Can Altay

Can Altay’s Deposit (Spring Deficit: After Dubai, After Hammons, and After The Politics of White Noise, 2008) was commissioned for the exhibition following the artist’s research period in Dubai. Deposit is a vibrating, mirrored, circular-shaped sculpture which operates mechanically as a fountain that circulates sand instead of water. The intervention is referred to as a ‘Sand Fountain’, while the noise pollution coming from it is a cross between the sound of a power generator and a drill. In shape and materials, it creates an intensified experience of the urban environment. The use of sand references the basic building materials not just of buildings, but of human life being made of dust. It is both eternal and ephemeral. Being specifically concerned with Dubai, the sand evokes the not so distant past of the city as a modest place in the desert, as well as its contemporary metamorphosis into a built-up metropolis. The work refers to the historical and metaphorical status of the fountain and its gift of water, as well as to the abundance of oil in this region, but displaces these desired assets with sand, a symbol of drought. On another level, the work considers the new developments in the Gulf and their celebration of an urban ideal and of cultural forms taken from other locations. As the fountain strives to function, it illustrates and commentates, via a singular sculptural object, a current state of mirroring and mimicking that is the driving force behind the creation and development of the city of Dubai.
 
The Open Eye Gallery showed Can Altay’s photograph Mirrorworld (2008). This work captures life for Dubai’s construction workers. While Deposit refers in part to the affluence of the city, Mirrorworld presents the other side of the coin in the everyday existence of labourers in Dubai, urging one to pause and reflect amid the rampant clamour and buzz of development.
 
Can Altay (1975) is a Turkish artist living and working in Istanbul. He obtained his PhD in Art, Design and Architecture from Bilkent University in Ankara in 2004 after gaining a postgraduate degree in Critical Studies, and completing graduate studies in Interior Architecture and Environmental Design. His work has been exhibited in solo and group exhibitions around the world since 2002, including his solo exhibitions at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin (2008), Spike Island in Bristol (2007), and Sala Rekalde in Bilbao. His group exhibitions include The Columns Held Us Up (2009) at Artists Space in New York, The 4th International Architecture Biennale (2009) in Rotterdam,and Day Labor (2005) at MoMA in New York.
 
In Zenith Magazine: A conversation between November Paynter and Can Altay