The story of human civilization's intervention and transformation into nature is also a reflection of its process of becoming the subject of the planet. As human beings produced tools, as they strived to build cities, their struggle and relationship with nature produced uncertainty and chaos that exceeded their power of imagination through technological and industrial revolutions. From Kant's human-powered ‘second nature’ definitions to the ‘Anthropocene’ age discussions, the ecological and sociological dimensions of the subject, which touch everyday life as well as philosophical, were discussed: the destruction of the human species to the planetary ecosystem, declining natural resources, growing social unrest and the wars caused by them...
Today, we have come to the final stages of the struggle of human civilization against nature while realizing its own goals and ambitions. We must also realize that there is no triumphant future on the horizon, in the world after nature.
Artist Gökhan Balkan takes the concept of second nature produced by man one step further and creates his own image through a wide delta of thought covering post-human futures such as artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, robot evolution, while painting the loss of the natural and reality through the fiction of architecture and nature of the artificial. In the exhibition’ After Nature', the artist reveals a competent image in which he looks for the plastic language and forms of the future.
Berkay Buğdan, the artist, presents the pure, untouched natural landscapes that occupy an important part of the art of painting with new productions that he has performed on metal plates through an uncertain and destructive image of the era in which he lived. The artist builds romantic spaces on the ‘apocalyptic’ image of industrial society in the landscapes he reveals, suggesting the absence of nature, while the unique image he creates on the landscape continues through the figure in his sculptural work.
In the work of both artists, it is observed that similar concerns stand out due to innovative pursuits in material selection and experimental characteristics in aesthetic applications. But both artists ' perspectives on the post-nature(l) world have developed with very different dynamics. Gokhan Balkan rejects the principle of a human-centered universe in the development potential of techno-evolution, which he calls’ Third Nature', and opens the door to new types of existence. Berkay Buğdan, on the other hand, treats the aftermath of nature(l) as a process of Decay, surrender to chaos, that is, entropy. As a result of these approaches, the works of art create an uncanny duet about the Unity states of contrast and uncertainty.
Gökhan Balkan
Berkay Buğdan
