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Writer's pictureJaamZIN Creative
Apr 22, 20202 min read

Artist Mehmet Dere


Sofa (dining table) represents a common, traditional geography of life, one where people gather around it, sit together and eat. The truth is that your homeland is not where you are born but where you eat. In Turkey, this is an often used, boilerplate saying. The skull and the wood surface of 'Dining Table' refer to the desert, while the wolf inside the skull's eye refers to the hungry wolf that awaits its share.
Sofa (dining table) represents a common, traditional geography of life, one where people gather around it, sit together and eat. The truth is that your homeland is not where you are born but where you eat. In Turkey, this is an often used, boilerplate saying. The skull and the wood surface of 'Dining Table' refer to the desert, while the wolf inside the skull's eye refers to the hungry wolf that awaits its share.

Mehmet Dere was born in 1979 in İzmir. He graduated from Faculty of Fine Arts, Painting Department at Dokuz Eylül University. He completed his MA in the same faculty and now studying his PhD in Faculty of Arts and Design, Painting Department at Sakarya University. The language that the artist creates in his work exists in an area of many (sociological-psychological) layers that touch one another. The conceptual framework of Dere's early works exists in a political area and deals with the socio-political history of Turkey, its multi-culturalism, identity and creating multi-vocality in terms of belonging and cultural democratization. In terms of form, Dere's generally produce installations through which he can reach the whole from smaller parts. Dere use objects, photos, charcoal patterns and object installations in order to create a personal archive (narrative) in a sense. Also, he create objects based upon the social memory and senses and work on video. In his own words, Dere likes to collect "invisible stories" while creating his works. For the artist, a whole is travelling in time composed of small episodes.


49A is a form, a space, and a situation without any given repertory and is founded by Mehmet Dere in Gürçeşme/ Izmir in 2008. 49A has been founded with the pursuit to create a space where the contemporary art can exist in the rhythm of everyday life, can open itself to all over the world, and interact with its environment. 49A, which is the construct of a visible, sustainable and tangible space aims to ensure the accessibility and possibilities of production and to host other people's projects in a playfield. 49A, which is also based in Gurcesme, is a project to develop a cultural exchange and meeting point in an invisible, socially isolated district of Izmir. 49A, which used be a liquor shop, run by the artist's father, mainly focuses on direct relation to the public space of the neighborhood. The street, where 49A is located, is a vivid, busy main street with 24 hours of non-stop traffic.
49A is a form, a space, and a situation without any given repertory and is founded by Mehmet Dere in Gürçeşme/ Izmir in 2008. 49A has been founded with the pursuit to create a space where the contemporary art can exist in the rhythm of everyday life, can open itself to all over the world, and interact with its environment. 49A, which is the construct of a visible, sustainable and tangible space aims to ensure the accessibility and possibilities of production and to host other people's projects in a playfield. 49A, which is also based in Gurcesme, is a project to develop a cultural exchange and meeting point in an invisible, socially isolated district of Izmir. 49A, which used be a liquor shop, run by the artist's father, mainly focuses on direct relation to the public space of the neighborhood. The street, where 49A is located, is a vivid, busy main street with 24 hours of non-stop traffic.

Dere constantly feeds his work in this way in their reckoning with and creating reality. Deriving from Turkey's cultural history, the exhibition consists of a series of ironic and upfront constructions, focusing on a research of local and social memory. While the artist builds his work with the retrieved images of the cultural memory, he poetically includes his own subjectivity to all these captivities. Issues of social injustice, resistance and politics of survival are raised not through the artist's observation as an outsider, but from close range; a perspective precisely constructed by the practices of life. This stance, at times tragicomic, and at times built upon the relationship of patience and suffering, is tackled to be presented to the audience time and again, uninterrupted, and almost prayer like. Looking at Turkey's cultural history, while focused on memory, individual and social identity research, the recent work shows an abstract trend towards poetic lyricism fed by internal reality.

Charcoal works The recent graphite works of Mehmet Dere are based on psychologically fragile relationships. In these works, the artist references concepts such as falsehood, anxiety, ennui as well as an incomprehensible sense of loss, and living in a world of biased truths. The creative inspiration behind Dere's work comes from the tense moment when the answer to the question can mean both yes and no. The period of time the artist spent in the region of Van was an example of such a moment. The Black and White in Dere's works on paper; which corresponds ontologically to the dialectic between life and death, being and nothingness, pencil and paper, container and contained; is actually a metaphysical stance. This feeling is an interior manifestation of a frustrating physical reality
Charcoal works The recent graphite works of Mehmet Dere are based on psychologically fragile relationships. In these works, the artist references concepts such as falsehood, anxiety, ennui as well as an incomprehensible sense of loss, and living in a world of biased truths. The creative inspiration behind Dere's work comes from the tense moment when the answer to the question can mean both yes and no. The period of time the artist spent in the region of Van was an example of such a moment. The Black and White in Dere's works on paper; which corresponds ontologically to the dialectic between life and death, being and nothingness, pencil and paper, container and contained; is actually a metaphysical stance. This feeling is an interior manifestation of a frustrating physical reality

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