Right to Defect No.3 Exhibition Opened for Access!

The third of the Right to Defect exhibitions, the first two of which were held in previous years, under the curatorship of Asst. Prof. Dr. Emre Doğan, Head of the Department of Radio, Television, and Cinema, was developed together with the students of Istanbul Gelişim University, Graduate Education Institute, Visual Communication Design II course. In addition to the works of Asst. Prof. Dr. Emre Doğan, the exhibition included the works of students who took the course, Arda Can Serin, Kardelen Gamsız, Mohammed Ghelichi, Sergen Akın, and Yaren Kaya.

“If Something is Too Beautiful, It Is Not Beautiful”

The manifesto of the exhibition, which is available online, was based on sociologist Jean Baudrillard:

“To produce an example of the dualities of flaw and reality or flaw and life that Baudrillard weaves between the text and the lines, and perhaps even between the words, in his texts, we can talk about a 'fabrication' that can be remembered as the 'play dough metaphor'. This metaphor is quite the opposite and even 'anti' to the 'creationists' unpleasant utopia of perfection, and in this sense, it is perhaps an education. Accordingly, when play dough is handled and starts to be squeezed in the palm, it starts to gush out between the fingers and from the crevices/folds of the hand. When the hand is opened, the 'thing' called play dough takes the shape of the hand. This is exactly where the problem emerges: A 'look' devoid of historicity explains/tries to explain/thinks it can explain the ergonomic structure of play dough with 'harmony'. The thing held in the hand is almost a 'design', it is suitable for the minaret cover. A 'looking' who has learned to look from behind knows, or at least predicts, the compression, collision, escalation, and subsequent 'fading' in the resulting shape, or rather in the memory of the shape. Here is the subtext of the street fight between religion and science.

According to Baudrillard, reality cannot be designed. Because the main purpose of design is to be perfect. For this reason, it cannot be designed into reality. Reality must include compression, collision, escalation, and then 'collapse'. What are these? All the 'impossibles' that reveal the flaw: Tertiary damages, overflows, filling and emptying, suffocation, permanent defeats against the universe that is thought to have a mathematical order. A melancholic resignation to not being able to design/will design anything.

All the photographs in this series are works that were not fully designed but were not accidental either. It is the result of a discipline that has adopted as its motto not to make any juxtapositions 'despite reality', not to produce skillful 'flaws', not to think of what is called 'beauty' isolated from flaws, and not to perceive beauty without looking at its own expense: If something is too beautiful, it is not beautiful. "This is the motto of these photographs."

We congratulate Asst. Prof. Dr. Emre Doğan and our students whose works were included in the exhibition and wish them continued success.