Ergin Çavuşoğlu: Dust Breeding, 2011-2016 vinyl, closed-circuit video camera and monitor. Courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York. Photo David Heald

Two works by Ergin Çavuşoğlu were featured in recent (Autumn 2016) exhibition But A Storm Is Blowing From Paradise: Contemporary Art Of The Middle East And North Africa. The exhibition was curated by Sara Raza at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York; it was also due to open in China but was later cancelled. It includes two works created by London-based Çavuşoğlu; these works were also recently acquired by the Guggenheim. The works by Çavuşoğlu featured in the exhibition are the film and video installation Crystal & Flame, 2010) and the site specific anamorphic drawing installation Dust Breeding, The latter refers to the photograph Dust Breeding, 1920 by the artist Man Ray, a photograph showing a layer of dust deposited on the surface of Marcel Duchamp’s work The Large Glass over a year-long period in his studio in New York.

Çavuşoğlu created an anamorphic drawing based on a 3D model of the largest cement factory in Turkey (called Noah). By recording the movements of the visitors in this drawing and displaying them on a monitor Çavuşoğlu shows the closed link between virtual and real.

Also in the artworks created by Çavuşoğlu for Sedition we can find a link to Duchamp, in particular to Montecarlo Bond, a readymade questioning the art system. This interest in Duchamp’s practice is a constant with Çavuşoğlu, who is always interested in all that is intellectual before that which is aesthetic, and whose work regularly engages with complexity, referring to different fields such as literature, sociology or philosophy.

The artist’s multifaceted practice is also a reflection on borders and the idea of overcoming boundaries and never a goal achieved permanently, but rather, as contemporary events show, an act questioned and renegotiated each time.

Text by Raffael Quattrone