ONE TWO THREE – Ayşe Erkmen receives the Ernst Franz Vogelmann Prize 2020

Ayşe Erkmen’s arrival on the world stage of art has come as no surprise, though still with actions of great conceptual strength. The artist, who studied classical sculpture in Istanbul in the early 1970s, and now lives both there and in Berlin, caused a worldwide sensation with her helicopter flight around Münster Cathedral as part of SkulpturProjekte 1997 – tethered to the helicopter was a sculpture damaged in World War II – and again twenty years later with her work »On Water«, also created for SkulpturProjekte, that allowed visitors to walk on water in the harbor basin in Münster. The contrast between East and West, however, is of little artistic relevance to her, since she tends to examine »what the place and the situation demand (of her)«. In her actions, installations and interventions, Erkmen’s attention is thus focused on the specific characteristics of the respective place. This focus is on the incidental, the overlooked, on what is concealed by the complexity of the situation, when history and function, or purpose, cross-fade. In July 2020, Ayşe Erkmen will receive the fifth Ernst-Franz-Vogelmann Prize for Sculpture. The prize has been awarded in Heilbronn every three years since 2008, and she is the first woman in the series of previous winners: Roman Signer, Franz Erhard Walther, Thomas Schütte and Richard Deacon. Her temporary works disappear at the end of the exhibitions; and she has always considered anything permanent and fixed to be somewhat suspect. Ayşe Erkmen’s practice does not aim at a permanent work of art, but rather employs minimal interventions on site to create a temporary state that challenges our perception and endures as a memory. Over five decades, an oeuvre rooted in sculpture and characterized by sharpness of thought, sensuality and formal consistency has been created, whereby a variety of concepts, forms, media and materials intersect on a number of different levels. The book provides a brilliant overview of this artistic development, with additional insights revealed by curator Rita Täuber’s highly instructive text.

Exhibition:
Städtische Museen Heilbronn / Kunsthalle Vogelmann, 18/7 – 1/11/2020