Opening : Home is where the he(art) is, curated by Yann Perreau - Galerie Paris-Beijing

Featured artists:
Halil Altindere, Yesim Akdeniz, Volkan Aslan, Mehtap Baydu, Antonio Cosentino, GÖzde Ilkin, Yaşam Şaşmazer, Güneş Terkol, Mehmet Ali Uysal

Over the last years, Galerie Paris-Beijing has explored the axis linking Europe to Asia, Paris to Beijing. On its way, it knew precisely where to stop: Turkey, where the two continents meet. The gallery will exhibit works by a new generation of artists who live and work partly in Turkey, focusing on their relationship to the notion of “ev” (a new home in Turkish).

These artists have been exhibited around the world in the last few years, confirming the Istanbul art scene as one of the most interesting, innovative and dynamic of our time. Some of them have decided to move abroad recently. Others still live there, while most of them have now one foot here, and another one elsewhere. Hence, they have made of the world itself, in its complexity and diversity, their home. This exhibition doesn’t focus on the eternal themes of exile, diaspora or migrations, which can be a bit limitative to define works of art.
It doesn’t either reduce itself to “Turkish artists”, preferring to look at artists who live in Istanbul, whatever their nationality (a global city, Istanbul welcomes artists and creators from around the world, who consider it their home).

It starts from a proverb: “Home is where the heart is”? and follows a philosophical and aesthetical - even if political too - approach: in our globalised world, is the traditional apprehension of home relevant anymore? Can home still define one and
only one specific location? “Here, isn’t it elsewhere”, questions Gözde Ilkin in her poem Delirium for a poetry of space ? How can travels, displacements and shifting remodel one’s apprehension of home, one’s sense of belonging and - ultimately - one’s aesthetics? Home is sometimes left behind, voluntary or by necessity. Still it can be recreated elsewhere. What do we remember of our previous homes?

Ultimately, isn’t home that strange, mysterious, ephemeral feeling that art can sometimes help to define? Something personal, always changed, always re-imagined,
like memory itself, or may be like a romance?
This group exhibition looks at how these questions can materialise, take shape in various bodies of works. It will transform the gallery into a transitory, dwelling, utopic space. A “Here and elsewhere”, as Anne-Marie Miéville and Jean-Luc Godard defined it in their eponymous film.

Yann Perreau