THAT’S FUCKING AWESOME, 2011
: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?