Kutlug Ataman - Contemporary Art Evening Sale London Tuesday, October 12, 2010 | Phillips

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  • Provenance

    Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago

  • Exhibited

    New York, Lehmann Maupin Gallery, Kutlug Ataman, Stefan's Room, 2004 (another example exhibited); Chicago, Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Kutlug Ataman, Stefan's Room, 2005 (another example exhibited); Sydney, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kutlug Ataman, 22 June - 4 September, 2005 (another example exhited)

  • Literature

    Exhibition catalogue, Museum of Contemporary Art, Kutlug Ataman, Sydney, 2005, front and back covers, p. 54  (illustrated)

  • Catalogue Essay

    In the present installation, composed of five large screens, ataman uses his favourite medium of video. The five screens arranged in a somewhat chaotic circle surround the viewer and echo the flight or dance of butterflies and moths which are the subjects of the films projected onto the screens. The installation is completed by the narrative of Stefan Naumann who explains in lengthy detail his passion or rather lifetime obsession with tropical moths; from his first encounter with the insects as a child, to how he bred them, and finally to how he killed them to store them in display cabinets in his tiny Berlin flat.
     
    The installation forms a dynamic and colourful structure suggesting Stefan’s psyche and transformation. Ataman sees the playful and eerie installation as a metaphor for the complexity of Stefan’s obsession. The viewer becomes confined within the broken and tilted installation, as if walking into a man’s head and thoughts. Ultimately, Ataman illustrates the imprisonment of obsession by creating a sense of claustrophobia. as is often the case with ataman, his art is about people and their stories and more importantly their words. “Ataman is an artist whose medium is people lives, that for him and for us, take form in the words they produce” writes B. Horringan (‘Kuba, Si!’, in Kuba, Kutlug Ataman, exh. cat., Artangel, London, 2005). People are the heroes of his videos and films, which more often than not, deal with the life of marginalized subjects, and include an array of colourful and poignant characters. Ataman usually lets his subjects talk uninterrupted in front of the camera in a documentary type style, blurring the boundaries between life and reality.
     
    “I am really after every individual’s reality of who they actually are … I more or less do ‘bad interviews’ on purpose. I don’t do good journalism, because good journalism is trying to get people to say what you want … my work is only talking heads. I never understood why this was a bad thing , because to me talking heads are so essential. People are telling you exactly who they are. What else are you after?” (The artist, in conversation with Aimee Chang, in Imagine us together: Kutlug Ataman’s Southern Californian Paradise, exh. cat., orange county
    Museum of art, Newport beach, 2007, p. 17)
     

10

Stefan's Room

2004
Five screen video installation.
Dimensions variable, duration: approximately 45 minutes.
This work is from an edition of five.

Estimate
£40,000 - 60,000 Ω♠

Contemporary Art Evening Sale

13 October 2010
London