In certain places during ancient times, people had their possessions buried alongside them. Slaves and wives often accompanied men of substance to the afterlife. The popular guess is that this was done so that they were comfortable and well-provided for in the next life. I feel it may have been due to the need to remain whole persons when they got to wherever they were headed to, and to not be missing parts of themselves.
What is a person without the things they project their selves into? What would you be without the set of objects that make up your lifestyle: Your books? Your paintings? Your favorite mug or your preferred chair in the TV room? And looking at it from the other side, is Manu not identical for us with the book of his laws, or Monet with the body of his work? We extend ourselves into things, and we expend part of our substance into them, because things pick up significations and personalities. My grandfather’s watch or my mother’s wedding dress carry some sense of their persons about them. While pointing to a painting in your house, I ask ‘what is that?’, you reply ‘that is Irfan Gul’, and this is a meaningful exchange that surprises no one and all can understand. Sometimes objects carry significances and selves beyond the singular. An object passed from person to person and place to place carries significations of all those people and places. Tropes and styles take on the weight of history: blood and gold and what I felt when I saw them as a boy, for instance. The two artists in this exhibition play with existing images and objects that have a life of their own and carry the weight of other selves from the past. They extend this life through the mediation of their individual expression, adding meanings and connotations of the present to the cultural-historical mix that is already there. When this work is then taken over by the viewer or by future owners, these images or objects take on other associations and new affiliations through possession by other selves. Just as the object cannot be considered as something discrete, the self of the artist exists as a continuum. In the same way that the images are not in stasis, the self that possesses and apprehends them is also dynamic. Both are extended as a chain connecting human life through time.