Halil Altindere

"Space Refugee"
Andrew Kreps Gallery

New York, 537 West 22nd Street #1

 

In 2015, Turkish interdisciplinary artist Halil Altindere was the subject of a solo exhibition at MoMA PS1 titled Wonderland, which focused on the effects of government-supported gentrification in Istanbul on the city’s marginalized Romani population. In his solo exhibition at Andrew Kreps Gallery this month, Altindere comments on the current refugee crisis which has been one of the most devastating issues around the globe as well as his native Turkey. While the crisis has caused a tremendous scale of loss and destruction to countless lives, Altindere, in his signature fashion, approaches the subject from a twisted point of view.   

Halil Altindere Journey to Mars, 2016 360° VR video 5 minutes, 10 seconds Courtesy of the artist and Pilot Gallery (Istanbul) and Andrew Kreps Gallery, New York

Originally exhibited at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein in 2016, the multimedia installation introduces Syrian cosmonaut Muhammad Ahmed Faris who was the first Syrian and the second Arab in space. The film tracks Faris’s biography beginning with his entry to Soviet space station Mir as a cosmonaut in 1987. The video later shows him standing as an opponent of the Assad regime and currently living as a refugee in Turkey. From there, Altindere reaches an argument about the achievability of freedom and peace on earth and questions the possibility of a new order on Mars. Altindere who has exhibited his work on global scale handles tender political and social issues with a dose of irony and wit.

On view through February 11, 2017