23 June—23 September 2023
Solo show
Labour after Pay, Love before Work – An Artworkers VIP Lounge
Ahmet Öğüt
State of Concept presents the first solo exhibition in Greece of the work of Ahmet Öğüt entitled “Labour after Pay, Love before Work – An Artworkers VIP Lounge”, followed by a public program. The exhibition’s opening will take place on the 23rd of June at 19:00 accompanied by the performance “Fair Wage for a Made Up Job” starting at 19:30.
The solo show presents a wide range of Öğüt’s individual as well as collective and collaborative parts of his practice, all works that have never been on display in Greece before. Öğüt’s exhibition is based on a critical interrogation of the art institution, exploring how artist, viewer and curator intersect. In a newly commissioned installation that includes previous works, the artist is re-creating visually a VIP Lounge for precarious cultural workers, making a potent comment on the precarious conditions of freelance art workers in Greece and beyond, that many times work for free, without contracts or with short term zero hour contracted jobs. The work comes in a poignant time when discussions in the Greek art scene are leading to the formation of a union and collective struggles for contemporary art work to be recognised in the tax system. Within the installation previous pieces of the artist will be activated, and the viewer can see examples of past collaborative and collective projects, but also other cultural workers will be hosted, invited to present their work. A film program will be running in the VIP Lounge in July and September.
Ahmet Öğüt lives and works between Amsterdam and Berlin. He works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and printed media. Öğüt has exhibited his work throughout the world, at venues such as the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide; Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art), Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Lissabon; and Künstlerhaus Bremen.
Special thanks to SoC team: Konstantina Melachrinou, Róza Deák Beatrix Szovetes and Claire Weibel
Public Program
June 23rd 2023 (opening night)
Performance: Fair Wage for a Made-Up Job
Öğüt’s performance consists of hiring three performers to work in shifts. They are spinning monitors displaying Öğüt’s film and as part of the project, the performers are paid per hour as much as the Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST). The project tends to expose and re-evaluate the hierarchies of pay and repute within cultural production.
Performers: Konstantina Barkouli, Evi Psaltou, Xenia V.Koghilaki
September 15th 2023
Lectures at the Artworkers VIP Lounge with Nagehan Uskan & Katarzyna Wojtczak
Available on our YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbJWc_VrqrY
&
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wrq_BdlPzY
September 22nd – 23rd 2023
Screening (on loop): Workers Leaving the Factory (1995), Harun Farocki
September 23rd 2023
With the support of the Mondriaan Fonds.
Part of The Bureau of Care research platform
Image Credits
History Otherwise: Ottoman Socialist Hilmi and Ottoman Women’s Rights Defender Nuriye, Ahmet Öğüt, 2019, dimensions: 3.50 m x 6.43m, Digital anamorphic painting courtesy by the artist, view from Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Bremen.
Jump Up!, Ahmet Öğüt, 2022 , Installation, with 3 selected works from the museum collection, 3 trampolines photo courtesy by Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje “Jump Up!” viewing -hang above eye-level- 3 selected works from the Museum of Contemporary Art Skopje collection donated after earthquake in 1963 (by David Hockney, Anna-Eva Bergman and Victor Vasarely) with the help of trampolines.
Ahmet Öğüt born in 1981 in Diyarbakır, is a sociocultural initiator, artist, and lecturer. Working across a variety of media, including photography, video, and installation, Öğüt often uses humor and small gestures to offer his commentary on rather serious or pressing social and political issues. Öğüt is regularly collaborating with people from outside of the art world to create shifts in the perception of common. He has exhibited widely, more recently with solo presentations at Kunstverein Dresden, Kunsthal Charlottenborg, Chisenhale Gallery, and Van Abbemuseum. He has also participated in numerous group exhibitions, including 17th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul, (2022); FRONT International 2022, Cleveland Triennial for Contemporary Art, Ohio (2022); Asia Society Triennial: We Do Not Dream Alone (2021); In the Presence of Absence, Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (2020); Zero Gravity at Nam SeMA, Seoul Museum of Art (2019); Echigo Tsumari Art Triennale (2018); the British Art Show 8 (2015-2017); 11th Gwangju Biennale (2016); the 13th Biennale de Lyon (2015); 19th Biennale of Sydney (2014); Performa 13, the Fifth Biennial of Visual Art Performance, New York (2013); the 7th Liverpool Biennial (2012); the 12th Istanbul Biennial (2011); the New Museum Triennial, New York (2009); and the 5th Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art (2008). Öğüt has been a guest professor, mentor, tutor, advisor, research teacher at several schools. Among the schools are Institut für Kunst im Kontext at Universität der Künste Berlin; Jan van Eyck Academie, Maastricht; Sandberg Institute Amsterdam; Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, Helsinki; TransArts – Transdisziplinäre Kunst, Institut für Bildende und Mediale Kunst Universität für angewandte Kunst Wien; and DAI (Dutch Art Institute) Arnhem. Öğüt was awarded the Visible Award for the Silent University (2013); the special prize of the Future Generation Art Prize, Pinchuk Art Centre, Ukraine (2012); the De Volkskrant Beeldende Kunst Prijs 2011, Netherlands; and the Kunstpreis Europas Zukunft, Museum of Contemporary Art, Germany (2010). He co-represented Turkey at the 53rdVenice Biennale (2009).