Artist: Leyla Aydoslu
Exhibition title: Leyla Aydoslu
Venue: Fred & Ferry, Antwerp, Belgium
Date: May 13 – June 19, 2021
Photography: Tomas Uyttendaele / all images copyright and courtesy of the artist and Fred & Ferry, Antwerp
Wonder
Sculptural forms take up space. Their monumental and physical presence invites us to explore them. We can walk between them or around them, look into them or stand on them. Leyla Aydoslu plays with space, shapes and boundaries. She chooses simple architectural forms and creates volumes. The sculptures on show refer to shells, which reinforces the relationship between the inside and the outside. Their size and spatial dimension reinforce the physical experience. A sculpture can never be viewed as a whole. We have to move to see each side and can only mentally construct it as a unit.
Aydoslu’s work is disorienting. As much as we would like to explain and understand everything, her work looks for openings to escape our thought patterns. She creates space for freedom and experimentation. Physical, men-tal aspects and various materials shape her work in a playful way. Besides exploring the physical boundaries of herself, a mould or a space, the mental state during the making also plays a role. Aydoslu likes to work with different materials. The variety stimulates discovery and experimentation because she has to find out what the possibilities or limitations are every time. In this way, she also avoids falling into a systematics.
Her sculptures evolve according to a situation and are subject to factors that are constantly changing. A space, physical possibilities and mental processes always interact differently and determine her work. With the numbered titles, Aydoslu refers to the circumstances of the moment and to how works succeed and influence each other. Yet each of her sculptures has its own character and refers to itself. We can describe the work and assign qualities to it, but that is not the point. That brings us back to reasoning while the work offers us a direct, physical experience. Those who let go of their frame of reference grant themselves the freedom to experience the sculptures sensually. More than that, Aydoslu’s work gives us the chance to be amazed. This happens by standing still for a moment and feeling things as they are, without defining them. Only then do we realise how valuable it is to use all our senses.
-May 2021, Indra Devriendt
