Risk of Rain: Cem Örgen

Entitled Risk of Rain, the exhibition explores intertwined materialities of water, desire, heartbreak and material production processes through a series of works-as-bodies, which appear as at once organic and artificial, spanning sculpture, drawing, assemblage, text and sound.

A meteorological possibility underlies the exhibition. As desire, heartbreak and trauma manifest themselves through bodily fluids; atmospheric transformations, biological bodies, industrial processes and optical devices become affective subjects on the verge of making it rain. Or, on the verge of creating a momentary focus in our distracted, dopamine-addicted present. Arising from the global urge and desire to find what and who you love under these circumstances, the sculptures in the exhibition each elaborate on a selected moment of focus under conditions of distraction, around the possibility of romantic love, affective states in an everyday family gathering, the softness of a wound or around moments of epiphany in the artistic process. 

A relatively small and seemingly simple steel sculpture is placed at the center of the exhibition. Its shape is reminiscent of a designer chair but obfuscates any compatibility with the sitting human form. The function is dislocated yet the metaphor is active, as in mounting a horse: it is titled “Horses”. When seen from the perspective of the small piece of Tyvek paper hanging on it, displaying a hand made copy of the Faber Castell logo, it becomes a frame. Breaking the horse, training living matter, taming your own body: an archeology of making and of industrial production capitalizing on material, emotional, organic and cultural resources across centuries can begin here. Friction and adaptation are central in this and many other works on display: the drawing was made using the transfer technique, applying pressure between two surfaces and pushing a color pencil across the paper. Friction creates the trace, as much as it provokes erasure. Same can be said of “Breakfast with Family”, one of the larger installation pieces, where erosion becomes central, as a metaphor for memory embodied by the material, in this case, wood: painted, perforated, scraped, carved out, filled up and varnished. Much like the artist’s intentionally amateur sewing and clumsy stitches that cover the surfaces of bags and of the silicone suture kits reaching out from the mechanical body of “Open Surgery”: An inventory of different shapes of wounds on soft tissue, fillings and stitches over scar tissue. In Cem’s works matter and material processes stand for layers of collective and individual trauma, sediment after sediment. Can love and contingency ever be compatible? He mentions in passing “the truth that when love is conditional, our hearts will be unconditionally broken”. “Am I In Love” features twin little monsters, fire, danger and deflection as much as it conveys warmth and light, millions of little suns our iphones are. Love remains a question, never becomes a statement. Its simple possibility, as in real life intimacy, is quickly overturned by defensive tactics, scary posturing and irony, all characteristic features of online and parasocial relationships. 

There are attempts to collect a momentary focus and form, often through the presence of a liquid process. “In Breakfast with Family”, this comes in the form of acrylic water lenses through which a series of five photographic prints come to view. The water lens creates an interplay of scale within the photographic image, reliant on the viewer’s movements and animates the image through this central tension: its focus keeps changing as you shift your position, and so does its relationship to the rest of the exhibition space, momentarily reflecting through the body of water encapsulated within the acrylic porthole. In another instance, “Open Surgery” is half surrounded by a glass structure carrying its own evaporation metaphor, much like in a condensation cube or a heated aquarium, the glass surface is obscured by an accumulation of matter. While the fluid in “Breakfast with Family” serves as an optical device, here its shading effect comes as a protective layer in support of the mechanical body it shelters. Occultation might be a necessity when it comes to focus. The barely discernible magnetic drawing in Omnipotent is an underwater self portrait trickstering through the conductivity of water and lightning to describe a moment of artistic epiphany, on the verge of drowning.

Cem Örgen (b. 1996, Istanbul), holds a BA in Industrial Design from Istanbul Bilgi University. Disenchanted with the motivations of industrial design, his interest in material processes, functions and standards directed his practice towards more personal and situated movements rather than mass circulation. The artist examines the moral nausea caused by the speed of everyday stimuli, online and offline social interactions and desires. He values the search for shared and collective memory in hidden, rushed, and isolated settings, using installation, found objects, photography, sculpture, video and painting. 

Cem Örgen’s selected solo shows include the following: ”No Entry” (with Can Küçük), IMALAT-HANE (Bursa, 2022); “You Can’t Hide In The Sky”, 5533 (Istanbul, 2021); “Next Blood is Just a Fresh One” Pose (Istanbul, 2019). He has participated in group shows such as the 4th Capriola Art Week, Circolo Cittadino (Lecce, 2023); IST-BLN, Pose A, Pose B, HOTO (Berlin, 2022); Last Minutes, Untitled (1-4), THE POOL Heybeliada (Istanbul, 2021); “Ceremony” - Young Fresh Different, Zilberman Gallery (Istanbul, 2018); Mamut Art Project (Istanbul, 2018); The New Domesticity, Bender no.9, Salt Galata (Istanbul, 2017) & Dutch Design Week (Eindhoven, 2016). In 2020 he was a resident at Garp Sessions, Çanakkale in the program “Fictional Protocols and Desirable Futures” moderated by Guilia Civardi and Ekin Can Goksoy.  Cem Örgen lives and works in Istanbul.