As part of the ReMap art fair, Baltoyanni curated Station K43 for Rodeo Gallery, spotlighting the work of Emre Hüner and Ian Law. Staged in an abandoned neoclassical residence in a neighborhood of Athens known in ancient times for ceramic production, it juxtaposed two bodies of work: Hüner’s ceramic sculptures and a video inspired by the eccentric, Islamic-influenced 1930s mansion of the American tobacco heiress Doris Duke and Law’s site-specific installation of sculpture, painting, and fragrance in the decrepit space.
Rodeo is pleased to present “ Station K43”, a show featuring works by Emre Hüner and Ian Law curated by Artemis Baltoyanni.
“Station K43” takes as its point of departure ReMap’s unique relationship to the urban environment around it: in the area known as Keramikos, we witness a once grand past, alongside an ambiguous future. In the course of its many histories, Keramikos was alternately a 5th century BC potters’ district (hence the name derived from the Greek word for pottery), an ancient cemetery, the site of 19th century royal gardens that were never realized and the site of social housing for local workers. In the latter half of the twentieth century, the area fell into disrepair.
In this context, the past continues to bear significantly on the present for both artists. Hüner’s body of work is inspired by time spent in the eccentric Islamic-style mansion built by American heiress Doris Duke in 1930s Hawaii. Emre’s viewing of the Hawaiian landscape and natural elements come to inspire ceramic sculptures that merge reality and fantasy, the natural and the artificial. In Diamond Head Diving Man, the maquette of an alternate (never realized) proposal for Duke’s villa is dismembered and abstracted in the visual realm of Hüner’s work. Neither documentary nor pure fiction, they bear the fingerprints of the artist’s consciousness.
Once a residential building, Keramikou 43 has too long been in a state of decomposition, today a sort of carcass, a domestic relic of a time that has passed. Ian Law’s practice is one that responds with extreme sensitivity to the space and follows a recycling, sometimes entropic system; works changing shape and form through the course of time due to a very personal and closed cycle of thoughts and materials being used several times, past situations applied on new exhibitions. The artist has blocked off the rooms that were once sites of domesticity (two bathrooms and the kitchen) making work that serves as an enigmatic stand-in for that which is not available to us.
(born 1977, Istanbul) is an artist who works with drawing, video, and installation. He currently lives and works in Amsterdam as a resident at the Rijksakademie van Beeldende Kunsten. Recent exhibitions include “Signs Taken In Wonder” MAK Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna, Austria (2013), “III Moscow Young Art Biennale” Moscow, Russia (2012), “MANIFESTA 9” Genk, Belgium (2012), “Paradise Lost”, Istanbul Modern, Istanbul, Turkey (2011), “ The 6th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art” Gallery of Modern Art of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia (2009) , “ The Generational : Younger then Jesus”, New Museum , New York , USA (2009) , at “Manifesta 7 – The Rest of Now” South Tyrol Italy (2008), and the “10th International Istanbul Biennial” Istanbul (2007). In 2007, he published an artist book, “Bent 003,” through BAS in Istanbul.
(born 1984, Isle of Wight) is an artist living and working in London. Recent group and solo exhibitions include: “New Works, VI, VII”, Oslo, Norway (2012); “Make Sure”, Rodeo, Istanbul, Turkey (2012); “2012”, curated by Lindsay Jarvis, Mews Project Space, London, UK (2012); “Co-”, Laura Bartlett Gallery, London, UK (2011); “Add a description”, Galeria Plan B, Berlin, Germany (2011); “Is Many”, Supplement, London (2011); “Young London”, V22 Workspace, London, UK (2011) and “Programme Three: The Studio as Non-Place”, curated by Lucy Moore (video screening), Perth Institute of Contemporary Art, Australia (2011).
