Galeri Nev once again hosts Pelin Kırca two years after her exhibition “Down the Rabbit Hole” in January-February 2021. Kırca, who created illustrations for Lewis Carroll books in her previous exhibition, now illustrates a melody instead of a story. The exhibition consists of an animated film and accompanying drawings evoked by the composition The Crowd from the 1971 album "Sing Me a Song of Songmy, a Fantasy for Electromagnetic Tape" by İlhan Mimaroğlu and Freddie Hubbard. This time the artist turns the associations she had into a surreal game and invites the audience to participate.
Composed by avant-garde musician İlhan Mimaroğlu and accompanied by trumpeter Hubbard, the album is known for bringing together choir, strings, and all the 'familiar' sounds of jazz music as well as the 'unfamiliar' or rather experimental sounds of musique concrète. The Crowd also contains some text excerpts and poems, especially by Fazıl Hüsnü Dağlarca; when we listen to the words, it is quite possible to realize the existence of anti-war messages mixed into the melody. The patterns accompanying the video, which are arranged within the gallery space like music sheets, sometimes introduce us to the main characters of the animation with all their features, and sometimes bring characters to the spotlight whose silent presence in the background is overlooked by the music. Yet, none of the patterns attempt to remove İlhan Mimaroğlu himself, whom we see smoking a cigarette in the rain, from the movie.
Pelin Kırca, after completing her undergraduate education at Bilkent University, Department of Graphic Design, received her master’s degree from the School of Visual Arts in New York. She held her first exhibition in Istanbul in 2015 and then attended Werner Herzog’s film school in 2016. Alongside Turkey, her works were shown in group exhibitions in Germany, USA, France, England, Spain, Japan, and Switzerland, and her animated films have been screened at many international film festivals such as Vienna Independent Shorts, London International Animation Festival, Chicago Underground, Akbank, !F Istanbul, International Filmmor Women Festival on Wheels, and Manifest. With her film titled “One Moonless Night” she was invited by Istanbul Modern to take part in the 2018 International Artist Films program led by Whitechapel Gallery in London. Having received many international awards for her work, Pelin Kırca also continues to design for Begüm Khan, Beymen, Fey and Zac Posen.
Pelin Kırca's exhibition THE CROWD is on view at Galeri Nev between March 11-April 1.
