Cevdet Erek: Left Right, Stereo

Drawing on his Bergama Stereo, an architectural installation with sound currently on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, the artist extends his investigation into the trades of form and history around the Pergamonaltar and its famous frieze of gods and underground giants that has been displaced from Turkey and relocated in Berlin since the late 19th century. For the series Rituals of Care, Erek proposes two related yet distinct works. Situated on the façade of the exhibition hall, Left Right imagines two large banners that at once mark and blur the divide across stereophonic sound production and political spectrums against the classicist and symmetrical architecture of the Gropius Bau. In the foyer, Stereo features Erek’s own sound system from his high school years that mediates and amplifies a newly made stereo mix of the beat pattern and guttural voice from the sound composition installed in the left-side facade of Bergama Stereo. Together, these visual and sonic interventions emphasise the threshold between the outside and inside, prompting a new ritual that invites us to shift our perception of the space – its vibrations and ghosts – as we come in.

Cevdet Erek is an artist, teacher and musician based in Istanbul. His work ÇIN represented the Turkish Pavilion at the 57th Venice Biennale and his architectural installation with sound and performance programme Bergama Stereo is on view at the Hamburger Bahnhof until March 2020.