The Mori Art Museum is pleased to present “MAM Project 019: Emre Hüner”. Emre Hüner (born 1977 in Istanbul) produces artworks that question the civilized society with all its possible apprehension and the future that’s on the extension of the civilization, while acknowledging and analyzing facts grounded in history of science, war, technology, medicine and so on.

Such grand themes of his works are also reflected in the way the artworks are entitled: for instance, the title of his early yet representative work, Panoptikon (2005), derives from the word Michel Foucault used as a metaphor for the administered, controlled social system ( “modern disciplinary societies” ). It is an animation work where Hüner alludes to esotericism, history, an indefinite empire and the relationship between humans and nature by presenting a society of mysterious life forms of his own making. In the video work Juggernaut (2009), whose title alludes to “an irrepressible, gigantic force,” he references symbols of modernity such as international expositions and the motor industry, using aeronautics and combat planes as motifs to suggest that advances in science and technology have ironically gone hand in hand with war. In Quixotic (2011), which describes things that are “tremendously unrealistic,” he expresses via a poetic installation work the wild-eyed dreams and experiments of humankind, using as his theme “Fordlandia,” the rubber plantation town built in the middle of the Amazon rainforest only to be abandoned.

This edition of MAM Project will present Hüner’s installation, including above-mentioned Juggernaut and related new piece. Artworks by Hüner who travels among various media and genres with a viewpoint transcending space- time prompt us to think again about the direction in which humans and human civilization ought to be heading.

Courtesy of Mori Art Museum

*image (left)
Juggernaut, 2009
Video, 21min 8sec.
Courtesy: Rodeo