Table Of Content—
The Time Now
Is
1wo—uld liketocreateadream towakeup to, a dream that comesout and wanders in
darkn—ess everythingelsefadesaway, likeaprecious lightcontained ina shadowyvoid.
HalukAkakce1
The ancient Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder(c. ad 23-79) is said to have described
the origin ofpaintingas the moment when a woman, Dibutades, traced onto the wall
the shadow ofherdeparting lover, cast there by candlelight. Striving to circumvent the
passing oftime that takes him away from —her, to crea—te a future memory, she is forced
to turn awayfrom the sight ofthe present her lover that is the source ofthis desire.
Sketching his outline onto the wall, she creates presence out ofabsence, image out of
—
darkness. Light becomes the shadow oftime, and the darkness the shadow drawing
is in return the recollection oflight.
InIllusion oftheFirst Time, a new installation byTurkish-born artist Haluk Akakce at
the WhitneyMuseum ofAmericanArt at Philip Morris, the interplay oflight and shadow,
motion and stillness, absence and a reborn presence suggests a similarcollapsing ofthe
idea oftime. Enteringthe Museum, one is first drawn to the play ofthick, black lines
etched, it seems, directlyonto the glass doors that frame the view intogallery. Listing
and tiltingacross the surface, the lines recall the shadows oftrees, ora crowd ofpeople
movingacross a strong light source and casting inky, attenuated shadows. Behind the
glass, a black wail is limned with narrow white streaks that echo the black lines. Visible
onlywhen the viewerapproaches from an angle, the shifting planes ofthe design flicker
and move against one another, graphic and sharp but also in flux with every change of
the viewer's trajectory.
In the gallery, the viewerenters an interior room cloaked in a soft blackness. The
high ceilings and the tight dimensions ofthe walls form a space both intimate and
reverent, intensifyingthe silence. On the facingwall, three large projected images merge
into a single mural-size frame, cyclingthrough three "compositions" in a symphony of
shape and image.2The first is silent, echoingthe graphic black lines ofthe exterior
wall but here moving in increasingly hectic motion, rushing past one anotheralmost
—
anxiously in everydirection both across the plane ofthe wall and seemingly into the
depth ofthe surface itself. The second section evolves slowly from a deep graded dark-
ness into shadowy, slow-movingorganic shapes that drift gently down the surface with
increasing density, spiraling like loosened strands ofa DNA helix and accompanied by an
eerie, beautiful score. The third composition is heavy with diffuse, watery color, rich to
the eye afterthe intense gray scale ofthe previous two. Spinning and unfolding slowly,
as ifrisingthrough water, indeterminate techno-organic objects float upward through
meltinggreens and pinks. Clearlyarticulated in three dimensions against the flat stain
ofthe background, the objects clusterat the top ofthe image as ifwaiting, patiently,
optimistically, to bloom beyond the surface's edge.
IllusionoftheFirstTime draws on the increasingly abstract vocabularyofforms that
characterizesAkakce's recentwork. Elaboratingon earlier installations that combined wall
—
paintingswith projection, hereAkakce seeks to fuse the process further the wall becomes
the surface ofthe paintingand the projection its medium. Evoking the myth ofpainting's
origin, Akakce captures a drawingoflight in space that isas unfixed and fluid as a shadow.
He plays with the characteristics ofthe media at his disposal to undermine their indetermi-
—
nacy forexample, the formal and compositional aspects ofthe projections recall abstract
painting, while simultaneouslycreatinga dramatic, almost cinematographic denouement.
The painterly, gesturalflatness ofthe forms is tempered by the suggestion ofa virtual span1
—
with impossible, artificial depth. Each image is narrowlyframedbythe blackness ofthe
wall, suggestinga traditional notion ofpaintingand object; yet there is no actual object,
no literal plane oftjie artworkdistinct from its surface.
The gentle streams oflight, soft transparency, and subtle hues ofIllusionoftheFirst
Time offeran ambiguous, dreamlike vision that suggests ratherthan depicts an organic
evolution. The three successive sequences ofthe projections evolve in a dynamic continuum
—
ofform from the rapidyet seeminglyaimless movement ofthe first, and flattest, forms to
the swellingandunfoldingupward movement ofthevolumetric forms ofthe third segment.
Yetthere is no distinctconclusion to the narrative, no comfortable resolution to the process
as it continually cycles through the three compositions. The hypnotic, almost organic
movement and the repetition ofshadowyforms brings to mind Plato's famous parable of
the cave, inwhich the realityseenbythe cave's inhabitants was eventuallydiscovered to
be no more than moving shadows cast on thewall.IllusionoftheFirstTime similarlysuggests
the ultimate instabilityoftheworld andthe constancyofits flux. Is all realitymerely
perception, oris there a true essence, a true nature ofthings and the world?Is there
meaningthat canbe determined, orare we too detached from a definition ofreal to
achieve it? For this installation, Akakce sought to provide a meditative environment in
which the viewer can both experience these questions as well as escape from them
an antidote to the often aggressive engagementwith the everydayworld. As its title
suggests, Illusion oftheFirstTime maybe no more than a specter, a mirage ofexperience.
Yetthe attempt to recapture the process ofdiscovery, the miraculous potentialofanynew
and profound moment, is itselfinherentlyoptimistic.
"Thronesand dominions,"theFinnsaidobscurely. "Yeah, there'sthingsoutthere.
Ghosts, voices. Whynot? Oceanshad mermaids...andwehadaseaofsilicon, see? Sure, it's
justatailoredhallucinationweallagreed tohave, cyberspace, butanybodywhojacksin
knows...knowsit'sawholeuniverse...."
"Forus,"Lucassaid, "theworldhasalwaysworked thatway."3
Drawing on earlier investigations oftechnology, virtuality, time, and transformation,
withIllusion oftheFirstTimeAkakce exercises a new formal restraint in his work, a more
focused dramatics ofimage and form integrated with the existing space. However, like
his previous installations, Illusion oftheFirstTime
creates a distinct, otherworldly environment for the
viewer. The installation captures the heavy solitude
that permeates Akakce's alternate worlds, the sense
ofbeing outside ofreal space that the artist sees as
parallel to the "disappearance ofcoordinates,
caused by the fragmentation ofsocial structures"
that characterizes contemporary society.4
In his first digitally animated video, TheMeasure
ofAll Things (2000), Akakce used three-dimensional
rendering software and live-action segments to
evoke a world that addresses the basic human
desire for ultimate freedom and the flawed, often
counteractive perversity ofour attempts to achieve
—
this goal in this case, the birth ofthe information
age. The video depicts in part a massive structure
resembling the DNA double helix, butwith genetic
information reconfigured as binary-coded spheres; it
twists up from the viewer's vantage point in a black
void to an indeterminate futuristic cityscape. The
Still fromTheMeasureofAHThings,2000.Collectionoftheartist;
4 courtesyDeitchProjects.NewYork
—
video captures the (implicitly failed) Utopian notion ofcyberspace as an arena oftrue
liberation, in which all identity can be simulated, all space limitless, and all beginnings
hopeful. The only human presence is a pregnant woman, symbolizing human creation as
the quintessential individual populating the contradictory visions ofboth idyllic nature
and the empty, machine-driven urban landscape.
Like much ofAkakce's work, The Measure ofAll Things captures the yearning for the
future as infinite potential and the return ofthe imagined past ofthe last promised
land. He is deeply invested in examining the increasing integration ofthe "parallel
worlds" oftechnology conceived by new vehicles ofcommunication, where increased
access to information coexists with the growing isolation ofhuman understanding.
Using and celebrating these same technologies, Akakce's work resides in the contradic-
tions oftechnological potential. "The question is," he notes, "where and how we should
draw the line between a reality that desires to be virtual, and a virtually that imitates
reality: Neither have much sympathy for difference."5
The title The Measure ofAll Tilings is derived from the well-known statement of
relativism by the ancient Greek sophist Protagoras (480-411 bc): "Man is the measure
ofall things." In one scene ofthe video, the words "natura naturans" are imprinted on
—
a wall a phrase meaning "creating nature." During the Renaissance, this phrase came
to be equated with God, thus imbuing the act ofcreation, aesthetic or otherwise, with
extraordinary power and responsibility. Taken in concert, these two references suggest
— —
that the manmade or created nature is the true act ofgodliness, and that this
creation is what determines reality, rather than some objective essence ofthings.
Embodying the most drastic potential for the creation ofnew worlds in human history,
technology takes a godlike seat in contemporary society. Or perhaps the relationship
is more reciprocal: might this desire for transcendence ofthe real in cyberspace
require a theology distinct from the world ofexisting nature {natura naturata)? In the
—
ontological space ofthe future, does the created universe natura naturans prompt us
rn return to create organized structures oforigin? Does technology now give us the
power to generate our own gods?
"You shouldpretend thatweare talkingtwolanguagesatonce. Oneofthem,you already
understand...the-languageofstreettech....But, atthesame time, with thesamewords, weare
talkingaboutotherthings...."
"Okay,"Bobbysaid,gettingthe hangofit, "then what's the matrix? Ifshe'sa deck, and
Danbala'saprogram, what's cyberspace?"
"The world,"Lucassaid.6
In a more recent installa-
tion, Blood Pressure (2001), Akakce
further elaborates the conflict of
contemporary reality, exploring
the metaphysical space ofthe
individual in an increasingly
fluid, artificially determined
world. The sensorially intense,
multimedia environment ofthe
installation includes extensive
wall painting, photographs,
painted objects, wallpapered
imagery, and digitally animated projection that reconstruct the existing architecture
into a multiroom passage through an indeterminate, amorphous space. It has been
observed that the growing accessibility ofthe digital dimension has altered our spatial
StiltfromBloodI'ressutt, 2001.Collectionoftheartist:courtesyDeitch Projects.NewYork
—
perception much as the invention ofRenaissance
—
perspective in one critic's words, "the firstvirtual
—
reality" did. Akakce observes that "our interaction
with objects and spaces has been palpably height-
ened in artificial ways," an awareness central to his
imagery.7Though initiallydrawn by hand, the wall
paintings, drawings, and projections in BloodPressure
capture the idea ofthe digital, as shapes and forms
morph fluidlyfrom representation to abstraction.
Theirgraphic slickness glides easily into organic
lines and forms that suggest a kind ofprotoplasmic
space, a mechanistic ectoplasm.
BloodPressure envelops the viewer in an arena
ofpotential becoming, ofendless process and devel-
opment. The inhabitants ofthis world can never
obtain the real but only exist in a state ofliminality.
Akakce proposes a space ofdeparture, echoed bythe
viewer's directed movement through space that is
without a conclusive point ofarrival. The installa-
tion's room-sized projection captures this lack of
closure and the idea ofinfinite reinvention. In one
sequence, an intricately rendered room houses two
slowly spinning planes inscribed by enormous nee-
dles, like stylized turntables, futuristic sundials, or
medical machinery tracing unknown vital signs.
Their endless circularity is echoed in a live-action
sequence in which a character is asked where she is
headed. "I'm in transit," she replies.
Akakce's imageryalso parallels his idea offolding
time, drawing as easilyfrom the past as from an
envisioned future. While undoubtedly absorbing
historical aesthetics growingup inAnkara, Turkey
from the ubiquitous kilim patterns to the modular
organics ofIslamic and Ottoman art and architec-
—
ture Akakce's aestheticwas no less formed byhis playingcomputergames, watching
StarTrek on television, orobservinga Europeanballet performedbyhis father's company.
The hybrid forms that emerge in his work draw on all ofthese influences in imagining
what he calls the "future present," proposing the organic/biological as the most compat-
—
ible fusion with the technological the first and most familiar complex system logically
imaginingthe next.
Akakce sees himselfless a critic ofthese developments than an explorer, a historian
projected into the future reflectingback on his living present. This fluid treatment of
time is characteristic ofhis overall approach, and not unfamiliar. With astonishing
rapidity, technological developments have engendered a different notion oftime in con-
temporary society; while still definitively affixed to movement, the historical conception
ofthe passage oftime as strictly linear has begun to bend, to fold upon itself(not unlike
the movement offorms inAkakce's projections). The ever increasing speed ofthe world
—
we live in gives unprecedented centralityto the idea oftime from a simple idiom such
as "wanting it done yesterday" to the possibility ofsubvertingTime's control over the
human body with medical and technological inventions. The idea has been elegantly
—
evoked—in contemporary cultural theorybythe grammatical tense little used in
English ofthe "future anterior," which expresses an action in the past that has yet to
be completed in the future.8
Like much ofAkakce's work, Blood Pressure embodies the artist's idea that "the irre-
ducible plurality ofdata we incessantly collect alters our format ofbeing to a possibility
ofbecoming."4 Humanity's main form ofinformation and discovery is increasingly
provided and mediated by technological means, less and less so by direct human inter-
action. ForAkakce, the loss ofthis immediacy may be more profound than most realize.
Beyond the obvious desire for true human contact, he suggests that the loss ofthe
intangible aspects ofthe physical perception ofpeople, spaces, and objects may ultimately
engender a loss ofselfand identity. Blinded to this loss by the simulacrum substituted
for reality, we are unknowingly unmoored from self-awareness, drifting without direc-
tion and inhabiting potential rather than concrete being. Simultaneously, however,
"the body's folding in on itselfis accompanied by an unfolding ofimaginary spaces,"10
which as suggested in Vie Measure ofAll Things holds the ambiguous possibility ofa new
type offuture.
Meditating on the potential loss ofa fixed point oftime, space, and even identity,
Akakce's investigation ofthe relationship between the individual and the universe is
the basis for the Whitney installation. On the wall before the entrance to the projection
room, the viewer is presented with a framed drawing in which the image has been all
but obliterated by a thick coating ofblack paint. The only visible surface contains the
question: "Why are we so different from who we think we are?" Akakce is concerned
—
not onlywith the nature oftechnology, ofthe individual, and ofobjects, but also with
the idea ofhumanity's essence. He individualizes the notion ofreligion (perhaps better
termed spirituality) as a personal exploration ofselfonce the constructs ofsociety and
—
historyare stripped away a core ofbeliefwhose existence he doubts evenwhile he
searches for it. Elaborating on the moment ofdisappointed discovery suggested bythe
drawing's text, Akakce finds that "inthis strange romance ofalienation...ourambiguous
state ofexistence turns us into transient dreams in a permanent nightmare, like moving
shadows on a greatwall."11 Creating a space ofreverie for the viewer, Illusion oftheFirst
Time is a comfort to the nightmare, a dream ofnewness and origins that is nonetheless
conscious offailure.
Akakce's optimism, like his work ingeneral, canbe seen as partofa "newmodernist"
approach that moves beyond the rigid heroics ofmodernism and the self-consciously
cynical irony ofpostmodernism. Transcending the unresolved rift between the two,
Akakce builds toward a fusion ofthe Utopian impulse with a contemporary investigation
ofthe nature ofreality, rationality, and technology.
—
"Seeingisthe actofforgettingthename ofthe thingonesees." PaulValery
Modernism, as the philosophical underpinning ofsociety since the sixteenth century,
can be defined as the enlightenment: humanist rejection oftradition and authority in
favor ofreason and natural science. It is founded upon the assumption ofan objective
—
reality and beliefin the autonomous individual who can know and in fact is the sole
source of—that reality.12 Progress and novelty are valorizedwithin a linear conception
—
ofhistory a history ofa "real" world that becomes increasingly objectified.
For modern art and architecture, this often translates to a focus on material reality
to achieve the transcendent real, as immortalized in art critic Clement Greenberg's infa-
mous theories oftruth to medium, wherein painting's ultimate gesture was toward its
own flatness. The romantic notion ofthe artist as heroic individual was concretized
within these theories. The other critical strain ofthe modernist credo (seen particularly
in architecture descended from the German Bauhaus influence) was the secularbelief
that machines, as products ofreason and science rather than anygod, would save the
world. Machines themselves were beautiful because theywere made only ofwhat was
necessaryand reasonable.
Postmodernism, in turn, rejected these assumptions. While by nature against
finite definitions, postmodernism may be characterized as a rejection ofthe sovereign,
autonomous individual and an emphasis upon the anarchic, collective, anonymous
experience. Postmodernism advocated collage, diversity, and most importantly, the dis-
solution ofdistinctions: the merging ofsubject and object, ofselfand other. Postmodern
media artists accepted the impossibility ofan original, unmediated vision ofreality.
Their subject matter is not reality itself, but the representation ofrealityby media and
the world ofmedia (including traditional art forms such as painting or photography)
the strategy ofappropriation. However, the ever developing technologies that define
our lives remained as much the illustration and source ofpostmodernism as were the
comparable innovations ofthe modernist moment.
The idea ofa new modernism in contemporary aesthetic theory is similarly linked
to the advent ofnew media as artistic medium. Machines bring their own aesthetic;
computers and virtual worlds both produce their own distinguishable style and inspire
us to create one, as the modernists did fortheir machines ofthe future. The new mod-
ern artist might be defined as the new romantic painter, reintegratingthe desire for the
generative conception ofthe artist beyond the process ofappropriation as an end. Using
technology to create new confluences ofform, the new modernist reinvents the language
ofmodernist abstraction and design as a synthesis ofman and machine, the playofthe
hand paired with the mathematicallygenerated forms ofthe computer.
More than a nostalgic remaking ofmodernist imagery, Akakce's work attempts the
daunting task ofthe newgeneration: to integrate the two paradigms ofthe twentieth
century. He seeks to merge a beliefin science and rationality in the basic forms, idealism,
and heroic spirit ofmodernism with the skepticism, complexity, deconstructive strategies,
and baroque excess ofpostmodernism. By this strategy, Akakce translates lived experience
—
into hyper-painting painting that deconstructs painting and simultaneously reanimates
the modernist dream ofdirect, unmediated communication. Looking to cyberspace and
the changes technology has wrought on our ideas ofspace and time, he acknowledges
that the computer has created a different idea ofartistic media. Its essence is twofold: a
flatness that is the ultimate in modernist flatness, in which surface is indistinguishable
from medium, but one that also denies it completely, functioning as a ported to other
—
worlds without dimensionality. Instead ofthe computer as a media machine one thai
—
simply presents imagery this process can be seen, somewhat ironically, as a new inter-
pretation ofGreenbergian materialism, a return to the computer's essence as a funda-
mentally digital medium, with multiple modes ofrepresentation emerging from it."
Akakce's new modernism looks beyond the deconstructive impulse, reflecting a
process that asserts ifnot the primacy, then at least the necessity ofobjects for thought.
As our model ofreality becomes less linear and increasingly multilayered, artists con-
struct aesthetic worlds through theirwork to highlight the fluid border between the
artificial and the real. The true object in Illusion oftheFirst Time is the viewer's experience
ofit as space that is, as the artist states, "the borderline between reality and the world
ofdreams."14 The reinvigorated attention to form is a move away from discourse about
—
the object to intercourse with it a fusion ofthe mechanical and the organic that mod-
ernism rejected, where technology can be said to be embodied by the object, and by us.
Enabled by the digital ideology ofinfinite universes, Akakce fuses this notion with its
—
oldest manifestation, its most personal and intimate form the limitless potential ofthe
worlds we imagine and dream.
—
Shamim M. Momin
LArtiststatement.IllusionoftheFirstTime, 2002.
2.Thethreeworksaretitledcompositions1-2-3, intendedbytheartisttoreferencebothofthecommon
definitionsoftheword: thewayan imageis puttogether,aswellasamusicalwork.
3.WilliamGibson,CountZero(Ace Books: NewYork, 1986). 119.
4.Interviewwiththeartist, September9,2002.
5. "HalukAkakce,"Style54(October2002), 68-74.
6.Gibson, 114.
7.MaxHenry, "WhenPaintingMeets Digital,"TeniaCeleste85(2001),57.
8.Certainly, fearofdeathandthedesireforimmortalityarecentralconceptsofthehistoryofhumanity.
However,onecouldarguea funda—mental shift isoccurringtoaworld inwhichscience fiction's notionof
creatingapersonality"construct" whereinone'ssoul, one'sessence, might inhabit thenonspaceofthe
computerandthusliveforever—seemswithintherealmofpossibility.
9.Artist statement. BloodPressure, 2001.
10./hid.
1112..ITnhteerCvairetweswiiatnhctohgeitaor—tistI,thSienpkt,etmhbeerref9o,re20I02a.m—istheessenceofthisidea. —
13.Thischange,orrupture,canbeunderstoodasthetransition fromanalogtodigital literallyandconceptu-
ally.Thedigital image isauniform,griddedsubdivisionofpixels,each individuallydeterminedbyaset
ofinstructionsstoredasbinarycode ratherthanaspartofa largerimage.Thetranslation intonumerical
codemakes i—magingessentiallyindistinguishable fromothermedia inadvanceofthetranslation toa
physicalstate multimediabecomes notawealthofdifferent media, but a multiplicityofcorresponding
media implicit intheuseofacomputer.Theessenceisthatarrayofpoints, storedasdataand interpreted
byvariousdevices. Inotherwords, thereisnofundamental media todigitalcodebut itself,and nofunda-
mental linkagebetweenonesetofpixel instructions(an independentgroupingofnumbers)andthe next—
each imagebecomes merelyoneamongmanypossible representational forms.
14.Artist statement. [HustonoftheFirstTime, 2002.
9
Haluk Akakce
BilkentUniversity,Ankara (BFA, 1993)
Royal College ofArt, London (MA, 1996)
School oftheArt Institute ofChicago,
(MFA, 1997)
Lives andworks in NewYorkCity
Selected One-Artist Exhibitions
2002 UnEquilibreDelizato, Centro Nazionale perleArti Contemporanee, Rome
StillLife, Bernier/Eliades Gallery, Athens, Greece
Talbot Rice Gallery, UniversityofEdinburgh, Scotland
2001 BloodPressure, Centre d'ArtContemporain, Geneva
BloodPressure, Deitch Projects, NewYork
TheMeasureofAll Things, Kunst-Werke, Berlin
NoWayForwardNoWayBack, TheAldrich Museum ofContemporaryArt, Ridgefield,
Connecticut
2000 HenryUrbachArchitecture, NewYork
SpecialProjectsProgram, Winter 2000, P.S. 1 ContemporaryArt Center/The Museum of
ModernArt, LongIsland City, NewYork
Selected Group Exhibitions
2002 Fair, Royal College ofArt, London
media-citySeoul 2002, Seoul MuseumofArt, Korea
MetropolitanIconographies, XXVBienal de Sao Paulo, Brazil
OutofSite, The NewMuseum ofContemporaryArt, NewYork
ThinSkin: TheFickleNatureofBubbles, Spheres, andInflatableStructures,AXAGallery, NewYork
2001 Animations, P.S.i ContemporaryArtCenter/The MuseumofModernArt,
LongIsland City, NewYork
Casino2001, StedelijkMuseumvoorActuele Kunst, Ghent, Belgium
NeueWelt, FrankfurterKunstverein, Frankfurt
PaintingattheEdgeoftheWorld, WalkerArt Center, Minneapolis
Teilvon...?, Kunsthalle Exnergasse, Vienna
WithoutHesitation, DieSammlungOlbrichtTeil2, Gesellschaft furAktuelle Kunstand Neues
MuseumWeserburg, Bremen, Germany
2000 DNAidBillboards, CreativeTime, NewYork
Dusk, I-20 Gallery, NewYork
StrangeParadises, Casino Luxembourg-Forum d'Art Contemporain, Luxembourg
1999 ThePassionand TheWave, Sixth International Istanbul Biennial,
Dolmabahce Cultural Center
1998 Selections,The DrawingCenter, NewYork
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