Meliha Sözeri meets the audience with her first solo exhibition “Dust” in Bozlu Art Project. The material prima of existence, which is a process of continuous contraction, relaxation, expansion, recovery, separation and reuniting, gives the name "dust" as the primary ore. The wire material, which is dominant in the exhibition, reveals the volatility of the substance in a brilliant network tissue concreteness. The works of this exhibition, where metal sparkles cover deep gaps as lace, question the conceptual relationship between language, sound, body and image through forms and materials.
Every production; is a re-production
Meliha Sözeri works by borrowing the industrial society's remanufacturing strategy. The body of the exhibition named "Dust" consists of replicas of ordinary objects of everyday life, which are made up of metal-wire material on an individual scale: Cosmetics, cheval glass, sewing machine, underwear, vacuum cleaner... But the methods and materials used open up a critical perception distance between these objects which remind of 'inside' at everyday life', inside of the house and the body, feminine privacy, closeness, sexuality: The artist purifies these objects, where social relations are stored, from their ideological burdens. In order to do this, she also develops some sort of re-production strategy: First, she "exhibits" three-dimensional objects. She reduces them to two-dimensional patterns and templates. Then she re-unites these pieces, which are cut from the wire, by sewing. These processes of opening closing, relaxation and contraction bring the object to the surface while vacuuming the meanings accumulated within the object. The cosmetics turn into 'aesthetic threat', cheval glass turns into 'interface', vacuum cleaner turns into 'vacuum' and piano turns into 'noise'.
The bother, elegance, rhythm, transparency, modularity, mounting principle, light, uprightness, sharpness of the transparent, perforated wire material in the sculptures of Meliha Sözeri are simultaneously composing tissue, “texture” semantic field “text” of the exhibition. Finally, ghosty volumes, which become evident by the restriction of space, and "skin made of metallic dust" which is released between existence and non-existence and does not hide the space behind it, are arising.
Meliha Sözeri makes the nature of desire apparent as a brilliant network tissue, which covers the illuminated interior spaces of the sculptures. She catches the desire tightly during its fluency, seizures and cycles. Stich scars are clear, fold lines are apparent. Underwear washed and randomly hanged and metal that has already lost the smell and heat of passionate bodies. When desire leaves them, all that reminds from the desire-objects are a terrible emptiness and a shivered skin. A simple laundry hanger turns into a mourning space. "Memory of missing pleasure", which is hanged, stitched and held today with the help of latches.
Meliha Sözeri's first personal exhibition "Dust" is accumulating at the threshold: It provides us a closer look at the bright face of the world, which creates the illusion of depth and completeness to recognize its aggrieved skin. The exhibition can be seen between the dates 30 January and 6 March 2018 at Bozlu Art Project.
