Grayson Perry in Ways of Seeing, at Arter Space for Art, Istanbul

2 June - 13 August 2017

Taking its cue from Ways of Seeing, John Berger's 1972 critical text on visual culture, this exhibition explores the various formalistic strategies that artists employ to re-configure our perception of the world. 

Curated by Sam Bardaouil and Till Fellrath of Art Reoriented, the exhibition posits the surface of the artwork as a space of encounter between the internal aesthetic deliberations of the artist's creative process and the external often-conditioned gaze of the viewer. "Ways of Seeing" presents contemporary paintings, photographs, sculptures and videos, alongside artworks that span several centuries. It unfolds along a non-linear temporal thread whereby the viewer's desire to "understand through seeing" is constantly challenged through artworks that refuse to operate along the rigidity of styles, genres, and so-called "isms." In doing so, we are reminded that "the relation between what we see and what we know is never settled." It is in this inherently political process of searching, that we begin to discover several ways of seeing…

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Image: Grayson Perry,  A Map of Days, 2013