Arter initiated a new publication series, ARTER BACKGROUND, in 2019 to accompany exhibitions drawn from its collection, which holds more than 1.400 works of art. The fourth book of the series accompanies Locus Solus, which brings together selected works from the Arter Collection with several large-scale installations, including site-specific new productions, with an aim to explore the idea of “nature” through the lens of facts, fictions and emotions. In the book, excerpts of textual and visual contents selected around the ideas active in the curatorial process of the exhibition are complemented by new works produced specifically for this context. While the exhibition curated by Selen Ansen deals with the ways in which nature and culture permeate and affect each other, the accompanying publication, through its distinctive editorial structure, features texts pointing towards extinct territories, subconscious landscapes, foreign lands, fictive rooms, heres, elsewheres and nowheres, wonderlands, heavenly, earthly and subterranean realms, alongside commissioned essays by Sena Başöz, Pascal Janovjak and Su Pola.

This book reflects the exhibition which it accompanies, and whose spaces and reflections on the idea of nature it extends. It amounts to a territory the contours of which are fluid, semi-autonomous, inhabited by a variety of spaces and times. One may peruse it while sitting, standing or lying down, in broad daylight or when the night has fallen, in clear or foul weather, in or outdoors – just as one would with any other book that fell into one’s hands. One will probably make one’s way into it unaccompanied, since it is customary to read alone and in silence. Once inside, it will be preferable to keep one’s eyes open in order to understand where one sets foot, yet not to neglect to close them so as to be able to wander off beyond its borders. This neither-too-long, neither-too-short book is also a body: a hybrid body composed of heterogeneous worlds and points of view, assembled according to the “good neighbour” principle, so cherished by Aby Warburg. It compiles fragments of texts uprooted from their original context, some of which are published as a whole, others devised within the framework of the exhibition. It also contains images, some speechless, others quite talkative, which, again, have been deterritorialised – moved out of their original context – in order to become reterritorialised in new surroundings. One will find less theory here than fiction, fewer essays than narrations, versified poetry and free prose, a manifesto, dictionary and encyclopaedia pages, more solitude than crowds, more vegetation than concrete, at least as many unspoken as vocalised thoughts. — Selen Ansen

with contributions by

Sena Başöz • John Berger • Jen Bervin • Karl Blossfeldt • Richard Brautigan • Charles Burns • Joseph Conrad • Julio Cortázar • Karel Čapek • Evliyâ Çelebi • Ferit Edgü • Helmut Eisendle • Gianni Guadalupi • Marlen Haushofer • Robert Hooke • Pascal Janovjak • Kamo no Chōmei • Gizem Karakaş • Tetsumi Kudo • D.H. Lawrence • Leo Lionni • Lucretius • Maurice Maeterlinck • Xavier de Maistre • Alberto Manguel • Winsor McCay • Claudio Morandini • Murathan Mungan • Barış Pirhasan • Pliny the Elder • Su Pola • Robert Pufleb • Jochen Raiß • Iván Repila • Raymond Roussel • Nadine Schlieper • Carl Seelig • Gertrude Stein • Michel Tournier • Robert Walser • Aby Warburg • Lynd Ward • Volkan Yalazay

Locus Solus sergisiyle bağlantılıdır = Related to Locus Solus exhibition