Ergin Cavusoglu

A new exhibition from contemporary artist Ergin Cavusoglu at Haunch of Venison Zürich is to focus on the role of music in communicating cultural identity, community and mobility. This exhibition of all new work is co-directed and produced in collaboration with artist and filmmaker Konstantin Bojanov.

Cavusoglu and Bojanov commissioned and filmed five virtuoso gypsy musicians in the small border town of Kesan, Turkey. The town is the centre of a Rom (Gypsy) community, in an area referred to by Cavusoglu as “the end points of the European idea”. The Romany population in Kesan was forced to settle in the 1923 population exchange and is steeped in Greek-Turkish gypsy musical tradition and history.

A multi-screen video installation brings together individual footage of the musicians to create a harmonious audio-visual piece of synchronised sound and imagery. Shot individually, each musician plays their individual part in surroundings familiar to them – their home, the town’s port, the furnace of a brick factory. The group’s music travels through a range of styles embracing Turkish, Greek, Rom, Jewish, Bulgarian, Armenian and Arabian.

Cavusoglu and Bojanov also asked each musician to choose a location of their choice from in and around Kesan for a solo piece. The resulting films are very personal, each musician playing directly to camera a favourite piece from their traditional repertoire.

Choosing a variety of locations including a nearby beach, the forest on the town’s outskirts, a pigeon coop, the melancholic films work to reveal the dreams and desires of a generation of people who, until recently, have been banned from extensive travel. The musicians in the work - Selim Sesler and his friends - have starred in German- Turkish film maker Fatih Akin’s films Head-On and Crossing the Bridge.

Known for his poetic and unsettling video installations, the exhibition will be one of the first exhibitions in which Cavusoglu will show supporting drawings and sculptural works, also collaborations with Konstantin Bojanov.

Cavusoglu explores our relationship to the space we inhabit and live in, the borders we live with and how we create them. While producing personal portraits of his subjects, his work often examines the border between East and West, place and non-place.

By capturing a poetic rhythm of light and movement, both individually through editing, and collectively through the juxtaposition of screens, Cavusoglu’s work reframes our sense of space, and of reality. Cavusoglu uses darkness and sound as means to unsettle our sense of our surroundings and evoke the presence of the unseen.

Ergin Cavusoglu Ergin Cavusoglu (b. Bulgaria, 1968) studied fine arts at the The National School of Fine Arts ‘Iliya Petrov’, Sofia in the early 1980s. He consequently received a BA in mural painting from the University of Marmara, Istanbul, and an MA from Goldsmiths, London, where he now lives and works. He represented Turkey at the 50th Venice Biennale in 2003 and received widespread public attention in 2004 when he was short-listed for the Beck’s Futures Prize. Recent exhibitions include Point of Departure, John Hansard Gallery, Southampton, Entanglement, Dundee Contemporary Arts, Dundee, the 8th Istanbul Biennial and British Art Show 6 and the 3rd Berlin Biennial. Cavusoglu is one of several artist filmmakers whose proposals have been selected for funding to develop a feature length film under a UK Film Council initiative. Arts Council England and the UK Film Council’s New Cinema Fund will invest in two of the resulting films.

Konstantin Bojanov Konstantin Bojanov (b. Bulgaria, 1968) is a New York based artist and filmmaker. He is a graduate of the National School of Fine Arts ‘Iliya Petrov’, Sofia (B.F.A - 1987), the Royal College of Arts, London (M.A - 1993), NYU, New York (Documentary Production - 2002) He is the author of the photo projects: “Swingers” (1997); “Murders” (1998); “The Inca Trail” (1999); “Snapshots” (2000); “Self Portraits” (1994-2004) and “Burning Ghats” (2006). As a filmmaker his work includes: “Invisible” (2005); the controversial “3001” (2002) and the award winning “Lemon is Lemon” (2001). His films have participated in numerous festivals around the world. He is the recipient of a number of awards for filmmaking including: “Face of Drugs Award”, - Palm Springs Int’l Short Film Festival, 2001; “Best Short Documentary” – Cinequest 2002 and Special Jury Price - Big Sky Documentary Film Festival 2005. He is currently working on a feature length documentary “Outsider” – a portrait of six “outsider” artists and musicians and his first fiction feature film “Crime and Punishment”, a contemporary adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s novel.

Ergin Cavusoglu
Quintet Without Borders
A collaboration with Konstantin Bojanov