1976, Oslo. Lives in New York City.

In a side room on the second floor of the Garanti Building are Gardar Eide Einarsson's black and white photographs, taken in İstanbul. Cheaply printed and pinned onto the wall, they possess a regime of economy and a scaled down aesthetic. The photographs are uneventful; not much happens and there is not much to see. But this irreverent manner is only deceptive. Einarsson has previously taken similar photographs and produced objects that went into the street and came back into the art space without obfuscating how they operated. Here, he went on a walking tour of İstanbul hot on the heels of the terror bombings. He staked out urban obstacles, security barriers and homemade, accidental, everyday monuments. These are particularly abundant in İstanbul because there is little difference between individual initiatives, institutional barriers and municipal structures. Most are invented, transformed, provisional and ad hoc things. İstanbul, as a city that had its fair share of bombings in the past few years, has made only a few ornamental changes to its security measures. Like Einarsson's light piece The World Is Yours on top of Deniz Palas, the photographs oscillate between an offering as a work of art and a disappointment, by manifesting a slim and pared down visuality. The gesture shrugs off those expectations contaminated by a desire for the exceptional. The modesty and the political potential of this conversation starter should not be confused with a sub-cultural aesthetics in the service of the mother of all markets, the youth market, and the arrogance and in-the-know cool it claims.

Vasıf Kortun

DENİZ PALAS APARTMENTS | GARANTİ BUILDING