Diminishing Time

Diminishing Time consists of Çağrı Saray’s installations, drawings, etchings, photographs and videos based upon questionings of identity, personal memory, the concept of home-space and the societal-political meanings of urban environment.

A series of works that the artist produced between 1999-2015 and assembled in this exhibition aims to expose the data from today and from the past as a single form that is systematic and all-affirming instead of direct and anomalistic elements. Çağrı Saray reviews his past in the back of his memory which he reconstructs with every new experience and incident in the context of social circumstances. He focuses on the political, economical, social changes that are compelling and that unsettles local and global life conditions, and how these changes transform or diminish the memory.

The content and forms within the artist’s works meticulously map various features, processes and moments of these opposable conditions. Saray offers a bare, yet appealing and oppositional choice of notion against the dominant power of the visual culture produced by sovereign discourse.

The series called “The Red Room”, “The Waiting Room” and “The Lost Room” Saray created in 2004, 2009 and 2011 as a follow-up can be seen altogether for the first time in the exhibition.

Part of the project “4/12: Topography of a Home” and showing a series of steps of a walker, the drawings titled “From the Sea to Home: 282 Steps” and “Measuring the School”, in essence, focus on the concept of time. Comparisons between childhood and adulthood confronts the audience as Saray’s visualization of Peter Handke’s “Song of Childhood” by handwriting in his video. With “Non-Commercial Autobiography”, Saray documents in the context of the economical and systematic data of the Istanbul art scene the activities and opportunities he had to produce and manage other than creating artworks as an artist. Located in 5 different rooms, series called “3 Stories – 3 Narratives” that includes “The Red Room” (2004), “Waiting Room v1” (2009), “The Lost Room” (2011), “The Red Room: Sequences” (2005) and “The Lightless Room” (2007) sets the climax to this résumé inventory.
While the painting series “Memory Spaces” presents the phenomena of urban transformation that lies behind globalization and the dominance of consumerism ideologies within the architectural texture, video works titled “Feeling like…” and “Resonance” create visual metaphores of power, resistance, pleasure, hope and powerlessness, abidance, hopelessness as to the individual’s relationship with nature (ecology) and city (urbanism) in modern-time conditions.

You can find Çağrı Saray’s works here: cagrisaray.blogspot.com.tr

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Çağrı Saray
Born 1979, Istanbul. Lives and works in Istanbul. Graduated from Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts in 2001. Saray took charge as a research assistant in Bahçeşehir University’s Faculty of Communication, Visual Arts and Visual Communication Design Department between 2002-2004. He received his MFA and Proficiency in Art degree from Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts. Saray continues his academic career as Assistant Professor at Marmara University Faculty of Fine Arts, Basic Design Department.

Since 2001, Saray executed 9 solo shows including “Grey Corridor” (2013, Paris, France), “4/12: Topography of a Home” (2011, Istanbul, Turkey) and “Memory Boxes-1” (2001, Istanbul, Turkey).

Çağrı Saray’s works were exhibited in over 80 domestic and foreign group shows including “Ruptures and Convergences” (2014, Kuad Gallery, Istanbul), “3. International Çanakkale Biennial” (2012, Çanakkale, Turkey) and “Where Fire Has Struck” (2011, Istanbul, Turkey).