Artists: Ali Taptık, Ayşe Gül Süter & Dr. Joseph DeGiorgis, Gözde Becerikli, Işık Güner, İsmail Eğler, Macoto Murayama, Melike Kılıç, Paula Doepfner, Sadık Arı
21 January – 15 March 2017 BLOK art space, Çukurcuma
Studying and researching plants, Dioscorides laid the foundation for modern botanical science in the first century with De Materia Medica, his compilation on Anatolian and Mediterranean plants. Translated over time from Ancient Greek into Arabic and Syriac, this pharmacopoeia is one of the oldest and most comprehensive sources on Anatolian plants and flora. Although Dioscorides is chiefly known for his work on medicine, his study of plants — focusing primarily on their healing properties — is considered the foundational body of work upon which contemporary plant research is built. The journey he began with 600 plant species has since grown into the broad science of botany, encompassing numerous sub-disciplines devoted to the qualitative, quantitative and archival study of plants. Another distinctive feature of De Materia Medica is the way Dioscorides records the stories, myths, legends and beliefs associated with each plant he describes, weaving cultural and narrative observation alongside scientific detail.
On Botany brings together ten artists who examine the relationship between botany and art, approaching plant science from archival and narrative perspectives and presenting their research across different disciplines and geographies. Participating in these research processes, visitors have the opportunity to observe a range of plant species from multiple aesthetic viewpoints. Working across the sub-disciplines of plant biology, plant geometry, aesthetic studies of nature, plant-based healing and plant evolution, the ten artists simultaneously open new lines of inquiry within their respective fields. Ranging from depictions of extraterrestrial plants to species on the verge of extinction, the exhibition also seeks to expand the boundaries of botanical terminology itself.
Throughout the two-month run of On Botany, artists and guest researchers will gather at BLOK art space Çukurcuma to open these themes to discussion. The exhibition is on view from 21 January to 15 March 2017.
Seminar and Talks Programme Friday, 3 March 2017, 5–8 pm
5.00 pm — "Trees of Istanbul" Assoc. Prof. Necmi Aksoy, Department of Forest Botany, Faculty of Forestry, Düzce University
Opening with the significance of plant biodiversity as a world heritage asset within Turkey and Istanbul's flora, Aksoy will present the deciduous forest trees of Istanbul's northern forests — the Belgrade and Şile forests — including beech, chestnut, hornbeam, linden and oak, alongside other trees, shrubs and herbaceous plants, discussing their botanical characteristics as well as their culinary and medicinal properties. He will then introduce the exotic conifers that have been planted in Istanbul's parks, groves, arboreta and botanic gardens over the centuries — including swamp cypress, coastal redwood, giant sequoia, Norway spruce, Chinese parasol tree, monkey puzzle, Himalayan weeping pine, Spanish fir, ginkgo, Italian cypress, and Himalayan and Atlas cedar — tracing when and how each arrived in the city. The talk will conclude with a historical overview of Istanbul's contribution to botanical science, garden culture and the preservation of biological diversity, explored through the lens of culture, art and science.
6.30–8.00 pm — Artist Talks
(Skype) Ayşe Gül Süter & Dr. Joseph DeGiorgis: "Life Under the Scope" "We continue to use scientific visualisation techniques in the creation of art, choosing living organisms as our subject. In the 'Life Under the Scope (Botany)' series, we explore botanical life through photography, video and light boxes, using microscopic techniques including confocal, compound and diasec imaging. By employing these different techniques, we invite viewers to reflect on the dissolution of boundaries between disciplines, and on how inspiration can sometimes be found in the most unexpected places."
Gözde Becerikli: "Plant" "'Plant' is an installation created from seasonal plants gathered at random from nature. My aim is to make the plants appear 'unique' in different combinations. After being numbered, the plants are presented alongside information about their collection dates and locations, and viewers are invited to examine them more closely with a magnifying glass. The thirty-piece installation of Petri dishes places plants in an archival display context before a transparent panel incorporating an LED lighting system, removing them from their natural environment."
Sadık Arı: "Roots" "In this work focused on deformed roots, I concentrate on structures that grow within the soil — forming a bridge between what lies above and below the surface. The most rewarding aspect of working with plants is their diversity of form and texture; each element creates a different resonance in the mind. In the work presented here, I examine a shapeless and rough structure growing underground, one that is close in texture to flesh. Working with engraving, I found myself untangling this mass-like form through detail, placing roots somewhere in my mind between desire and fear — making the subterranean visible, and arriving at a strange yet familiar point through the formal flexibility of plants."
All talks will be held in Turkish, with the exception of the Skype conversation with Ayşe Gül Süter and Dr. Joseph DeGiorgis, which will be held in English.
"Dreaming of a Forest: Three Ways of Understanding Nature" İsmail Eğler, Onur Tekir, Nil Aynalı Eğler Saturday, 11 March, 5.30–7.00 pm
The second talk of the On Botany series takes place on Saturday, 11 March, presented by exhibiting artist İsmail Eğler together with Onur Tekir and Nil Aynalı Eğler.
Eğler's video work Forest consists of fragments drawn from a gaze directed at a forest — a gaze that moves calmly while maintaining a certain distance from the trees. The trees are dense enough to be called a forest, yet sparse enough to be distinguished one from another. At certain moments during this movement, a change occurs that is difficult to describe: a sense of falling or rising, of waking from a dream into wakefulness, or of passing from wakefulness into a reality more real than the real. The forest — the object of the gaze — remains the same, yet this hard-to-define shift seems to lift us from one dimension and place us in another.
Dreaming of a Forest: Three Ways of Understanding Nature will approach this work through the perspectives of three different individuals, each in a different state of being. The first is the artist, who transforms a natural phenomenon encountered in nature through an intuitive process to create an image of transition between dimensions. The second lives alongside this natural phenomenon — knowing it not through scientific detachment but from within life itself, at what might be called an immediate distance. The third believes that this work radically problematises the subject-object distance through which we attempt to know the world — including the concept of "botany" as part of that tradition. In place of "botany", he proposes tabiat — nature as an ontological register in the metaphysical thought of Ibn Arabi, a concept that positions the human being in immediate contact with both the living and the non-living world. The most striking proposition within this understanding: "Plants (nebadat) are superior to the human." The talk will first open up Forest through the different relationships these three individuals form with it, before attempting to gather those threads back together into a unified whole.
