Ahmet Ögüt

A Love Story. 2009. Mixed-media installation.


Ögüt’s large body of work includes performance, videos, animations, drawings, photographs, sculpture, books and installations. The commonthread is the artist’s playfulness and his ability to create powerful yet accessible images that condense issues of politics, authority and the use of the public space. Altering existing symbols, sketching new fictional sets and rearranging objects with a twist, the artist makes visible the imperfect and sometimes slow nature of power. After using in the past months the display window of his studio to present a provocative voting list (“Vote for the worst art exhibition title of all time”; www.popupcity.net/2009/05/vote-for-the-worst-art-exhibition-title-ever/), the artist now presents in the same space (Korsjespoortsteeg 12) the installation A Love Story. Drawn from an incident reported in a newspaper in Turkey, this story underlines the topic of love and desperation in this new, alienated world of object exchange.

Biography:

Ahmet Ögüt (b. in 1981, Diyarbakir, Turkey) lives and works in Amsterdam and Istanbul. He completed his MA in 2006 from Yıldız Technical University, Faculty of Art and Design. Between 2007 and 2008 he was a resident artist at Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten in Amsterdam.

His recent solo exhibitions include:
Things we count. Kuenstlerhaus Bremen, Germany, 2009
Mutual Issues, Inventive Acts. Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, 2008
Across the Slope. Centre d'Art Santa Monica, Barcelona, Spain, 2008.

A selction of his recent group exhibitions include:
53rd Venice Biennial. The Pavilion of Turkey, Venice, Italy, 2009.
Warsaw in Construction. Warsaw Museum of Modern Art, Poland, 2009.
Happy Together - Critical Reflection on Collective Identities. Tallinn Art Hall, Estonia, 2009.
28th Biennial of Graphic Arts. Ljubljana, Slovenia, 2009.
Take the Money and Run. De Appel, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, 2009.
The Generational: Younger Than Jesus. New Museum, New York, USA, 2009.
5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art. Berlin, Germany 2008.
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Auto-Stop. Malmo Konsthall, Sweden, 2008.
Alphabetical Order. Index, Stockholm, Sweden, 2008.
Candid Stories. Insa Art Space, Seoul, Korea, 2008.
Be[com]ing Dutch. Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, The Netherlands, 2008.