kassel (Germany), 13.10. – 16.12.2001

                      Taliban Talent Contest TTC – Ayşe Erkmen, Richard Hoeg, Karin Pernegger, curated by Stefan Bidner and Thomas Feuerstein, Kunstraum Innsbruck (Austria), 06.12. – 21.12.2002
(The video of installation South East was shown, which Erkmen has realized in the Kassel Museum for Sepulchral Culture in 2001)

Installation: two tables made of wood, lacquered, printed, paper, printed, edition: 1,000, paper: 29.5 x 21 cm; tables: each 60 x 120 x 70

Description:   Two standard white tables stood in the office of the curator Necmi Sönmez; icons of tables were printed on their surface tops. Erkmen placed two stacks of paper with the same symbols on the tables. These symbols were produced with an electronic typewriter and formed abbreviations of tables in 27 variations, one of them doubled.

Exhibitions:   Tische der Kommunikation, curated by Necmi Sönmez, Mobile Städtische Galerie im Museum Folkwang, Essen (Germany), 12.08. – 14.10.2001

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Müßiggang, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 24.09. – 30.11.2002

                     Ayşe Erkmen – Habenichts, Galerie Barbara Weiss, Berlin (Germany), 16.01. – 03.03.2007

Intervention: three ferries from Italy, Japan and Turkey with crews, passengers, ship dimensions (length x beam x draught): 2,435 x 412 x 80 cm, 1,900 x 276 x 80 cm, 2,682 x 520 x 125 cm

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Shipped Ships [in the Deutsche Bank AG art series: Moment – Temporary Art in Public Space], curated by Britta Färber, Ariane Grigoteit and Friedhelm Hütte, On the Main between Griesheimer Ufer and Gerbemühle landing at eleven ferry piers, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 28.04. – 27.05.2001, hours of service: Monday to Sunday, approx. 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Video projection: computer animations, transferred onto digital Betacam (later DVD), black and white, 00:01:57 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P., projection surface: ca. 350 cm

Exhibitions:   2. Berlin Biennale für zeitgenössische Kunst / 2^nd Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, curated by Saskia Bos, Postfuhramt et al., Berlin (Germany), 20.04. – 20.06.2001

                     Ayşe Erkmen – Kuaförde İki Kadın, Chambal, Eudora, Emre ve Dario, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 15.05. – 07.07.2001

                    Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

Installation: existing shop window, spray paint, stencils

Description:   Using stencils, letters of the alphabet were spray-painted onto the display window of a bookstore specialising in the humanities. The letters referred to the computer codes used to register the first and last books sold on a given day, which were made up of the first letters of the respective book title.

Exhibitions:   Bugünkü Program – Gelecek Program / Feature Presentation – Coming Attractions, curated by Özge Açıkkol and Cem İleri, Robinson Crusoe 389 et al.: İstiklal Caddesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 28.09. – 28.10.2000

Installation: large tarpaulin, digital print on tarpaulin segments set in aluminium tubing system, 600 x 1,000 cm twelve panels, digital print on aluminium signs set in tube frames on posts, each 84 x 126 cm

Exhibitions:   HIER DA UND DORT. Kunst in Singen. Internationales Kunstprojekt im öffentlichen Raum, Hohentwielstraße and urban space of Singen, Singen am Hohentwiel (Germany), 05.05. – 08.10.2000

Installation: existing elevator, 565 x 280 cm

Exhibitions:   Zeitwenden – Ausblick, curated by Dieter Ronte, Walther Smerling for Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V., Kunstmuseum Bonn (Germany), 04.12.1999 – 04.06.2000

Video: four films (dissolve, wipe, fade, cut) on digital betacam, colour, 00:02:40 min.; 00:02:36 min.; 00:02:31 min.; 00:01:28 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P.

Exhibitions:   Saman taivaan alla. Taidetta kaupungissa / Under the Same Sky. Art in Urban Contexts, curated by Maaretta Jaukkuri, Kiasma. Nykytaiteen museo: district: Munkkiniemi, Helsinki (Finland), 01.12.1999 – 29.02.2000

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

                     Seyahat Etmek ve Yaşamak / Travelling and Living, curated by Ali Akay, Şekerbank Açıkekran, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.04. – 14.06.2014

Installation: 18 panes of glass, engraved and sandblasted, each 100 x 280 cm

Description:   Several hundred first names of newly enrolled students at he Gelsenkirchen Polytechnic were engraved into the sandblasted glass façade affixed to the window of the entrance to the new college building.

Exhibitions:   Fachhochschule Gelsenkirchen / Abt. Recklinghausen, Recklinghausen (Germany)
A work commissioned by the Ministry for Construction and Housing in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia as part of a competition, 27.10.1999 (unveiling)

Installation: three balls made of plastic, diameter of the balls: ca. 200 cm each

Description:   Three orange balls made of plastic were moved by the wind through the exhibition location, which resembled an amphitheatre. Erkmen also entitles the work “for a small movement”

Exhibitions:   Art Focus. 3^rd International Biennial of Contemporary Art, Jerusalem. The Sultan’s Pool: International Project, curated by Kasper König, The Sultan’s Pool, near Jerusalem (Israel), 24.10. – 20.11.1999

video: DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:00:14 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P.

Description:   The film featuring the roaring lion was shown on a wall, the inner surface of which was part of the museum’s (Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien) cinema.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Half of, Galerie Deux, Tokyo (Japan), 14.09. – 22.12.1999

                     Zeitwenden – Ausblick, curated by Lóránd Hegyi, Manfred Nehrer, Museum moderner Kunst Stiftung Ludwig Wien, 20er Haus et al. (Austria), 05.12.1999 – 01.10.2000

                     Ayşe Erkmen – Kuaförde İki Kadın, Chambal, Eudora, Emre ve Dario, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 15.05. – 07.07.2001

                     Looking At You. Kunst, Provokation, Unterhaltung, Video, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 12.08. – 16.09.2001

                     İstanbul Yaya Sergileri 1: Nişantaşı, Kişisel Coğrafyalar, Küresel Haritalar / Istanbul Pedestrian Exhibitions 1: Nişantaşı, Personal Geographies, Global Maps (G) (C) (curated by Fulya Erdemci). Abdi İpekçi Caddesi, Vali Konağı Caddesi, (2x) Teşvikiye Caddesi; Maçka Caddesi (2x), Teşvikiye Caddesi (2x), Istanbul (Turkey), 29.09. – 28.10.2002
(The short film Chambal was screened at four locations in Nişantaşı, including the Armani Café and a DKNY store.)

                     Erkmen Schulze Sander Grosse – four artists respond to CASO, curated by Marianne Stockebrand, CASO – Contemporary Art Space Osaka (Japan), 01.11. – 30.11.2003

                     Die Neue Kunsthalle III: materiell – immateriell, curated by Rolf Lauter, Kunsthalle Mannheim (Germany), 17.03. – 12.09.2004

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

Installation: five hollow cubes made of Japanese paper (washi) supported by wooden or metal constructions : 16.3 x 31.1 x 43 cm, 32.5 x 62.2 x 86 cm, 65 x 124.3 x 172 cm, 130 x 248.5 x 344 cm, 260 x 497 x 687 cm

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Half of, Galerie Deux, Tokyo (Japan), 14.09. – 22.12.1999

Installation: existing room, aluminium construction with drywall panels for a vertical, movable wall, steel construction for electronic operating device, 340 x 290 x 700 cm

Exhibitions:   Chronos & Kairos. Die Zeit in der zeitgenössischen Kunst (G) (C) (curated by René Block). Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 05.09. – 07.11.1999

                     Weggefährten (S) (C) (curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator). Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; Installation: existing room, aluminium construction with chipboard for a vertical, movable wall, textile, painted, steel construction for electronic operating device, ca. 422 x 320 cm)

                     Whitish (S) (C), curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Installation: eight existing columns, safety belts, metal tighteners, dimensions unknown

Description:   This is the first work by Erkmen where safety belts were wrapt around columns and crisscrossed.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – summertime, Galerie Brigitte Trotha, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 03.09. – 09.10.1999

Installation: 100 copies on transparency paper, 32 metal rods, 2 videos: DVD (PAL), colour, each shown without sound, 00:13:56; 00:12:32 min., loop, each edition of 5+1 A.P., 2 monitors, audio equipments, sensor, transparency paper: each 80 x 100 cm, metal constructions: 600 x 550 cm, 400 x 350 cm

Description:   The installation was staged in the former bedroom of Franz von Stuck. Metal rods were assembled into two corridors, where-in copies of newspaper stories on the love life of Gunter Sachs and Brigitte Bardot were installed. Upon entering the room, Serge Gainsbourg’s song Je t’aime moi non plus in the version recorded with Bardot was played. Monitors positioned above the entrance and exit showed for the first time the videos Kuaförde İki Kadın (Two Women at the Hairdresser); Erkmen would later clearly distinguish between the two, calling them Hairdo and Haircut.

Exhibitions:   “Dream City” – Ein Münchner Gemeinschaftsprojekt, curated by Jo-Anne Birnie Danzker, Luise Horn, Dirk Luckow, Dirk Snauwaert, Museum Villa Stuck, München (Germany), 25.03. – 20.06.1999

                       Ayşe Erkmen – Kuaförde İki Kadın, Chambal, Eudora, Emre ve Dario, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 15.05. – 07.07.2001

                      Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; videos: two films on DVD (PAL), colour, sound 00:13:56 min.; 00:12:32 min., loop, each edition of 5+1 A.P.)

Installation: four rail circuits by the toy company Märklin made of stainless steel (track profile), sheet iron and plastic (track elements), four toy trains by the toy company Märklin made of zinc-die casts (locomotives) and plastic (carriage structures), lacquered in grey, four planks made of plexiglass in different colours, diameter of rail circuits: 119 cm, planks: 2.5 x 60 x (length) 600 cm each 

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – choo-choo, curated by Werner Meyer, Städtische Galerie Göppingen [today Kunsthalle Göppingen] (Germany), 21.03. – 25.04.1999

Sculpture: three objects of fiberglass, computer, motor, each ca. 52 x 80 x 13 cm

Description:   with the sculptures of Maskman and others – here now mobile –

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Batman and others and other Auto Shapes, Galerie Mueller-Roth, Stuttgart (Germany), 20.03. – 08.05.1999

                     Ayşe Erkmen – Boş Zamanlar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 24.10. – 30.11.2002

Video: DVD (PAL), colour, 00:03:45 min., loop, edition of 5+1 A.P.

Description: The video from 1994 was rearranged.

Exhibitions:   Karin Sander / Ayşe Erkmen C 1, curated by Werner Meyer, Städtische Galerie Göppingen [today Kunsthalle Göppingen] (Germany), 30.01. – 07.03.1999

                      Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

                      Seyahat Etmek ve Yaşamak / Travelling and Living, curated by Ali Akay, Şekerbank Açıkekran, Istanbul (Turkey), 16.04. – 14.06.2014
(The video work titled Ein Weg included in the scope of the exhibition to meet the art-lovers everyday except Sunday and Monday was be available for 24 hours a day to view through specially designed monitors in Şekerbank’s 9 branches: Istanbul Feneryolu, Ankara Küçükesat and Çankaya, Tekirdağ Alpullu, Ordu, Izmir, Bodrum, Mardin and Edirne.)

Sculpture: five objects made of plaster, painted in light grey, each ca. 13 x 25 x 6 cm

Exhibitions:   7. Triennale der Kleinplastik 1998, curated by Werner Meyer, SüdwestLB Forum, Stuttgart (Germany), 17.10.1998 – 17.01.1999

                     Fireworks, curated by Saskia Bos, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 12.11.1999 – 03.01.2000

                    Ayşe Erkmen – Boş Zamanlar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 24.10. – 30.11.2002

Video: DVD (PAL), colour, sound, 00:17:00 min., loop, edition of 5+1 AP

Erkmen’s video shows a young man dressed completely in black, singing and dancing with great gusto to a French song; its refrain of “Istanbul c’est Constantinople / C’est à Istanbul ou Constantinople” soon seeps into the viewer’s mind like an earworm. At times pirouetting and moving his arms and legs vigorously, the young Emre – Erkmen’s son – mostly faces the viewer. The scene would appear to be shot in a white studio. The title refers to the song’s composer, Dario Moreno (1921 – 1968), whose real name was David Arugete. Born into a Jewish family – his father was Turkish, his mother Mexican – but raised in an orphanage, Arugete began his career in the Jewish districts of Izmir before moving to Paris and establishing his name there, starring in films at the side of such luminaries like Brigitte Bardot and Yves Montand throughout the 1950s and 1960s. He pursued his music career with the same determination, recording more than ten albums. The love song Istanbul (1954) was a hit in Turkey, dedicated to the city and full of yearning and sadness. The story of the song revolves around the search for the ‘great love’ and dreams of wealth and is told from the perspective of a man in Istanbul. Sauntering through the streets of the “city that is not part of Europe,” the poetic persona evokes the Oriental images of a muezzin and Allah, revelling in the ‘Asian’ enchantment as he follows his beloved through the crowds of Istanbul. “A Istanbul la vie était belle” (“In Istanbul life was beautiful”) is how it begins, but upon finally finding the ‘great love’ she says: “Comme vous, j’arrive droit de Paris” (“Like you, I’ve come from Paris”). The song concludes by declaring that there is no need to seek happiness far afield because it is already there close by. The melancholic theme contrasts starkly to the upbeat rhythm which – like Erkmen’s video – is exhilarating and cheery.
Erkmen first showed the work as part of a group exhibition in Berlin featuring contemporary art from Istanbul. Although the name “Istanbul” fits in with the national emphasis, at first glance the film negates any of the cultural or national characteristics usually associated with Turkey. The song is performed in French, the young man wears clothes fully in line with the international standard fashion look of youths in the 1990s, and he is dancing in a room that discloses no specific national atmosphere. However, in his mimic and body language he moves as impulsively as the hyperactive Moreno in the film Oh! Que Mambo! (1959). Like the ‘hero’ of the song of Istanbul, Moreno was driven out of the city. The song’s reminder that Istanbul was once called Constantinople alludes to the loss of cultural diversity resulting from Turkey’s modernisation in the 20th century, which also triggered waves of Turkish migration. On the one hand, with the video Erkmen questioned national ascriptions, while on the other she chose – to mark this space of ‘identity’ moving between freedom and loss – a song and thus the interwoven fate of Moreno, a fate that stands for a specific historical process bound very much to a particular national context. The personal aspect, conveyed in the video by the role played by her son, is the link for a more general observation on society.

Exhibitions:   İskorpit. Aktuelle Kunst aus Istanbul / Recent Art from Istanbul, curated by René Block and Fulya Erdemci, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin (Germany), 15.10. – 05.11.1998

                      Man muss ganz schön viel lernen, um hier zu funktionieren, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 28.01. – 12.03.2000

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Kuaförde İki Kadın, Chambal, Eudora, Emre ve Dario, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 15.05. – 07.07.2001

                      Orientale 1. Recherchen, Expeditionen, Handlungsreisen, curated by Peter Herbstreuth, ACC Galerie and Universitätsgalerie Weimar, Weimar (Germany), 15.07. – 02.09.2001

                      Spekülasyonlar, curated by Vasıf Kortun and Erden Kosova, Platform Garanti Güncel Sanat Merkezi, Istanbul (Turkey), 06.11. – 10.12.2002

                      Blut & Honig. Zukunft ist am Balkan / Blood & Honey. Future’s in the Balkans, curated by Harald Szeemann, Sammlung Essl. Kunst der Gegenwart, Klosterneuburg / Wien (Austria), 16.05. – 28.09.2003

                      Ko to tamo pjeva? / Who is singing over there?, curated by Dunja Blažević, Umjetnička galleria, B i H, Sarajevo (Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina), 15.03. – 22.03.2004

                      EindhovenIstanbul, curated by Eva Meyer-Hermann and Charles Esche, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (The Netherlands), 01.10.2005 – 29.01.2006

                      Fremd bin ich eingezogen, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 11.11. – 26.11.2006

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

                      Hep Aynı Şarkı / On Connaît La Chanson / Same Old Song, curated by Ali Akay, Akbank Sanat, Istanbul (Turkey), 13.05. – 10.06.2009

                      Video Program / Tanas, curated by Barbara Heinrich, Marta-Herford Museum, Herford (Germany), 22. – 23.01.2011

                      Bodily Choreography, curated by Maria Brewińska, Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw (Poland), 18.06. – 14.08.2011

                     Emre & Dario, GROTTO, Berlin (Germany), 30.05. – 15.03.2025

Sculpture: armchair and sphere-shaped ottoman made of alabaster, grape pigments, 92 x 117 x 137 cm, diameter of the sphere: 40 cm

Alabaster has been mined and fashioned into objects since the Etruscans in the Val d’Elsa. Although alabaster possesses similar qualities to marble, the satiny-white, gypsum sedimentary rock is far easier to cut and hew. Erkmen employed this traditional material and drew on the area’s long history of craftsmanship to create four pieces of seating furniture; perfect imitations of modern designer classics and in original size, these sculptures were then painted with different coloured grape pigments. While Donna and Sacco as well as the seat First were exhibited in Mensano, the sofa Elogio, 800 kilograms of weight, at the time in yellow, was positioned in front of the so-called Rocca Senesa, the 14th-century castle today home to Casola’s town hall. Sharing an international design history but nonetheless specifically Italian, all of these furniture pieces for interior space were suddenly in public space. In this setting the viewer’s associations could be personal or of a more general nature. Positioned on Casola’s representative historical square, the low sofa entitled Elogio (“eulogy”) provoked associations of ‘heavyweight’ powerbrokers in a hotel lobby. 
With the exception of the chair, the models chosen are characterised by the light, supple materials fashionable in the 1970s. The qualities and manufacturing process of these materials are diametrically opposed to the solidity of the alabaster, which Erkmen had hewn in traditional sculptural techniques. This is particularly evident in the Up series designed by Gaetano Pesce, from which Erkmen chose the massive work Donna (design 1969; production 1970 – 1973 by C & B Italia). Ultimately however the opposites converge, for Erkmen enhanced the anthropomorphic character of the armchair otherwise made of polyurethane foam through the alabaster: with its gleaming finish, veins and colouration, the armchair appeared to have hint of hair and flesh. Sacco is also based on a famous design (Piero Gatti, Cesare Paolini, Franco Teodoro, 1968; production: 1968 to the present by Zanotta spa), immediately recognisable. Filled with synthetic granules, the seat is designed to shift to accommodate the contours and weight of any user and the position they take. In Erkmen’s Sacco the folds inherent to this purpose were particularly accentuated, the contrast to the original becoming all the more eye-catching. With the mimesis of forms, their cultural coding and contextual displacement, Erkmen posed questions about cultural identity. The alabaster furniture generated awareness in Tuscany for the present moment and its history: what does it mean to live or stay in this old town with its past and rich traditions? This awareness is a physical experience, triggered by viewing the sculptures as bodies in space and recalling that their models also date – albeit closer to our historical present – from an earlier time, the 1970s.

Exhibitions:   Arte all’Arte 98, curated by Florian Matzner, Angela Vettese, Associazione Arte Continua: Mensano, San Gimignano (Italy), 12.09. – 02.11.1998

                     Boom! Confluenza: Network open to Contemporary Art in Tuscany, curated by Silvia Lucchesi, Manifattura Tabacchi, Manifattura d’Arte, Florenz (Italy), 10.06. – 20.07.2001

                     Chairs in Contemporary Art, curated by Agnes Kohlmeyer, Civici Musei del Castello di Udine (Italy), 09.09.2001 – 06.06.2002

                     Continuità / Magnete. Artisti stranieri in Toscana 1945 – 2000, curated by Angela Vettese). Frattoria di Celle, Pistoia (Italy), 03.06. – 30.09.2002

                     Double Crescent: Art from Istanbul and New Orleans, curated by Dan Cameron, C24 Gallery, New York (USA), 08.09. – 29.10.2011

Installation: existing monitors, existing computers, CDs

Description:   The work to save comprised screensavers with shots taken from the six videos of PFM-1 and others shown on monitors in various offices of the Fridericianum.

Exhibitions:   Echolot: oder 9 Fragen an die Peripherie, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 22.03. – 07.06.1998

Installation: fabric, dimensions unknown

Description:   For to keep Erkmen painted backs of depot walls in the exhibition area on three floors of the Fridericianum in different colours.

Exhibitions:   Echolot: oder 9 Fragen an die Peripherie, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 22.03. – 07.06.1998

Installation: existing elevator set in granite floor, existing glass ceiling with three rosettes, two existing heaters clad in stone, room size: ca. 90 m² (545 x 720 x 1,250 cm), granite plate covering the elevator: 94 x 398 x 276 cm, glass ceiling: 276 x 398 cm, diameter of each rosette: 153 cm, clad heaters: 94 x 94 x 195 cm

Who or what has a stake in what, who or what participates in something? What constitutes the spirit of a place, its “genius loci”? Together with nine other artists, Erkmen accepted the invitation of the Kunsthalle Bern to develop a site-specific work addressing these questions. She chose the spacious foyer and worked with its characteristics: two voluminous, rectangular stone components are part of the room into which natural light falls through a glass ceiling. Three radial-segmented rosettes adorn the ceiling. Heaters are set in the stone components. Like the room overall, they have an extremely unpretentious appearance, with circular decorative elements their sole ornamentation. The artist took one element of the room that is not used during opening hours and related it to these features: the elevator set in the granite floor that is used for transportation. Erkmen had this elevator raised to the height of the “stone sarcophagi” (Bernhard Fibicher). This meant that a section of the floor was also raised, resulting in the room having two levels. In addition to this intervention, Erkmen removed the glass from the three rosettes of the foyer ceiling. This allowed the visitor to look up at the sky through the Kunsthalle’s – otherwise concealed – narrow side windows as well as the coffering of its ceiling. Light and air flooded the setting. “The participation,” wrote Erkmen in her project sketch, “will be coming down from the ceiling and up from the floor of what is already there and with what is already there.” The extension upwards drew attention to a connection between spaces inside and outside. In Bern, the mountains are the characteristic element outside – depending on the weather, at times invisible, at others a majestic sight. For the print in the catalogue the artist chose a photograph that gives a clue to what her work is referring to. On the way to Switzerland she took a photo of her view out of the plane window. The photo shows a craggy, snow-covered mountain range rising out of dense cloud banks. Transposed to the work, the elevation of the floor in the Kunsthalle, the selection of existing materials – glass and stone – and not least the crystalline form of the rosette panels, whose delicate grates remained visible, alluded to the topography of Bern, set in an alpine scenery. Mountains are regarded as sublime in all cultures, as the seat of the divine. They point to a sphere “beyond the oppressive captivity of physical life” (Friedrich Schiller). The work was able to graphically convey this relationship between heaven and earth. That art takes up an intermediary position in this metaphysical relationship is made abundantly clear by the ‘in-between’ positioning of the elevator.

Exhibitions:   Genius loci, curated by Bernhard Fibicher, Kunsthalle Bern (Switzerland), 24.01. – 08.03.1998

Sculpture: eight heated benches made of stainless steel on footings, underground pipelines, each bench 77 (backrest) / 34 (seat height) x 154 cm

To mark the construction of a new co-generation plant in Berlin, Erkmen was invited to develop a work for the Bewag project Kunst am Bau along with other artists such as Per Kirkeby, Dan Graham and Franz Ackermann. The first meeting was held on 25 and 26 August 1995, with the artists shown around the plant site and its surrounds. The project plans were then presented at a second meeting held on 13 November 1995. Erkmen submitted two proposals for the planned footpath along the bank of the Spree. The first comprised of a shaft that was to have an underground connection to the plant. Warme Bänke (Warm Benches), her second proposal, finally accepted by Bewag in February 1996 and constructed in 1997 by company trainees, also pursued this idea of connection. Above all, Erkmen explored the given circumstances, leading her to use the heat generated by the plant to create a sensual experience, while the work itself was useful for the functioning of the overall system.
Each of the benches is made of 22 burnished, curved stainless steel pipes welded together. The pipes are connected to the transformer cooling circuit of the plant through underground conductions. The transformer inside the plant needs to be cooled. Erkmen’s sculptures serve precisely this purpose of dissipating heat. The waste heat is directed to and stored in the steel pipes. This method of feeding and dissipating heat is unconventional and functions on the basis of the Tichelmann principle. An engineering office developed a series of construction plans featuring heat circuitry for this purpose. These were then supplemented by plans for the construction of the valves and hot temperature water connections on the benches designed by Jourdan & Müller, the architectural firm with overall responsibility for the construction of the new plant.It was in this version that the benches were built. The host of plans in the company archives reveals the complexity of the undertaking. The benches were placed along a 50-metre stretch of the path, predominantly facing the Spree. The slightly askew position of 10° and their placement in front of the wall by Kirkeby followed Erkmen’s plans. At her request, another bench was added to the seven originally planned. Looking out at the river enhances awareness of the cycle taking place within the benches. Their pleasurable warmth generates an experience that is genuinely social. The promenade along the riverbank, the actual starting point of Erkmen’s idea, remains closed to the public however due to successful litigation by local residents. Bewag, today part of the Vattenfall group, decided to keep the path closed; given the legal impasse, making the path accessible would only mean creating a dead end leading to the property in question.

Exhibitions:   Das Kunstprojekt am Heizkraftwerk Mitte, curated by Kasper König in conjunction with Jochem Jordan, Bernhard Müller, Co-generation plant Mitte, Köpenicker Straße 59–71: bank of the River Spree between Michaelbrücke and Brückenstraße, Berlin (Germany), 25.08.1995 – 24.11.1997 (unveiling)

video installation: computer animations, transferred to DVD (PAL), for six screens (alternative five), colour, sound, 00:00:04 min., loop, since 2001 edition of 10+1 A.P.

Description:   a 6-channel-video installation with sound – namely the first video installation ever published in an edition. It shows green, strangely anthropomorphic objects appearing from a blank background, jumping into the foreground before eventually disappearing, accompanied with synthetic sounds. In fact, these forms are computerized animations of landmines which form a bizarre parade, weird and unsettling.

Exhibitions:   Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1997, curated by Kasper König, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster (Germany), 22.06. – 28.09.1997

                      Dazzle Gradually, curated by Gregory Volk, Apex Art, New York (USA), 11.09. – 11.10.1997

                      Ayşe Erkmen – Half of, Galerie Deux, Tokyo (Japan), 14.09. – 22.12.1999

                      Fireworks, curated by Saskia Bos, De Appel Foundation, Amsterdam (The Netherlands), 12.11.1999 – 03.01.2000

                     Man muss ganz schön viel lernen, um hier zu funktionieren, curated by Nicolaus Schafhausen, Frankfurter Kunstverein, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 28.01. – 12.03.2000

                    WIDER BILD GEGEN WART. Positionen zu einem politischen Diskurs, Galerie Martin Janda, Wien (Austria), 17.03. – 29.04.2000

                   III. Gwangju Biennale 2000: Man + Space, curated by René Block, Biennial Exhibiton Hall, Gwangju (South Korea), 29.03. – 06.06.2000

                  WIDER BILD GEGEN WART. Standpunten t.ov.v. een politiek, curated by Martin Janda, Niew International Cultureel Centrum, Antwerpen (Belgium), 15.09. – 18.11.2000

                  Looking At You. Kunst, Provokation, Unterhaltung, Video, curated by René Block, Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel (Germany), 12.08. – 16.09.2001

                 V. Cetinje Biennale: Love it or leave it, curated by René Block and Nataša Ilić, Narodni muzej Crne Gore et al., Cetinje (Montenegro), 28.08. – 19.09.2004

                 Frei. Fem kunstnere fra Balkan, Galerie Susanne Ottensen, Copenhagen (Denmark), 09.03. – 21.04.2007

                Modern and Beyond, curated by Fulya Erdemci et al., Santralistanbul, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.09.2007 – 29.02.200

                Edition Block – to be continued, curated by René Block, Edition Block, Berlin (Germany), 18.03. – 26.07.2008

               Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008

               Istanbul Next Wave. Simultaneity – Parallels – Opposites, curated by Çetin Güzelhan, Levent Çalıkoğlu). Martin Gropius Bau, Berlin (Germany), 12.11.2009 – 17.01.2010

              The Secret Life of Abstract Forms, curated by Barbara J. Scheuermann, Hopstreet Gallery, Brussels (Belgium), 29.04. – 11.06.2011

              Rainproof Ideas & More Editions, Edition Block, Berlin (Germany), 06.12.2014 – 10.04.2015

Intervention: 13 stone sculptures, a helicopter, safety belts, metal tighteners, karabiners, steel plates and bars, pallet

Many artists with a project specifically created for public space encounter insurmountable difficulties. Although somewhat less prevalent for temporary projects, Erkmen’s participation in Skulptur. Projekte in Münster 1997, the large and prestigious sculpture show held every ten years, became shrouded in controversy. The artist faced such obstinacy on the part of public authorities that the eventual realisation of one of her proposed works was nothing short of a miracle. Her work Sculptures on the Air has thus quite rightly been seen as a symbol for the freedom of artistic expression. Three projects, respectively titled The Clock, The Covers and The Lights, planned for the St. Paulus Cathedral or its vicinity were rejected – without stating on what grounds – by the diocesan chapter. For the conception that was finally undertaken, the organisers and the artist literally overrode another predictable veto – they declared the air space over Münster to be a free terrain. A helicopter was leased to transport sculptures from the museum depot to the roof of the museum on Domplatz. A sculpture was to remain on the roof until the next ‘flying’ sculpture arrived to replace it. Four persons were positioned on the roof to carry out the change. The sculptures in the air were heard before they were seen, hovering in the air, looking down laconically on the city and then when in position across at the cathedral, located only 50 metres from the museum. “This work is about sculpture. It is also about exhibiting. It is about being on air, existing, being valid, informing and being informed. It is about seeing and being seen. It is about transfer and shifts,” declared Erkmen in her project proposal. Thirteen sculptures from the 15th through to the 17th century were selected from the museum’s holdings for the action. Most of the statues were figures of saints or bene factors. A number are attributed to Johann Mauritz Gröninger, a 17th-century royal court sculptor in Münster, or his studio. The sculptures bear the stamp of war, for example the Ecce Homo or the beardless saint with crossedlegs, which are kept in the museum’s depot and otherwise not exhibited. The action could only be carried out on two weekends for cost reasons. The first weekend however was marred by another conflict with the diocesan chapter: on Sunday, 22 June, between 10. 30 and 11 a.m. the pilot flew to the museum roof to pick up the sculpture placed there the previous day, just as the Sunday mass was being held in the cathedral. The helicopter approached the museum from a different – permitted – direction and flew directly over the cathedral. Allegedly he hovered there briefly before flying on to the museum. The diocesan chapter issued a formal complaint to the police for disturbance of the peace. Proceedings were dropped however in exchange for the pilot paying a fine and Klaus Bußmann, the director of the museum at the time, issuing a formal apology. When Erkmen speaks of transfer and shift in her project proposal she is also referring to the metaphorical transference which the viewer undertook upon seeing such sculptures in the air. For example, a visitor who had read the catalogue knew of the previous rejections by the church authorities and thus recognised in the realised work a metaphor for the difficulties encountered in exhibiting art and how they are overcome. They could relate the massiveness of the figures and their melancholic expression as they hovered in the air to the strain Erkmen was exposed to, while at the same time the flying sculptures could accordingly be interpreted as a metaphor for the suspension of gravity, as a wondrous feat of resistance. A further association was presented in the catalogue, namely the printing of a filmstrip taken from Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1959), where a helicopter flies over Rome carrying a figure of Christ with raised arms. In the film this scene implies that religion had lost its power in contemporary society.

Exhibitions:   Skulptur Projekte in Münster 1997, curated by Kasper König, Westfälisches Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Münster (Germany), 22.06. – 28.09.1997

Installation: 15 digital prints on fibreboard panels, height: 274 cm (ground floor), 416 cm (first floor), 410 cm (second floor)

Erkmen enlarged five motifs and mounted them on walls in so-called landscape format, distributed across the three floors of the gallery. They were not conceived to be hung on the wall however; instead, they were left freestanding in space and matched the height of the respective exhibition room. On the ground floor the lower section of the image was presented in giant formats, with the middle shown on the first and the upper section on the second floor. The positioning of the works was consistent on all floors, so that the images seemed to cut through the building’s architecture. This meant that those upper sections of a photograph showing, for example, the blankness of a brilliantly blue sky hung on the second floor, while strange, if not comical aspects were to be seen on the lower floors: only the legs of people in distinguished business outfits of the 1990s, or the long necks of giraffes rising cheekily out of the ground. The reverse sides were left  blank. Some of the images were arranged in oblique angles to one another and placed diagonally to the setting of the room’s architecture. For the viewer, this meant that they could not look at the images – as it were already presented in estranged cut-out sections – unhindered, if indeed at all. Either their view was blocked by pillars, or the images could only be viewed up close, for the compressed space between the walls denied a viewing position proportionate to their size. It was even possible for a visitor to inadvertently enter into a kind of passageway, faced on both sides with only the blank reverse sides of the images. Whereas in Arnsberg it was the artificiality and clichéd motifs which caught the eye, those of the purportedly wonderful, intact world employed by advertising, in !ecklinghausen Erkmen focused more on the fragmentation of our perception. The models for assembling the installation underline how Erkmen was aiming to take a position that facilitated a comprehensive view of the ‘world’ from above, but only to then reveal our sometimes limited and restricted point of view.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – I-MA-GES, curated by Ferdinand Ullrich, Hans-Jürgen Schwalm, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany), 04.05. – 06.07.1997 

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; installation: four digital prints of two images on fibreboard panels, height: 454 cm (ground floor), 451 cm (first floor), width: each 250 cm)

Slide projection: slide carousel, ca. 80 slides, slide projector, dimensions unknown

Description:   For a wall with round arch, a series of slides were produced, featuring views of white light which, although taken in various focuses, nonetheless resembled one another. The images generated a fleeting appearance of light on the white exhibiton wall.

Exhibitions:   s/light, curated by Peter Herbstreuth). Konstmuseet Malmö (Sweden), 16.02. – 31.03.1997

                      Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Intervention: existing electronic indicator panel, video, ca. 00:10:00 min., dimensions unknown

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Konuşmalar, Taksim Cumhuriyet Meydanı, Istanbul (Turkey), 01.02. – 28.02.1997

                      ğ – queer forms migrate, curated by Emre Busse, Aykan Safoğlu, Schwules Museum, Berlin (Germany), 02.03. – 29.05.2017

                     Murmuring, curated by Ali Akay, Mestna Galerija Ljubljana, Ljubljana (Slovenia), 20.04. – 04.06.2017

Installation: removal of several glass windows in the entrance area to the Künstlerhaus in Graz, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions:   Inclusion: Exclusion. Versuch einer neuen Kartografie der Kunst im Zeitalter von Postkolonialismus und globaler Migration (=steirischer herbst 96), curated by Peter Weibel, Künstlerhaus et al., Graz (Austria), 22.09. – 26.10.1996

Installation: existing shop window, monitor, video

In her work The Pink Sweater, Erkmen “puts into brackets” the scene in Wenders’ Paris, Texas in which Nastassja Kinski talks to her husband through the mirror in a peep-show room where she can’t see him, but he can see her. Using the shot reverse shot technique, the film does away with the man and focuses only on the talking Kinski in a pink sweater, and even substitutes the husband’s absence with the occasional TV static. In this way, we—the spectators on the street—get drawn into the covert feeling of the subject. We don’t know who she’s talking to, what she’s looking at and we’re thinking: “Who is it that’s looking at us and why is this gaze so persistent?”

Exhibitions:   Zeil & Kunst. Zeil-Fenster 96: Kunst im Schaufenster, curated by Kasper König, Brigitte Kölle, Florian Waldvogel, Zeil, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 29.08. – 14.09.1996

                     Kendi Kendine / On Its Own, Rampa, Istanbul (Turkey), 09.02. – 26.03.2011

Installation: existing grain silo, cans of Quaker yellow corn meal, dimensions unknown

Description:   Alternating between three and four cans for each row, ten rows of Quaker corn meal were stacked in grain silo belonging to the ART /OMI International Arts Center.

Exhibitions:   ART /OMI 1996 International Artists’ Residency, curated by Linda Cross, ART /OMI International Arts Center, Columbia County, N.Y (USA), 08.07. – 28.07.1996

Installation: plastic on metal construction, ca. 150 x 300 cm

The villa at Museumpark 9, built and designed for the physician Dr. H. J. Boevé by the architect duo Brinkman & Van der Vlugt between 1931 and 1933, is a building possessing all the characteristics of “New Objectivity”: a simple, light construction and a functional design in white. For Manifesta I, the formerly private villa served as an exhibition site for six artists under the motto: “In every dream home a heartache.”
On the railing of the roof garden Erkmen attached a lightweight aluminium construction bearing a text in English in red lettering. Extending beyond the architectural dimensions of the building and arranged in three lines, the text could be read from a distance. Set in quotation marks and given in direct speech, a voice was made at once visible and audible out of which a positive, naïve curiosity speaks, wondering about who lives in such a “nice house.” This arrangement invited the viewer to relate these lines to their own impending visiting of the exhibition. The sentence is taken from Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Appropriate to the fairytale genre, Erkmen selected the font “Vag Rounded Bold,” which recalls the clear and large lettering favoured by children learning to write. Erkmen had previously used passages from this nursery story in Çağrılı Olmayan Konuk (Uninvited Guest) from 1993 and in Eine Geschichte for the Stuttgart IFA Gallery as part of the İskele exhibition. The story was first published in 1837 in a version by Robert Southey and it relates the tale of a girl called Goldilocks who enters the unlocked house owned by a family of bears while they’re out for a walk in the woods. Without asking she proceeds to sample their porridge and try out the chairs and beds, breaking the baby bear’s chair. In an interview she gave on the occasion of her work Portiport, Erkmen remarks: “The figure of Goldilocks has always reminded me of the role of the artist, who goes inside somewhere, interferes with things as they are and changes how people perceive things.”
The lettering of the text also cast a shadow on the façade in Wow. The text was positioned in this way to highlight that it was attached to the villa from the outside. Erkmen rejected a proposal to quote the text in Turkish, considering this too personal. The English translation enabled her to extend and transfer her playful identification of the artist as Goldilocks to include the visitor, who could then relate the quote to their very own entering of the exhibition.

Exhibitions:   Manifesta 1. European Biennial of Contemporary Art, curated by Katalyn Néray et al., Villa Museumpark et al., Rotterdam (The Netherlands), 09.06. – 19.08.1996

Installation: ten digital prints on fibreboard panels, 280 x 180 cm (4x), 230 x 125 cm (4x), 230 x 120 cm (2x)

In a comparable constellation of rooms at the Kunstverein Arnsberg, Ayşe Erkmen installed five large-scale photographs in the five rooms, pictures she had borrowed from an imagebank. There it is possible to borrow photographs; usually these are requested by advertising offices and press agencies. The photographs’ visual statement is so universal that they can only make the specific message clear in connection with a text, without this text connotation the effect is that of a cliché, and at the same time, in Ayşe Erkmen’s enlargement they appear emblematic. In Arnsberg she enlarged the photographs to the size of a door in order to block the entrances to the rooms with the mounted pictures. The motif of the barrier appears again here, a barrier which barricades the entrances to the rooms in such a way that the interior itself becomes perceptible in its emptiness. The viewer is almost hopelessly exposed to the motifs of these glossy lifestyle photographs.

Exhibitions: Ayşe Erkmen – Images, curated by Johannes Teiser, Kunstverein Arnsberg (Germany), 30.05. – 15.06.1996

Installation: seven metal detectors set in gates made of copper beech, dimension of the gates: each 217.5 x 87 x 50.5 cm

On the initiative of the Siemens Culture Program (subsequently renamed Arts Program), the exhibition series Zuspiel was established; following the conception of this series, two artists were to ‘play’ a specific site. The first venue was the Portikus, the gallery for contemporary art in Frankfurt am Main. Ayşe Erkmen and Andreas Slominski were the chosen artists by the Portikus to take part in this duo-exhibition.
The name of this institution goes back to a specific feature of the preceding building, the old city library. Built in 1825, the library was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War, with only the classical entrance façade and its portico supported by columns surviving. The art gallery, which would remain at this location until 2003, was added onto the torso placed under monument protection in 1987. The plain architecture of the annex contrasted starkly to the portal. Six Corinthian columns supported a pediment inscribed with an epigraph formulated by Arthur Schopenhauer: “LITTERIS RECUPERATA LIBERTATE CIVITAS.” It boasts of recovered freedom which has enabled the city to devote the building to the sciences and learning. Freedom is a theme Erkmen has broached in a number of works – and this is also the case in the work for the Portikus, where the artist responded to the specificities of both the site and the exhibition. During the preparations for the exhibition, Erkmen decided to ‘play’ the outside area and leave the ‘field’ inside to Slominski. Focusing on the portico, she placed security gates between the columns through which visitors had to pass before entering the art gallery. The control lamps on the gates switched from green to red and a piercing sound bleeped out whenever the detector identified even the tiniest amount of metal. Readymades, the gates only became art temporarily by a shifting of the context and, most importantly, the interaction with the visitor. In experiencing the transition

Exhibitions:   Zuspiel – Ayşe Erkmen, Andreas Slominski, curated by Brigitte Kölle, Kasper König, Matthias Winzen, Portikus, Frankfurt am Main (Germany), 03.02. – 24.03.1996

                     Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; sculpture: metal detector set in gate made of plastic, 225.5 x 83.5 x 63 cm)

                      Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Print: Exposure on offset plate, realized by Ofset Yapımevi, Istanbul, edition of 90, 100 x 70 cm, signed and numbered, edition A of 50: numbered 1/50-50/50, edition B of 40: numbered I/XL-XL/XL as A.P.

Description:   The sheet showed water drops, enhanced by highlights, which were exposed on an offset plate. This is the first image Erkmen leased from an image data bank.

Exhibitions:   4. Uluslararası İstanbul Bienali Özel Baskı Portföyü / 4^th International Istanbul Biennial Print Portfolio, 1995

Installation: existing freight elevator, corrugated steel sheets, cordoning bars, 400 x 259 x 252 cm

For the 4th Istanbul Biennial in 1995, storage warehouses for the shipping industry in Tophane were converted into exhibition space. At the time of Erkmen’s first on-site inspection, the warehouse Antrepo I was in a completely derelict state. The artist decided to incorporate the freight elevator connecting the two floors of the exhibition into her project. She lined the inside of the elevator with corrugated metal sheets normally used in containers for transporting goods. “Wertheim” is the name of the company which manufactured the elevator, while “ACUU” is the name given to such containers. The doors of the elevator were opened, creating the impression of a stage. A metal bar prevented visitors from entering the elevator. And so the gleaming spectacle was played out in front of them: the elevator was set in motion. Viewed from the first floor, the shiny inner space disappeared into seemingly bottomless depths, leaving behind a dark emptiness. On the ground floor it seemed as if the elevator ascended heavenwards, operated by an invisible hand. The volume of the elevator’s inner space that was visible changed continually.This shuttling back and forth between more and less space evoked a new realm of imagination for the viewer. In permanent motion, the installation unfurled a multifaceted metaphoric: it illustrated a temporary changing of roles or the functional transformation of places, like that of the Antrepo warehouses into exhibition sites for art. By virtue of its incessant coming and going, the elevator also had a temporal dimension.

Exhibitions:   4. Uluslararası İstanbul Bienali / 4^th International Istanbul Biennial, curated by René Block). Antrepo I. et al., Istanbul (Turkey), 10.11. – 10.12.1995

Installation: discs of plaster and oak, lacquered, diameter of the discs: ca. 9.7 cm

Description:   For the installation Erkmen engaged an architect who measured all possible spatial dimensions of the gallery. Erkmen then traced the measured lengths and breadths with lines of circular discs; those on the wall were made of plaster, those on the floor of wood

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Bu Galeri, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 25.04. – 03.06.1995

Installation: material (divided into four parts), embroidered, each 220 x 150 cm

Description:   Four widths of black fabric were embroidered with the word endings used in the work On the House (“-miş” etc.)

Exhibitions:   Da-zwischen. Zeitgenössische Kunst in Deutschland / Entre-deux. Art Contemporain en Allemagne / In Transit. Contemporary Art in Germany, curated by Ulrike Rüdiger). Centre Albert Borschette et al., Brussels (Belgium), 13.09. – 02.12.1994  

Installation: three railway tracks, pedestal elements, eight monitors, video, length of tracks: 1,442 cm, 805 cm (2 x)

Description:   Three original railway tracks hanging close to the ground crisscrossed the rooms of the IFA-Galerie in Bonn. The eight monitors, positioned on different walls, showed a video featuring film sequences from various American, European and Turkish films with the scenes taking place on railway tracks.

Exhibitions:   İskele. Türkische Kunst Heute, curated by René Block, Beral Madra, Sabine Vogel, Iris Lenz, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V., Bonn (Germany), 17.08. – 01.10.1994

                      GAR, curated by Vahap Avşar, Selim Birsel, Claude Leon, Tren İstasyonu, Ankara (Turkey), 03.05. – 15.05.1995

Installation: 40 suffixes / word endings out of plexiglass on rendering, dimensions unknown

Erkmen obtained permission from a real estate company, owned at the time by the federal state of Berlin, to affix 40 strings of letters in Turkish on the façade of a newly renovated building in Kreuzberg. Although planned only temporarily for the duration of the exhibition, the work pleased the residents of Oranienstraße 18 so much that they demanded it become a permanent installation. In brilliant black plexiglass, suffixes were stamped in the font “Universe extra bold (black) condensed.” With the exception of “miş,” no suffix is repeated. Erkmen purposely chose for these word fragments a building and a district where a vast number of Turkish migrants live. In isolation, as Erkmen used them, they have no meaning however. Meaning is only generated when they are placed in front of a word as an attribute or at the end of a sentence. The artist signalised that they are to be added to by placing a hyphen at the beginning and a full stop at the end of each fragment. Local Turkish residents could well understand this as a challenge to complete the ‘game.’ But it is just as likely that they also find it disconcerting to suddenly see something familiar and original to their language, namely the variants of a specific past tense, in an ‘alien’ context. In contrast, a viewer without any knowledge of Turkish can only discern that the strings of letters are differentiated grammatical forms. In this way, the so-called outsider in German society becomes the insider, while conversely the insider is now the outsider.

Exhibitions:   İskele. Türkische Kunst Heute, curated by René Block, Beral Madra, Sabine Vogel, Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V.: Oranienstraße 13 / Heinrichplatz (P), Berlin (Germany), 20.05. – 03.07.1994

                     Modern and Beyond, curated by Fulya Erdemci et al.). Santralistanbul, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.09.2007 – 29.02.2008
(reduced version; ten word endings in plexiglass on aluminium construction)

Sculpture: iron, welded, height: ca. 800 cm, diameter: ca. 100 cm, originally with grass

When passing in Istanbul from the busy pedestrian zone of İstiklâl Street onto Tünel Square, one is suddenly surrounded by buildings from the 19th century which radiate a French charm with their wrought-iron latticework. Here, in the European part of the city, is where the nostalgic tram connecting Taksim with Tünel Square ends; it is also where one may change over to the world’s second oldest metro, a funicular railway. Since 1874 it is possible to travel from Beyoğlu to the lower-lying bank of the Golden Horn in Karaköy.
Fifty-five project proposals were submitted for ten public spaces as part of a competition organised by Istanbul city authorities. Erkmen’s plan for Tünel Square was successful. She designed a column made of different wrought-iron ornaments layered over one another. For her choice of the diverse and delicate ornaments, the artist drew her inspiration from the latticework adorning the balconies, windows and doors of the buildings facing the square or in the near vicinity. Even the column’s form is borrowed from the surrounds: from a chimney that is part of the ‘summit station.’ One has to – like the artist had – explore the area, saunter through its narrow lanes, to find the prototypes which have been incorporated into the sculpture. Erkmen explained in 1994 that she wanted to create a new work, one that appears to belong intrinsically to its surrounds. The only new element to be added is nature, evident nowhere else in the immediate vicinity, and this is included as a strip of grass. Positioned on the ground in the middle of the column, it looks as if it has been placed under special protection. The work bears in itself the enclosed, introverted structure of the surrounds, so as to once again exude outward. Erkmen achieved this by employing wrought-iron ornamentation, creating a clear and stable form that is nonetheless transparent.

Exhibitions:   Açık Alanlara Üç Boyutlu Çağdaş Sanat Yapıtları Yerleştirme Etkinliği, İstiklal Caddesi, Tünel Meydanı, Istanbul (Turkey)

Installation: existing lighting construction for fluorescent tubes, three videos, screens on pedestals, existing speakers, plants, height of lighting: 100 cm, 120 cm, 130 cm, 150 cm, 160 cm

For the year 1993 Erkmen was invited by the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) to take part in the Artists-in-Berlin Programme. Her exhibition in the DAAD Gallery was the fruit of this stay. Together with Zum Haus (To the House) and Am Haus (On the House) the latter created as part of the İskele exhibition, Das Haus/ Ev / The House forms a trilogy. For Das Haus/ Ev / The House the artist not only took – as previously – the structure and composition of a site into consideration, but also looked into its specific history.
The film actress Henny Porten had owned the villa located on the property Kurfürstenstrasse 58 until the late 1950s; in 1993 the villa was home to the DAAD Gallery on the first and Café Einstein on the ground floor, which is still there today. A popular UFA actress and herself the owner of a production company for a period, Porten’s second marriage was to a man of Jewish background, resulting in her being placed under a boycott during the Nazi era. Although on a list of ‘protected persons’ her life was frequently threatened from 1933 onwards. After the Second World War she lived initially in West Germany before returning to Berlin, where she died in 1960. Erkmen drew attention to the former owner of the site by showing films featuring Porten on three screens located in one of the gallery’s back rooms. The films borrowed from the Federal Archive included Skandal um Eva (1930, director: Georg Wilhelm Pabst), Porten’s sound film debut, 24 Stunden aus dem Leben einer Frau (1931, director: Robert Land) and her film for the DEFA (the GDR film studio), Carola Lamberti – Eine vom Zirkus (1955, director: Hans Müller), a collaboration that was severely criticised in West Germany.
Visitors had to pass a series of ‘obstacles’ first before they reached this part of the exhibition. Fluorescent tubes blocked the way, raising attentiveness for the act of passing through the rooms. Erkmen had lowered the gallery’s lighting construction in five rooms, including the foyer, to the chest or head height of a 1.70 metre-tall visitor. They formed a compact rectangular system in each room. Although Erkmen changed only the height of the existing construction, this necessitated lengthening the electrical leads and additional cable attachments. The overall impression was dominated by the rhythm of these tubes. The symmetrical arrangement continued with the plants assembled on the balcony, which formed a counterpart to those in the winter garden on the opposite side of the building. Nature and art, interior and exterior were correlated and interlocked through the existing speakers attached to the lighting construction, which transmitted sounds from Café Einstein located beneath the gallery. The minimal interventions had a frightening impact, which in turn could be associated with the past of the building’s former owner and, not least, the history of Berlin and Germany. But they also focused attention on the space that was converted into a gallery room. Instead of presenting the works of artists in the best light, an exhibition room put itself on show.

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Das Haus, curated by Friedrich Meschede, DAAD–Galerie, Berlin (Germany), 09.12.1993 – 16.01.1994

                     Modern and Beyond, curated by Fulya Erdemci et al.). Santralistanbul, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.09.2007 – 29.02.2008
(reduced version; three tracks, each with two neon tubes)

                    Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; installation: removal of ca. 60 glass panes from the ceiling, existing lighting construction for ca. 30 fluorescent tubes, lighting set at various heights)

                     By Nature, curated by René Block). Kunsthal 44 Moen, Askeby (Denmark), 19.07. – 20.09.2015
(Details of this version: Named as Down and Below, 1993/2015; site-specific installation: lowering the already existing light system)

                     A – Ayse Erkmen & Ann Veronica Janssens, curated by Ann Hoste and Philippe Van Cauteren, S.M.A.K., Ghent (Belgium), 31.10.2015 – 14.02.2016
(Details of this version: named as Luminous, 1993-2015; Installation with existing light infrastructure)

                     Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Installation: eight photographs, light boxes: each 21 x 30 x 12 cm

In the Archeological Museum the artist hung light boxes on the walls behind the antiquities; photographs of the statues inserted in the boxes and they glimmered in the building's darkened rooms like foreign bodies. Entitled Yabancı (Alien), the installation harboured numerous contrasts, prompting the viewer into drawing comparisons, for example between old and new, moving and stationary, original and reproduction. Obviously photographed in outdoor settings, upon closer inspection the sculptures turned out to be plaster casts positioned in a fenced-off space. Erkmen had taken the photographs beforehand in Berlin, near the flat at Storkwinkel 12 provided by the DAAD she was living in. The artist was thus transferring something from her new, temporary place of residence to her home city. By virtue of the change of location however, the classification of what is alien and what is familiar or indigenous was blurred, the correlation between the opposites called into question. With the form of the installation – stills of scenes suggesting movement placed in boxes resembling television sets – Erkmen posed the viewer numerous questions without giving answers. Does it not seem that the plaster casts are more embedded in life than the originals in the museums? Where do antiquities actually belong? Is the culture a country claims as intrinsic to its identity not the outcome of centuries of exchange, interaction and human migration? Is it not in a continuous state of flux? The installation animated viewers to compare the image with the sculpture. By focusing on the three-dimensionality of a figure, the artist directed the museum visitor’s attention to their own body, how he or she moved through the rooms and thus historical ages. What generally seemed familiar suddenly appeared alien, while conversely the alien suddenly seemed familiar.

Exhibitions:   Çağlarboyu Anadolu’da Kadın. Anadolu Kadınının 9000 yılı / Women in Anatolia. 9000 years of the Anatolian Woman, Arkeoloji Müzesi et al., Istanbul (Turkey), 29.10. – 29.11.1993

Installation: radiator heaters above the existing fire alarm box, ca. 74 x 64 cm

Exhibitions:    “İstanbul Sergisi”, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Istanbul (Turkey), 12.10. –28.10.1993

Installation: wood (seven-part work), tiles, adhesive vinyl, dimensions

Exhibitions:   10 Sanatçı 10 İş: D / 10 Artists 10 Works: D, Koleksiyon Mobilya, Istanbul (Turkey), 02.03. – 20.03.1993

Installation: metal plates with grooves, fluorescent tubes, transistors, electrical cable, dimensions of metal plates: 50 x 70 cm

Description:   Twelve metal plates were laid out on the floor, each with signs of the zodiac. The title refers to mathematician and astronomer Hipparchus (190-127 BC); born in Iznik, West Anatolia, he compiled a catalogue of more than 800 stars.

Exhibitions:   Sanat Texnh. Ondört Türk ve Yunan Çağdaş Sanatçı / Sanat Texnh, Fourteen Turkish and Greek Contemporary Artists, curated by Beral Madra, Efi Strousa, Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 28.03. – 18.04.1992

                      Hatırlamalar – Hatırlatmalar, Galerist, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.02. – 17.03.2007

                      Kavramsal Bir Miras: Öncü Yerleştirmeler / A Conceptual Heritage: Vanguard Installations, curated by Beral Madra). Artam Antik A.Ş., Istanbul (Turkey), 12.09. – 07.10.2011

                      İlk Raunt. Çarmıklı Koleksiyonu'ndan bir Seçki, curated by Hakan Çarmıklı, Galata Rum Okulu, İstanbul (Turkey), 06.03.– 12.05.2018

Installation: plaster, floor covering (blue), ceiling element: ca. 60 x 90 cm, floor element: ca. 80 x 60 cm

Exhibitions:   10 Sanatçı 10 İş: C / 10 Artists 10 Works: C, curated by Beral Madra). Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Istanbul (Turkey), 07.01. –08.02.1992

                      Modern and Beyond, curated by Fulya Erdemci et al.). Santralistanbul, Istanbul (Turkey), 08.09.2007 – 29.02.2008
(Enlarged version)

Installation: fluorescent tubes, radiator heater, carved electrode coal, total length of installation: 1,790 cm

Exhibitions:   Europäische Werkstatt Ruhrgebiet ’91 / European Workshop Ruhrgebiet ’91, curated by Ferdinand Ullrich, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany), 05.05. – 17.07.1991

                      Die Kunsthalle als Museum – Der Eigenbesitz, curated by Hans-Jürgen Schwalm, Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany), 25.07. – 15.08.1993

Installation: five light projectors, five metal discs, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions:   8 Sanatçı 8 İş: B / 8 Artists 8 Works: B, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Istanbul (Turkey), 20.12.1990 – 19.01.1991

Installation: five objects of wood, metal rollers, existing carpet, 197 x 45 x 30 cm; 43 x 120 x 40 cm; 48 x 50 x 35 cm; 82 x 82 x 35 cm; 46 x 35 x 45 cm

Description:   Five low platforms on castor rollers, their surfaces clad with parquet, were placed on these surfaces of the parquet floor in the exhibition space which were not covered by the existing large red carpet.

Exhibitions:   Büyük Sergi 2 / II. Grand Exhibition, curated by Tomur Atagök). MSÜ Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 02.11. – 16.11.1990

Installation: brass, silkscreen, sheet metal around stone remnants, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions: 2. Uluslararası İstanbul Bienali / 2^nd International Istanbul Biennial, curated by Beral Madra). Aya İrini et al., Istanbul (Turkey), 25.09. – 31.10.1989

Installation: eight existing, eight new ventilation grilles, wall paint, lighting, dimensions unknown 

Installation: 30 metal constructs made of sheet steel, welded, car paint, adhesive vinyl, height of the metal elements: 20 cm (14 x), 40 cm (16 x), various dimensions 

Exhibitions:   Ayşe Erkmen – Burası ve Orası, Maçka Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 14.03. – 15.04.1989

Europäische Werkstatt Ruhrgebiet ’90 / European Workshop Ruhrgebiet ’90 (curated by Ferdinand Ullrich). Kunsthalle Recklinghausen (Germany), 05.05. – 17.06.1990
(Only one half of the work was shown in Recklinghausen)

Kunstraum Deutschland, curated by Ursula Zeller). Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen e.V. The Genia Schreiber University Art Gallery, Tel Aviv (Israel), 16.06. – 31.08.2000; numerous other venues in Western and Eastern Europe as well as Asia
(Only half of the work was shown.)

Kavramsal Bir Miras: Öncü Yerleştirmeler / A Conceptual Heritage: Vanguard Installations, curated by Beral Madra, Artam Antik A.Ş., Istanbul (Turkey), 12.09. – 07.10.2011

Artspace Germany (curated by Ursula Zeller). Milli Reasürans Sanat Galerisi, Istanbul (Turkey), 10.01. - 09.02.2109

Installation: iron pipes with base plates and canted signboards, plexiglass, adhesive vinyl, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions: 5. Öncü Türk Sanatından bir Kesit / 5^th A Cross-section of Avant-Garde Turkish Art, Dolmabahçe Sarayı Birinci Hareket Köşkü, Istanbul (Turkey), 02.11. – 30.11.1988

Installation: metal, two sheets of paper (frottage), dimensions unknown

Exhibitions: Toplu Sergi, curated by Cengiz Çekil). Türk-Amerikan Derneği, Izmir (Turkey), 04.05. – 26.05.1988

Installation: 33 bricks, fluorescent tube, photography, map, dimensions of installation: ca. 100 x 100 x 150 cm, photographs and map: 50 x 60 cm

Second version: bricks in metal frames, fluorescent tube, photography, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions: Toplu Sergi, Türk-Amerikan Derneği, Izmir (Turkey), 22.04. –12.05.1987

4. Öncü Türk Sanatından bir Kesit / 4^th A Cross-section of Avant-Garde Turkish Art, Atatürk Kültür Merkezi, Istanbul (Turkey), 03.07. – 18.07.1987

Installation: steel pipes with base plates and additional welded-on pipes, lacquered in green, various forms and sizes 

Exhibitions: 5. İstanbul Sanat Bayramı. Yeni Eğilimler Sergisi / 5^th Istanbul Art Festival. Exhibition of New Trends in Art, Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 14.10. – 08.11.1985

Weggefährten, curated by Britta Schmitz and Bettina Schaschke, co-curator, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin – Nationalgalerie im Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (Germany), 13.09. – 11.01.2008
(Details of this version; sculpture: 24 steel pipes with base plates and additional welded-on pipes, lacquered in green, various forms and sizes)

Desire Acquire, Galerie Bob Van Orsouw, Zurich (Switzerland), 24.01. – 21.03.2009

Istanbul Eindhoven – SALTVanAbbe: 68-89, curated by Charles Esche and Vasıf Kortun). Salt Beyoğlu, Istanbul (Turkey), 20.04. – 26.08.2012
(12 new Imitating Lines were reproduced for this exhibition)

Ayşe Erkmen & Mona Hatoum - Displacements, curated by Frederic Bussman, Museum der Bildenden Künste Leipzig (Germany), 18.11.2017 - 18.02.2018

Sculpture: stone, wood, 125 x 125 x 125 cm

Exhibitions: 4. İstanbul Sanat Bayramı. Yeni Eğilimler Sergisi / 4^th Istanbul Art Festival. Exhibition of New Trends in Art, Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 17.10. – 11.11.1983

Installation: stones, ropes, print, various forms and sizes

Description: 30 stones of various forms and colours were stamped with “AE” and hung on ropes, one beneath the other, in five rows on the wall; Awarded

Exhibitions: Günümüz Sanatçıları. 4. İstanbul Sergisi / Artists of Today. 4^th Istanbul Exhibition, Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 02.07. – 28.08.1983

Installation: stones, adhesive tape (red, yellow, blue), variable forms and sizes

Exhibitions:   3. İstanbul Sanat Bayramı. Yeni Eğilimler Sergisi / 3rd Istanbul Art Festival. Exhibition of New Trends in Art, Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi [currently: Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University], Istanbul (Turkey), 24.10. – 14.11.1981

Whitish, curated by Emre Baykal, Arter, Istanbul, 13 September 2019 - 08 March 2020

Sculpture: metal, dimensions unknown

Exhibitions:   Günümüz Sanatçıları. 1. İstanbul Sergisi / Artists of Today. 1st Istanbul Exhibition, Park of Resim ve Heykel Müzesi, Istanbul (Turkey), 28.06. – 15.07.1980

Sculpture: plastic pipes, dimensions unknown 

Exhibitions:   Fındıklı Park, Istanbul, Graduate piece at the Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi [currently: Mimar Sinan Fine Arts University], Istanbul (Turkey), 1977