Histoire de l'art

New English Paperback. Demy 8vo. (22 x 15 cm). In English and Turkish. 96 p., 40 unnumbered color ills. Asli Çavusoglu. Mercury in retrograde.= Merkür geriliyor. Edited by Iz Öztat, Süreyyya Evren. The Contemporary Art Series of artists books, initiated by Art-ist publications, presents unique monographs of work by emerging artists who do not have a publication on their work yet. The series aims at documenting practices as they manifest and creating a space for evaluating each artist's practice through most of their works. The books published to date are Ahmet Ögüt: Informal Incidents (2008), followed by Bashir Borlakov: Fictional Reality (2009), Can Altay: Pigeons are People (2010) and A. Sener Özmen Book (2011). Mercury in Retrograde is the fifth book in the series, which focuses on Asli Çavusoglu's artistic production since 2004. In her works, Ash questions the audience's relationship with reality through her daring interventions in space and time. No matter what the topic is, her works reflect the process and the coincidences invoked by the artist that result in layered interpretations. In the universe that is presented in this book, linear relationships and narratives don't work. We can only perceive the works as a constellation of time/space compressions, which impact each other in multiple dimensions. You can imagine that an artist dealing with the fictional nature of historiography and placing herself at the center of experiences shaping her work would not let somebody else edit the narrative about her practice. The interpretations you will come across are some possibilities articulated from now and the same works might appear with completely different meanings in the future. In this book, you might be looking for a narrative of Ali Cavusoglu and her artistic practice but you might find something else.