Work_In_Progress

‘Work_In_Progress’ by Evelyn Bencicova and Enes Güç has been exhibited as part of 'NEW VIEWINGS' a project of Barbara Thumm Galerie in Berlin. Curated by Philipp Bollmann.

The motionless figure of an androgynous giantess occupies almost the entire gallery space in its entangled posture. On its body and around it, small scaffolding grows upwards. But the construction site is deserted. Only the figure, which resembles an avatar, remains in a calm state. A state of "being in between". Between day and night. Between dream and reality or even between life and death? It almost seems as if the figure is still being brought back to life.

One is inclined to think of Mary Shelley, whose novel character Victor Frankenstein created an artificial human being 200 years ago - in a time of great upheaval and discovery. Today we are once again at a historic turning point in technology. Is that what Evelyn Bencicova  and Enes Güç are alluding to here?

Or are they even illustrating a creation of the „Self-image“? The construction of the persona for external perception has advanced to a mania that was only enabled by the possibilities of the digital world. We use our extended abilities to make ourselves appear larger than we presumably are. The oversize of the figure is a testament to this. And the scaffolding becomes a metaphor for the process of construction, work in progress. How will it develop? To what extent can it grow?

These questions cannot be answered. Like the figure itself, we as recipients also remain in an intermediate stage. Somewhere between fiction and reality, the visible and the invisible and what we think to know and what we can imagine.
(Philipp Bollmann)