Gallery 1 — ÖZGE KUL

Thoughts on F106

When we look at these life-proves of strangers we tend to discover something we know, try to find similarities, histories, which we think are real. But looking at them closely and really spending time with them, one understands that you would only spent time with yourself, with your own thoughts and that you will never be able to reach the real hi-/stories of the people you already think you feel close to.

Even the time you spent with the photographs includes a layer of this misunderstanding: While trying to find certain realities, we might look at one particular picture for minutes/hours, but as a matter of fact, we do not even see a second of someone else’s life.

190 Paintings-All oil color on paper- 2019-2020

TOMIKOPAINTING F106-011.jpeg

TOMIKOPAINTING F106-038.jpeg

F106 üzerine düşünceler Özge Kul 8402.jpeg

In 2018 Özge Kul has been invited by the Berlin artist Patrizia Bach to the Akademie Schloss Solitude (Stuttgart, Germany) to contribute in Bach’s long time project on an amateur photograph-archive, Bach has been establishing for the last 15 years.The central idea of the TOMIKO Archive is to preserve an alternative history and histories and carry them to the present: How do historical facts and fiction mix up when we look at these pictures? How do we become co-writers in collective history writing over the decades and which history do we want to tell? Following these questions Patrizia Bach aims to open her archive sustainably through working with other artist and writers.

The artist Özge Kul developed a method to deal and play with this misunderstandig: She has repainted all the 190 photographs in a certain degree of blurriness, which the audience only recognizes if getting close to them: From farer away Özge Kul’s images seem sharp, you feel like you might have discovered something, but in the moment you get close to them, only blurry shapes appear as if getting insecure with what you have already seen and thought might be true. Additionally Özge Kul worked on accompanying drawings “Absence”.