Art Encounters 2017 Exhibitions:
Whoʼs afraid of politics?

Ahmet Öğüt (b. 1981) works across a variety of different media often picking up on an urban environment. With an eye for daily encounters and moments of improvisation his works address topics such as structural inequality, state suppression and forms of resistance. Collective struggles and singular acts of non-alignment equally inspire the aesthetic and thematic reflections that occur in his work just as the way he operates in the institutional ecology surrounding his practice.

Selected exhibitions: Goshka Macuga & Ahmet Öğüt, Witte de With Center for Contemporary Art, Rotterdam (2017, solo); Action!, Kunsthaus Zürich (2017); Museum On/OFF, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2016); Forward!, Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven (2015, solo); Happy Together: Collaborators Collaborating, Chisenhale Gallery, London (2015, solo); Political Populism, Kunsthalle Wien (2015); Performa 13, The Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, New York (2013); Tensta Museum: Reports from new Sweden, Tensta Konsthall, Stockholm (2013); Ahmet Öğüt, Protocinema/Itinerant, New York (2012, solo); Stones to throw, Kunsthalle Lissabon (2011, solo).

His works were exhibited, in 2016, at the 11th Gwangju Biennale, at the Okayama Art Summit and at the Manifesta 11, Zurich. Previously, he participated at the 13th edition of Biennale de Lyon (2015), the 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014), the 7th Liverpool Biennial and at the Bucharest Biennale 5 (2012).

Ahmet Ögüt’s research takes its inspiration from the experience of everyday life and the urban environment that he alters and amplifies to construct situations that generate a shift of perspective on social and political issues. For The Swinging Doors, he transforms Romanian police riot shields into a swinging door, subverting the classical function of this object that indicates force, authority and resistance. This work activates a direct confrontation between the visitors and the work: the viewers have to push this device rather than being subjected to it, and, in doing so, they perform an act of resistance.

Images:

1. Ahmet Ögüt, Portret, photo credits: Christina Li

2. Ahmet Öğüt, The Swinging Doors (2017), original riot shields, dimensions variable, photo credits: Vlad Cîndea