CONTRADICTABLES

Bilsart presents Ilgın Seymen’s exhibition “Contradictables” curated by Melike Bayık between October 16 – October 26, 2024.

A Breath-long Meditation on Contradictions and Variables

Ilgın Seymen’s exhibition Contradictables delves into the ways of interrelationships between humans and their environment by embracing contradiction and variability as the fundamental dynamics of human perception and the fabric of life itself. With a dramatic, meditative, and humorous approach, the works in the exhibition critically address the futility of the nature-human, animate-inanimate, and body-environment distinctions, as well as humanity’s attempts to dominate the world. Taking its title from the merging of “contradictions” and “variables”, Contradictables blends fiction and documentation through videos, photographs and three-dimensional objects. The exhibition seeks possibilities for coping with the unpredictability of tomorrow and forging deep connections with our environment at large, in a world where it is inevitable to face the ecological devastations caused by the ever industrialized, globalized, technology-heavy modern life in every field.

ABOUT ILGIN SEYMEN

Born in Istanbul in 1980, Ilgın Seymen graduated from the Sculpture Department of Marmara University. Receiving Fulbright Scholarship for graduate studies she completed her art education  at the Sculpture Department of the San Francisco Academy of Art with top honours. In her first solo exhibition, “Nothing Personal”, which she opened at the Melting Point Gallery in San Francisco in 2007, she focused on the effects of consumerism and mass culture on shaping daily life habits, thought and behavior patterns. While delving into the same themes with her first solo exhibition in Istanbul, “mash-up”, which opened at Bilsart in 2010, and her exhibition “Mini Market of Happiness” at ArtOn in 2011, she aimed to reveal the gaps between the actual scientific and the perceptual realities with a playful approach. In her exhibitions “Forever Blind”, which opened again at ArtOn in 2014, and “Meta Takeover” at the Saatchi Gallery in London in 2015, she also began to examine the destructive effects of daily life practices on the environment. In her exhibition titled “Unemployed Objects – Traces of Vitality” opened at Bosfor Gallery in 2022, she focused on creating alternative approaches to the human-nature relationship that break human-centered, normative, determinist, dualist perspectives and question values, definitions, and boundaries. In addition to her solo exhibitions, Seymen’s works have been included in various group exhibitions in NY, SF, Frankfurt, Berlin, Seoul, Lahore, and Istanbul. She participated in the Borusan ArtCenter workshop program between 2008 and 2010, in the Frankfurt artist residency program organized by Garanti Platform Contemporary Art Center in 2008, in joint workshops with international artists organized by Apartman Project in 2009 and 2012, and in the ecology workshop organized by Nilüfer Municipality in 2022. Ilgın Seymen, who collects and transforms her materials from her personal encounters in daily life in her works, has a diverse production practice that does not follow the traces of traditional and modern art production methods. Her production practice, which she defines as a method of perceiving and making sense of the world and life, contains a critical approach as well as  a playful and joyful attitude.