Halil Altındere, one of Turkey’s most internationally recognized artists, will exhibit his sculpture titled “Safety Tree”, which he created in 2021, at Mozaik Ortaköy.
Beyond Halil Altındere’s projects for biennials and museums, this work, which will meet with the accidental viewer passing by on the street, seems to be on the radar of art enthusiasts as well as many people who are not interested in art.
The artist’s Security Tree, which was commissioned by Yaman Erturan and will be permanently exhibited in front of Mozaik, was inspired by the 21st century. century’s interest in surveillance. In an age where surveillance has become almost an obsession, with retina-reading cameras, drones, internet cookies and many other tools collecting and processing the known and unknown data of our bodies, surveillance is becoming more and more sophisticated/invisible and necessary. The information you share, often voluntarily, with the apps you download on your phone, your voice recorded by robot call center employees or the 20-year-old photos you upload to Instagram, creates a tree of information about you. Altındere’s Tree of Safety is a metaphor for this whole cult of surveillance, as well as a metaphor for the tree in the backyard of our civilization. It can also be seen as a reasoning of how its blossoming flowers look like in the 21st century.
In an interview about his work, the artist says the following;
“In temporary exhibitions, I focus on the conceptual framework; when I produce a permanent outdoor work, I act according to both conceptual and spatial context. I pass with the surrounding architecture and environment and scale the work accordingly. When I received an invitation from Yaman Erturan to put my latest sculpture, Security Tree, in the garden of a very busy place like Mozaik Design, I realized the project after extensive research and preliminary preparation. Material, dimensioning, landscaping, possible angles of encounter of the work with the viewer, etc.”
The 5th At the Istanbul Biennial, the artist exhibited his installation titled Dancing with Taboos-2, consisting of giant-sized identities, in the garden of the Mint-i Amire building, and at the Manifesta organized in 2002, he made a special installation at Frankfurt Airport. The sculpture titled Pala Şair, which the artist exhibited on İstiklal Street in 2008, became one of his most recognized works. In 2009, a statue of an upside-down German police car, the Monument to Direct Democracy, was unveiled in a square in Berlin and quickly became a meeting place in the region. In 2019, Ralph Rugoff will curate 58. One of the works produced by the artist, who was invited to the International Venice Biennale, was an outdoor installation titled Neverland. At the Venice Biennale, known for its exhibitions based on the representation of the nation, the work questioned the representation of the other/excluded/stateless. Again in 2019, the artist installed a 9-meter Limousine Police Car work in the garden of Çırağan Palace. The artist, who has recently focused on sculpture works, is exhibiting his work Drone Killer in Riva, his sculpture Where the Story Ties the Knot in Küçükkuyu, and his sculpture Crocodile Rider dated 2021 in Burgaz Island.
