Seda Hepsev’s seventh solo exhibition at x-ist “Stranger Than Paradise” meets the audience between October 15 and November 21.
Seda Hepsev’s exhibition titled “Stranger Than Paradise,” inspired by the movie with the same name directed by Jim Jarmusch in 1984, deals with the quest for a flawless therefore impossible space, translocation, transforming the memory and the body in the potential new space, and the processes of reconstruction and persuasion.
In this exhibition, Seda Hepsev, whose works focus on the feminine existence which can carve itself a space, time, and memory by shedding various social experiences and constructs, feeds on the creative power of female bodies in creating their own space. The patterns and paintings of the exhibition comprise imaginary spaces and bodies constructed based on personal and collective stories. The representations of various geographical elements such as the sea, mountains along with the flora, and torn, scattered motifs and figures are all interacting both with the space and each other, embedded in an undefined, ambiguous activity. In his essay “No Place for them in Our Minds,” Adorno talks about things that keep going just as thoughts and recollections when he says that even the “non-reified” or the uncountable and non-quantifiable has an end. He believes that home is in the past and that it’s a part of ethics not to see our house as our home or not to feel at home there. The journey of the exhibition “Stranger Than Paradise” is shaped by this definition or lack thereof.
Consisting of paintings, patterns, and objects, the exhibition is composed of four installations titled “Preparation”, “Journey”, “Paradise”, and “A Year Later.” Although the titles create a sense of sequence, the construction of the exhibition and the incomplete images spilling over the paper or the canvas prevent certainty, framework, and borders. The element of water which provides journey and translocation in the exhibition opens the door for movement with figures placed near water, sea, or rivers.
Starting from the idea of plurality, lightness, ambiguity, and non-centrality embedded in the journey of three strangers between three cities in the movie “Stranger Than Paradise,” Seda Hepsev’s seventh solo exhibition at x-ist can be visited between October 15 and November 21, 2020.