Ayşe Erkmen's installation 'Kein gutes Zeichen' translates architectural voids and open questions into minimalist forms. The multi-part work addresses the spatial and conceptual divisions within the Secession building, exploring the tension between different ideal moments of the structure and its surroundings.
Ayşe Erkmen's installation 'Kein gutes Zeichen' (No Good Sign) is a multi-part work for the Secession that addresses the building's architectural divisions and the inherent tensions between its various spaces and their intentions. The artist translates architectural voids and open questions into a minimalist formal language.
In the main exhibition space, light beams move horizontally across the glass ceiling, highlighting platforms typically used for cleaning. These elements, along with video projections of flashing white circles on black, engage with themes of illumination, daylight, and avant-garde film's light and perception experiments. The movement of the platforms is accompanied by their motor sound, introducing an auditory dimension to the visual experience. A preceding slide series in the foyer uses the motif of a circle, showing coffee surfaces projected onto an architectural rosette, linking the abstract forms in the main space to the building's Art Nouveau design and societal implications.
Erkmen's work situates elements of avant-garde film and the White Cube at an ideal and architectural fault line, questioning the myth of a neutral space, artistic practice's engagement with commercial imagery, and the implications of abstraction in aesthetic experience. The exhibition emphasizes ephemerality, reflecting the transient nature of interpretation and site-specific installations, with the 'coffee' motif in the foyer and the abstract installations in the main room remaining open to multiple readings regarding their social and historical implications.