Nasan Tur
Public Privacy

Curated by Gabi Scardi
Galleria Riccardo Crespi – Via Mellerio 1, Milano
Opening 16 April, 6.30 p.m.
16 April 2008 - 31 May 2008

On April, 16 the Galleria Riccardo Crespi will inaugurate Public Privacy, the first personal exhibition in Italy by artist Nasan Tur.

Public Privacy draws an itinerary between public and private, on the look-out for the "point" of intersection between individual and collective sensitivity.
This young artist drives his spectators into a meditation on the fragmentation of a single person’s identity, which is more and more homogenized with superficial stereotypes and standard behaviors.

The exhibition shows a collection of works especially conceived for the gallery which convey by a single underlying theme specific problems in today’s society.
Through Public Privacy, Nasan Tur takes us on a journey that evolves around feelings of anxiety over the loss of self, typical in our days. In his works the individual loses his oneness only to find pieces of his personality, lost in the shallowness of the crowd.

This thought gave life to one of Public Privacy's fundamental works, Mirror Sculpture, an installation hanging in mid-air, made from fragments of mirror which reflect multiple images of reality or of the self, shattered by depersonalizing conventionalities.
His artistic poetics evolves around daily routine, conveyed by gestures and words that punctuate everyday life. This reflection gave rise to works, such as Milano says and Human Behaviours.
Milano says is about graffiti on the walls around Milan, the language of collective awareness capable of conveying individual stories and feelings by the spattering of spray paint.
Human Behaviours is a multiple slideshow, with hundreds of pictures of passers-by taken in different European towns, organized into categories made to label men on the strength of superficial stereotypes, worn out and standardized, which however allow the variegated diversity of each person to emerge.
Nasan’s art intermingles with society, gives it regenerating power, and gives life even to every day life junk. Thus he created Public sculptures - Milano, an installation of five “precious” sculptures whose kernel consists of small pieces of scrap found in the rubbish and then coated with a layer of fine gold, which gives new artistic life to something that appeared to have come to the end of its life cycle.
Furthermore, thanks to Nasan Tur the world regains possession of the fruits of his art. Replicas of the sculptures in the exhibition have been left in the streets, as a symbol of the dualism of the self which loses its way in society with no power over its actions. The fate of such "replicas" remains a mystery; we can only appreciate the reactions of passers-by when they notice the abandoned works. The artist filmed people's behaviours with a camera and the video will be screened during the exhibition, on five plasma screens. Public sculptures - Milano also conveys the underlying theme of all of Nasan’s works, passing over the known, which is here and is represented by the displayed sculptures, and the unknown, which is elsewhere and is represented by the people's bewilderment before the replicas.

Nasan Tur's art is focused on discovering a new language between art and daily life.
His search gave life to Public Privacy, which is used to tackle, with subtle irony, the difficult relationship between the individual and society, through a wide range of techniques and instruments.

The invitation to the exhibition, designed by the artist especially for the occasion, constitutes an edition in 1500 copies.

Nasan Tur was born in 1974 at Offenbach, he lives and works in Berlin.

Among its most recent exhibitions: 
2008 6th Taipei Biennial curated by Manray Hsu and Vasif Kortun, Taiwan, cat; SCAPE Biennial, Christchurch Biennial of art in public space, cur. Fulya Erdemci and Danae Mossman, New Zealand, cat; Du dialogue social Motorenhalle-Projektzentrum fuer zeitgenoesische Kunst, cur. Frank Eckhardt, Dresden, Germany, cat; Gone City Bregenzer Kunstverein, cur. Gulsen Bal, Austria, cat.


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