Rey Akdogan exhbition: Carousels, rolls and offcuts

Sutton Lane is pleased to announce the first solo exhibition in London of New York based artist Rey Akdogan. On view is a new body of work which examines the apparatuses of atmosphere and how they can be taken apart.

Lighting gel is a transparent, coloured material that is used in theatre and cinema to colour light, notably with the purpose to create particular atmospheres and lighting conditions. Gel colours are coded and serialised according to an international system that defers from common colour systems as used in painting or printing processes. In the present exhibition the gels are not treated as theatrical lighting but as material whose interrelation and physical properties carry its own logic.

CAROUSEL #4, 2010 is a series of slides that are projected in a standard Kodak projector. The slides are created out of lighting gels and assorted coloured packaging. The material is carefully chosen and submitted to the intervention of the artist before being assembled within the slide frames that are the only support holding the different components together. The slides do not derive from any photographic processes and have no reference to an original image as such. Rather, they are objects in themselves, where material is being directly projected and transformed into an image.

The works Pamplemousse rouge, 2011, R 18, 2011 and 312207, 2011 incorporate offcuts from the materials used for the making of the slides. The production of the offcuts is governed by these very constraints set by Akdogan where material moves from the slides to the offcuts and can’t be added to.