Özgür Atlagan

A trolley in Özgür Atlagan’s EKWC studio is full of ceramic fragments. Black pieces on the top shelf, white pieces below, offset by a few bright red plastic cups. It’s beautiful, although it’s not a work, or is it? Atlagan’s installations are subtle, spontaneous, they evade easy interpretation but communicate nonetheless. The fragments are cut out from rectangular slabs to form floor plans of palaces where a headless child is being kept. Writing the story from room to room, removing clay, leaving traces, Atlagan advances through these symbols of power that hide their oppressive nature behind luxurious pomp. His own head turns up everywhere, scanned and moulded the size of a thumbnail, or printed larger and used to impress his astonished features on a lump of clay. Ceramic sheets are draped over absent shapes. Clay faces on a seesaw alternately disappear under water, until they wash away.

Gulsah Mursaloglu

Ipek Kotan