In her site-specific installations Özlem Altın repurposes narratives and rearranges them into new ones. Many of these stories are concerned with the human body, which she sees as a site of transfer, communication, resonance, reflection and feedback. Our bodies, she notes, are constantly informing us and signifying to us, and the sense of touch is a crucial aspect of communication. Her new work, which emphasises moments of ‘passage’, also takes up the notion of portals: sites that open up to other sites. She has said that the body is itself a portal, and that one aspect of portals is that they require an element of surrender.
Özlem Altın (b. 1977, Goch, Germany) lives and works in Berlin. Altın draws from a vast collection of found imagery, replicas and prints originating from books, magazines or the Internet, and contextualizes them into dense collages and complex installations. Abolishing any hierarchies within the source material and juxtaposing it with her own distinct paintings and photographs, she develops a highly associative visual semantic that discloses inner states and external restraints of the human existence. Recent solo exhibitions include Lens, Merano Arte, Meran (2019); Processing, Camera Austria, Graz (2017); Untitled (Touch or Melancholy), Lentos, Linz (2016). Group exhibitions include Part of the Labyrinth, Göteburg International Biennial for Contemporary Art, Gothenburg (2019); We don't need another hero, 10th Berlin Biennale (2018); Beyond Words, 4th Mardin Biennial (2018).
EXHIBITED WORKS
Each Moment is a Portal (Jurema), 2019
(with Ali Altın and Jochen Goerlach)
Installation Dimensions variable Courtesy the artist.
Commissioned by the 16th Istanbul Biennial.
Produced with the support of Goethe Institut Istanbul and SAHA–Supporting Contemporary Art from Turkey.
