In his latest exhibition, Sumer Erek explores the links between the ‘basic’ need and the ’divine’ pursuit, between the ‘fundamental’ and the ‘sophisticated’, leaving the question of which is which, to his audience.
We die after a while without food. We need to eat for everyday functioning. Without creating, without art? If we are hungry, without having shelter, do we go to an art exhibition, do we want to look at art? Do we care? On the other hand if you appreciate ‘art’ as an aesthetic power and/or a critical force, without it, are we not in hunger, don’t we diminish and rot eventually? And when we say ‘art’, is it only created on canvas etc and by the artist? Art of cooking? Food as distinguishing, identifying and also shared culture? Art of using the ingredients to feed and dazzle at the same time?
Sumer Erek’s recent works invites these questions among many others. The world we live and leave, hosts hunger, famine, hunger strikes, homelessness, disadvantaged masses perishing, ever widening huge gap between haves and have nots, food banks on one hand, and food thrown onto the sea to ‘regulate’ prices.
His departure point is, simply, food and art. Latest exhibition not coincidentally takes place in the basement of a shop which sells pots and pans.
In the process of creativity, fire replaced the brush, flour replaced the paint, table clothe aided the canvass. In some of his works he froze the visual journey, in others the metamorphosis will continue: to change, to rot, perhaps towards annihilation, perhaps while it looks like annihilation it will give birth to something else.
