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Nasan Tur
Magic

Solo exhibition

Exhibition: Saturday 09.05.2015 until Saturday 20.06.2015
Opening: Saturday 9 May, 5pm.

When watching a magic trick, the sleight of hand distracts the audience from the reality of the magician’s action. Even though the audience knows it cannot be real, for a time disbelief is suspended. When the trick is uncovered the audience wishes that the illusion had not been lost. It is this suspension and deception that Nasan Tur deals with as a cross-disciplinary artist.

The illusion is perfected by Tur, a prolific artist, whose art works gradually unravels the uncomfortable truths of the world. His output could actually be an urgency, or a political chant that he is compelled to pass on to others. From video to sculpture, from woodcuts to performance he disturbs the normalcy of the everyday with radical acts.
Tur’s performances and actions deal with symbols of power and conflict and how these are represented in contemporary society. This is seen in his restaging public declarations and acts where he overlays hundreds of graffiti one of after the other until they eventually erase themselves.

The use of language out of the public domain is extended to the computer algorithms, a program is designed to create forty-one thousands versions of the word ‘Kapital’. In time, Tur intends to paint each variation. His accumulation of action and image is extended to attempts to break multiple world records, and also sections of the sky redirecting the viewers gaze from violent explosions.
Nasan Tur’s work is precise and challenging with humorous touches that leave the audience with a new outlook on the world at large through subtle and refreshing gestures.

In his first solo exhibition in the Netherlands at West Den Haag, Magic presents works where redirection is at its core. The redirection of attention is found in his video works, where the hands of a magician turn the Israeli flag into the Palestine flag, or where the slow motion of a gun being shot is shown. The audience is kept fascinated by Nasan Tur’s work, but eventually his sleight of hand and the reality of the times that we live in, are revealed.

Nasan Tur lives and works in Berlin. Tur has exhibited widely at institutions and galleries internationally, including Blain|Southern, Berlin/London; Centre Pompidou, & Palais de Tokyo, Paris; Christchurch Biennial of art in public space; Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin; Istanbul Modern, Museum of Modern Art, Istanbul; Kunsthalle Mannheim; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kunstraum Innsbruck; MARTa Herford; Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin; Museum of Contemporary Art, Thessaloniki; Neuer Berliner Kunstverein; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden; Thyssen-Bornemisza Art Contemporary, Vienna; Times Museum, Guangzhou.

A new publication will accompany the exhibition.