This catalogue was printed within the context of the exhibition titled Hot Spot Istanbul that took place at the Museum Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich on June 6-September 22, 2013 by Kehrer Verlag. Accompanying this exhibition that looks into the nuances between abstraction, reduction, minimal art, conceptual art, and object art, the catalogue features a presentation of the curator Dorothea Strauss and a text by Thomas Wulffen, in German and English. Over the past ten years or so, Ebru Uygun has developed a complex way of handling the medium of painting, which constitutes a link between the act of painting on canvas, a deconstruction thereof, and a subsequent synthesis: Uygun tears several previously painted canvases into strips, a process which is physically quite strenuous, and collages these strips in a new sequence on another canvas. This process of fragmentation and synthesis gives rise to abstract constellations, the components of which hint at a possible, former whole, which nevertheless remains intangible. She causes a new image to emerge, in which everything that essentially constitutes painting is put under scrutiny: the image ground, the colors, the forms, and the image space which painting can thus create -be it representational, abstract or concrete. Ebru Uygun's solo and group exhibitions are as follows: Complicité, Dirimart, Istanbul (2002); Things, C.A.M Gallery, Istanbul (2003); Breath, Mac Art Gallery, Istanbul (2005); Trace, Mac Art Gallery, Istanbul (2006); Dirimart Presents, Dirimart, Istanbul (2009); Time For a Dream, Dirimart, Istanbul (2009); Istanbul Cool: Turkish Contemporary Art at Close Proximity, New York (2010); Confessions of Dangerous Minds, Saatchi Gallery, London (2011); Lucid Dreaming, Green Art Gallery, Dubai (2011); In Time and Rhythm, Dirimart, Istanbul (2012); Past and Present, Istanbul Modern (2013); Hot Spot Istanbul, Haus Konstruktiv, Zurich (2013); Inside, Yallay Gallery, Hong Kong (2013); Random Process, Dirimart Nisantasi, Istanbul (2016); Surface and Beyond, Dirimart Dolapdere, Istanbul (2016); and Cloud in a Raindrop, Galeria Senda, Barcelona, 2017.
About the Author: Thomas Wulffen completed his degree in Philosophy and Linguistics at the University of Konstanz. He has been working as an art reviewer for the Berlin daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel. Since the late 80's, he has been working as a curator, and writing critics for the journals such as Kunstforum International, Artscribe, Flash Art, Noema, and Pan. In April 2008, he was elected President of AICA Germany. Wulffen lives and works in Berlin. Dorothea Rose Strauss studied Art History, Theater, Film and Television Studies as well as Classical Archeology at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. Subsequently, she worked as a curator at the Museum of Non-Objective Art in Otterndorf until 1991. Worked as the director of Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen between 1996 and 2001, Strauss received the Swiss Federal Curator Award from the Federal Office of Culture in Bern in 2000. In 2005, Strauss became the director of Museum Haus Konstruktiv in Zurich. Since 2016, she has been a member of the Board of Trustees of the Hermann and Margrit Rupf Foundation in Stallikon. She is editor and author of numerous articles on contemporary art.