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By Hatice Utkan – Hurriyet Daily News
Established in Tophane, Mixer Arts is not a gallery but rather an art venue that aims to create an interactive and social platform for artistsWhile Mixer Art aims to give opportunities to every kind of art, the venue also aims to be a lively platform with its spacious loction where productions in every discipline can be displayed.
Founded in a very large venue in Tophane, Mixer Arts may be the new face of Istanbul’s art scene. The webpage of the venue includes a very unusual invitation for artists, to create a Mixer profile and upload a portfolio. The director of the venue, Bengün Gün, said they aimed to open the space for young artists who have never had the chance to show their work. Mixer Arts, with this attitude, refuses to be a part of the system, but rather seeks to stand out from other art galleries.
Founded by Hamit Hamutcu, the venue is open for young artists and for those who would like to discover more artists and contemporary art in Istanbul.
On its website, the venue wrote, “Mixer is a brand new platform opened in the autumn of 2012 at Tophane, with the mission of supporting emerging artists and creating a space for art followers.”
The venue aims to create an interactive and social platform for local and international artists and audiences, Gün said. The director added that with its wide and multi-purpose space, Mixer organizes solo and group projects of all art disciplines in its performance and open studio space.
Gün said Mixer aimed to support the sustainability of artistic production and bring the artists and those who are interested in art together. It organizes events to make art accessible to everyone, creates a space for artists where they focus on producing their art and enhances the dialogue between the artist and anyone who wants to experience the production phase.
The artists in Mixer’s portfolio are able to exhibit and sell their artworks on the website and the venue, located at Tophane-Boğazkesen, without any limitations of time or location.
The style of Mixer
However, the venue is not working as a gallery and the artists are not dependant on the venue. Mixer leaves the artists on their own and free, which is not common in the Istanbul art scene. Gün said this was because Mixer, with the mission to reach all social groups, aimed to make art accessible and affordable. This policy provides the required support for the production of the artist while allowing anyone interested the chance to create his or her own collection.
While it aims to give opportunities to every kind of art, the venue also aims to be a lively platform with its spacious location where productions in every discipline can be displayed. In this sense, the goal is to host the innovative projects of young artists in particular, according to Gün. Mixer also serves as an art lab, giving artists an opportunity to actualize their ideas at Mixer with open studio space where they can easily hold their productions. With local and international projects for solo and group exhibitions, it aims to create a platform where the production process can also be shared with the audience. Currently the venue is hosting a solo exhibition by Sibel Kocakaya including paintings, photographs and video works focusing on the expression of mental action he artist uses her own body as a model in her works while producing a new, faceless body dispelling her facial expressions.
Paintings of Kocakaya
Sibel Kocakaya has chosen to draw portraits without faces to make a statement about the individuality of people in society.
It is possible to feel the “increasing isolation of urban life and alienation of the individual due to cultural differences in the city with the concept of immigration in question” in the works, Kocakaya wrote. “The individual is trapped between family, society and himself. He is in a constant struggle with his own existence in the constantly changing living conditions of time and space.” In Kocakaya’s works, “the identity changing on the axis of uncertainty of the space is visualized as the position of seeking its own existence. The ambiguity in faces, in a sense, gives a clue to the distributional relationship established between the viewer and the artist.”
Source: Hürriyet Daily News
