Cevdet Erek [email protected] Void Gallery

In his new exhibition Beating A Retreat, Cevdet Erek draws on conditions of production from a distance as the exhibition has been developed remotely due to COVID 19 travel restrictions. The global economic imbalance and disparities between countries’ responses to the pandemic thickened the borders and enforced regulations on the movement of people or goods which imposed a global retreat. The title of the exhibition Beating a Retreat meditates on this present condition by referring to the military use of drums in signifying the end of battle and a retreat. Alluding to the title, Erek has composed a new sound piece titled Back with the bodhrán, an instrument associated with traditional Irish music of the 1960’s. In Double Arrow Line, the same bodhrán comes together with a parchement from Pergamon, a traditional material of a disparate culture, through a drawing. Welcome and Goodbye, a sound piece of two parts, marks paths of the audiences while interfering with other works as well reminding recent big scale installations like ÇIN or Bergama Stereo series. A new ruler conceived for this exhibition, Ruler 2019 BC19 to 1 AC19, bases itself on an imaginary COVID-19 calendar that takes 2020, the year that the pandemic declared by WHO, as its year zero. The exhibition responds to our present time which altered the experience of time, regulations of movement and slowed down our lives.