Throughout his oeuvre Ali Alışır has always been fascinated by vision, perception and cognition, both subjective and objective. Initially this orientation was manifested through his focus upon virtual worlds and some of these works will be shown throughout the exhibition at Erarta. Another later series will also be shown at the museum, which continues on with the exploration of cognition albeit from the perspective of capturing action (Hybird Souls Series). Here, the artist documents the singular movements of a woman in constant motion, seemingly dancing.
The works are unusual in their success at itemising the fluid movements of dance; managing to showcase a singular image of a dancer and her dress in flux. In addition to echoing a series of architectural structures which remind one of classic Romanesque style and sculpture, they also have a very modern aesthetic. The female body blends into the structure of her dress effortlessly, becoming a human sculpture hybrid. In fact, the photos present are the exact physical representation of how the brain perceives motion as a sequence of standstill images.
Alışır’s Virtual Places on the other hand, also to be shown at the exhibition, at first glance look like a digital collage of various thin slices of architectural fragments all superimposed upon one another, thus creating an image. Here, interiors and exteriors of churches and towers emerge in front of the viewer, typically monochrome in fashion. Segments of waterways, courtyards and building facades altogether give an illusion that the viewer is really glimpsing into a city from a different world. At closer inspection the fragments are in fact circuit boards, such as the ones you would find in a computer or other hardware. Hence the image is created by entwining these slices of motherboards, creating ‘virtual’ cities.
The concept of the virtual was always an interest to Alışır, as he created four distinct series: Virtual Bodies, Virtual Places, Virtual Wars and Virtual Landscapes between 2009 and 2015. He chose to concentrate on this concept due to his relentless pursuit in understanding the impact of technology on the structuring of society, especially in the context of accessing information. The rapid evolution of technology has ensured that images are disseminated instantly, globally and without context. Through these works Alışır wanted to show that as members of society we are saturated by these images and our visual language has lost its authenticity and reliability.
Born in Istanbul in 1978, Ali Alışır started his artistic education in 1996 by the virtue of a scholarship at the Faculty of Fine Arts at Yeditepe University in Turkey. Consequently, he attained his master’s degree in photography at Accademia Italiana in Florence, Italy, specialising in digital editing.
Ali Alışır’s works have been exhibited in many museums throughout the globe including Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, OMM (Odunpazari Modern Museum), Presidential Palace of the Republic of Turkey and 94 embassies worldwide. Furthermore, his works can be seen in several institutional settings, such as the collections of ING Bank, Allianz, HSBC Bank, Sabancı Holding, Ferko, Koç Holding, Haas, Demirören Group, TAV, CNN Türk, Akbank, and the American University of the Middle East (AUM).
