:mentalKlinik. THAT´S FUCKING AWESOME


:mentalKlinik is an infamous artistic duo from Istanbul composed of Yasemin Baydar (1972 ,İstanbul) and Birol Demir (1967, Ankara) known for their reactionary form of an open laboratory to reinvent process, production, roles, conception and presentation. Starting their collaboration in 2000 the creative team began their creative factory that could walk on …. This exhibition presents for the first time the culmination of 10 years of activity, and is an introspective rather than a retrospective.

Like a discoball, this project shows a selection of their multifaceted approach on their universe. Resisting to the limitations of a single vocabulary or style, their world is a playful one full of hedonistic appeal which can be experienced as festive and glamourous but also surprising as one approaches to discover with a closer view an underlying violence suggestive of a bad trip after party or a creepy begining of the end. Their works shift between emotional and robotic attitudes. Is it fake or true, or could it all be about falsification. Does it have to do with Poker face attitudes or with the alchemy of changing lies into truth or fake into real ?

To begin, their game requires several players and thus the KLINIK’s interplay with a minimalist ideology of seriality. Some Works begin by slicing or cutting whereby the artists introduce an element of danger, as a métaphore of art. Other works are emotionally charged with connotations set in direct contrast to other works completely devoid of human characteristics such as the series of robots or slivers.

Like the title of this exhibition, « THAT’S FUCKING AWESOME » :mentalKLINIK often employs oxymorons (figures of speech that combine contradictory terms) in their works with language (He is digustingly handsome/ She is awfully beuatiful) as a reflection on the inevitable paradox of life… or death ?

Are you ready to become their patient ?

:mentalKLINIK

:mentalKLINIK was founded in 1998 by artist duo Yasemin Baydar and BirolDemir. Converting all pieces of present time into materials for their Works of art, :mentalKLINIK points out to contemporary reality by means of sound, action, object, text and form.       

Reflecting upon our habits of consumption and production; the artist duo forces the limits of interdisciplinary working and questions the patterns and the modes of relation underlying these patterns. The artists dislocate the materials already detached from everyday life and create a new aesthetic form that is awkward, alien and uncanny within the exhibition space.  

Jérôme Sans

Jérôme Sans is a pioneer in presenting, speaking about and exhibiting contemporary art. He has curated numerous international solo exhibitions worldwide and created installations at the major international art biennales including Lyon, Taipei and Venice.

In 2000, he co-founded Palais de Tokyo with his partner Nicolas Bourriaud. In March 2006, Jérôme Sans was appointed Director of Program at Baltic, in Newcastle, UK. His mission was to establish Baltic as the most creative institution in Europe. Since February 2008, Jérôme Sans has been the Director of the Ullens Centre for Contemporary Art (UCCA) in Beijing, the first private institution in China.

:mentalKlinik 
THAT´S FUCKING AWESOME
Kurator: Jerome Sans