Murat Önen
Derdi Dağlardan Büyük / Sein Kummer ist größer als die Berge
NEVVEN ON SITE — Web Presentation
Apr 1 — May 9, 2021

• NEVVEN is proud to present Derdi Dağlardan Büyük / Sein Kummer ist größer als die Berge a solo show by Turkish artist Murat Önen presenting digitally a new body of paintings installed in the intimacy of his studio and apartment in Dusseldorf. In a show titled after the lyrics from an old Turkish song (which roughly translates in English as His Sorrow Is Bigger Than the Mountains), the exhibited works explore and question the idea of masculinity from a non-white Queer perspective. In these paintings masculinity is portrayed in both its attractive and repulsive sides, including the idealisation of the body, the struggle and desire for emotive connections, and the eroticisation of touch.

  In Önen’s works, we see naked male bodies longing for closeness while struggling with their physicality, as if trying to adjust into a relationship with others but also with themselves. In the paintings, limbs, heads and torsos are rendered in their rounded tridimensionality, the bodies have a weight, also enhanced by the quantity of gym barbells intersected with them, a sort of heaviness that seemingly affects everything, even the clouds. The image of the mountain in the title is inevitably echoed by the masses of bodies merging into one another. Although not without art historical references, with compositions that remind of French Romanticism, Önen treats his figurative paintings as abstract ones, he works and reworks them, changing the orientation of the canvas, finding shapes in figures and vice versa. The narrative suggested by figuration is in fact present but not central. What Önen aims to convey with these emotionally charged pictures is closer to a feeling, a sensation that involves more senses than only the sight, that is as tactile as touch can be and that engages with the body as much as with the mind. Derdi Dağlardan Büyük evokes a sense of struggle for intimacy which is both bodily and emotional at the same time.

  Alina Vergnano & Mattia Lullini

   

  NEVVEN ON SITE is a format of exhibitions that wants to question and expand both the classic ideas of art show and the artist’s agency in the curatorial process. Using the possibilities given by the digital dissemination of artistic contents, the artists are invited to conceive not only a body of new works for an exhibition but also to define an off— site setting in which the works are installed and documented. These exhibitions are non—viable to visit in person and would be impossible to fit a gallery space. The goal is to expand the program of the gallery and the possibilities of the invited artists, specifically their control over, not only the shown works, but the very environment in which these works are presented and their perception. NEVVEN ON SITE is a regular program of 6 exhibitions per year that from May 2020 sidelines the regular events hosted by NEVVEN’s gallery space in Göteborg.

• NEVVEN is proud to present Derdi Dağlardan Büyük / Sein Kummer ist größer als die Berge a solo show by Turkish artist Murat Önen presenting digitally a new body of paintings installed in the intimacy of his studio and apartment in Dusseldorf. In a show titled after the lyrics from an old Turkish song (which roughly translates in English as His Sorrow Is Bigger Than the Mountains), the exhibited works explore and question the idea of masculinity from a non-white Queer perspective. In these paintings masculinity is portrayed in both its attractive and repulsive sides, including the idealisation of the body, the struggle and desire for emotive connections, and the eroticisation of touch.

  In Önen’s works, we see naked male bodies longing for closeness while struggling with their physicality, as if trying to adjust into a relationship with others but also with themselves. In the paintings, limbs, heads and torsos are rendered in their rounded tridimensionality, the bodies have a weight, also enhanced by the quantity of gym barbells intersected with them, a sort of heaviness that seemingly affects everything, even the clouds. The image of the mountain in the title is inevitably echoed by the masses of bodies merging into one another. Although not without art historical references, with compositions that remind of French Romanticism, Önen treats his figurative paintings as abstract ones, he works and reworks them, changing the orientation of the canvas, finding shapes in figures and vice versa. The narrative suggested by figuration is in fact present but not central. What Önen aims to convey with these emotionally charged pictures is closer to a feeling, a sensation that involves more senses than only the sight, that is as tactile as touch can be and that engages with the body as much as with the mind. Derdi Dağlardan Büyük evokes a sense of struggle for intimacy which is both bodily and emotional at the same time.

  Alina Vergnano & Mattia Lullini

   

  NEVVEN ON SITE is a format of exhibitions that wants to question and expand both the classic ideas of art show and the artist’s agency in the curatorial process. Using the possibilities given by the digital dissemination of artistic contents, the artists are invited to conceive not only a body of new works for an exhibition but also to define an off— site setting in which the works are installed and documented. These exhibitions are non—viable to visit in person and would be impossible to fit a gallery space. The goal is to expand the program of the gallery and the possibilities of the invited artists, specifically their control over, not only the shown works, but the very environment in which these works are presented and their perception. NEVVEN ON SITE is a regular program of 6 exhibitions per year that from May 2020 sidelines the regular events hosted by NEVVEN’s gallery space in Göteborg.

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• Press

  Murat Önen, Derdi Dağlardan Büyük /
Sein Kummer Ist Größer als die Berge - NEVVEN ON SITE - Web presentation
  Daily Lazy — Apr 27, 2021

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