NEVIN ALADAĞ
SOCIAL FABRIC
February 18 - March 19, 2022
Nino Mier Gallery is pleased to announce SOCIAL FABRIC, a solo presentation of eight works by Berlin-based sculptor and performance, installation, and video artist Nevin Aladağ. The show, which will run from February 18 - March 19, 2022, is comprised of a series of collaged carpets forming geometric wall reliefs, and sculptures-cum-instruments from her Resonator and Resonating Space series. In all three bodies of work, the artist employs art objects from cultures across the world to experiment with the boundaries of cultural production as well as the limits of form.
In Aladağ’s collaged carpet works, she sutures together a panoply of rugs hailing from countries as various as the Americas, Ireland, China, Germany, and her family’s native Turkey. While some carpets are new and others are antiques, they share their pristine condition, as they often circulated as objects of fine art meant to be preserved and protected rather than worn until they become threadbare. By turning the carpet fragments into a new aesthetic form akin to a wall relief, Aladağ reifies the carpets’ occasional status as a fine art.
Aladağ arranges the collaged carpet in geometric designs that recall the more colorful, abstract paintings of Fernand Léger, Sonia Delaunay, and other Orphic Cubists. A uniform boundary composed of industrial, mass-produced carpet contains each carpet fragment, producing an effect that resembles the seams of stained glass. When viewing her constructions at an angle, however, the encircling black outlines disappear in a textured landscape of tufted, knotted, and woven fabric.
In Aladağ’s hybrid constructions, floral motifs are juxtaposed with solid color and geometric designs to form a final work that renders literal the oft-used metaphor, “social fabric.” Not only do her constructions bring aesthetic unity to designs that reflect vastly different regimes of cultural production, but they also give a domestic craft a public form. Carpets, if not used to decorate floors and cushion home dwellers’ feet, are kept in storage, protected from potential damage. To this medium often associated with privacy and domesticity, Aladağ imparts an Art Deco style. This early-20th century aesthetic is often linked to the public-facing feats of Modernity, from mass-printed advertisements to architecture and vehicle design. Her final works bring visual cohesion to what might otherwise clash, just as the “social fabric” of a community brings together the desires and needs of individuals that might otherwise seem incompatible.
Aladağ is perhaps best known for her Resonator and Music Room series, which transform pieces of household furniture into audible sound sculptures. Work from latter series was featured at the documenta 14 in Athens and Kassel in 2017, and from the former series in a solo exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 2019-2020, among other presentations. For SOCIAL FABRIC, she presents Resonating Space (Square Bells 90 degrees), 2021, Resonating Space (Corner Harp, red), 2021, and Resonator Percussion, 2019. Expanding on the notion that furniture might have sonic potential, Aladağ creates potential for sound in the architecture of a room. For instance, the series of bells in Resonating Space (Square Bells 90 degrees), which produce different pitches when rung, is constructed to fit in a 90 degree corner, as is Resonating Space (Corner Harp, red). The instruments are meticulously crafted with the guidance of professional musicians.
Just as Aladağ’s carpet works employ objects from around the world, so do her sound sculptures, which feature instruments such as drums, didgeridoos, and mandolins. If Aladağ’s carpet works ask what aesthetic transformations are possible when artworks from different locales are juxtaposed with one another, her Resonating Sculptures work asks what experiences of space are possible when the sounds of different traditions lie waiting to be activated on our very own walls.
Nevin Aladağ (b. 1972, Van, Turkey; lives and works in Berlin, Germany) received an MFA from the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. Currently, her solo show, Sound of Spaces, is on view at Museum Villa Stuck in Munich. She has had solo exhibitions in institutions such as Museum Lehmbruck, Duisburg; SFMOMA, San Francisco; Hayward Gallery, London; Albertinum, Dresden; Kestnergesellschaft, Hanover; Lentos Kunstmuseum Linz; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Kunsthalle Basel; Zeppelin Museum, Friedrichshafen. She was part of group exhibitions in the Museum Tinguely, Basel; Haus der Kunst, Munich; The Moody Center for the Arts, Houston; Kunstmuseum Bonn; Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin; Kunsthalle Mannheim; Kunsthalle Nürnberg; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt; Gropius Bau, Berlin; American Jazz Museum, Kansas City; Kemper Museum, Kansas City; Bundeskunsthalle Bonn; Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg; Kunsthalle Hamburg; Kunsthalle Fridericianum, Kassel; Kunsthaus Zürich, among other international institutions. Aladağ has participated in the Riga International Biennial of Contemporary Art (RIBOCA3), Riga, 2022; Venice Biennial, 2017; documenta 14, Kassel & Athens, 2017; Sharja Biennial, 2013; Istanbul Biennial, 2009; and Taipei Biennial, 2008. Her work is represented in the collections of the SFMOMA, San Francisco; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Lehnbach Haus, Munich; Kunsthalle Mannheim; Kunsthalle Hamburg; Kunstsammlung NRW, Düsseldorf; Lehmbruck Museum; Sammlung für zeitgenössische Kunst der Bundesrepublik Deutschland, Bonn; Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich; Kunstmuseum Stuttgart; Neue Nationalgalerie, Berlin; European Central Bank Art Project, Frankfurt; DEKA Bank, Frankfurt; Sammlung Philara, Düsseldorf; Schwarz Foundation, Munich; Österreichische Galerie Belvedere, Vienna; TBA 21, Vienna; LENTOS Linz Kunstmuseum; Museum Tinguely, Basel; Istanbul Modern; Vehbi Koc Collection, Istanbul; Collection of Sheikha Hoor al-Qasimi, UAE; and the K11 Art Foundation Shanghai and Hong Kong; among others.