Artists: Nicola Turner - Edward Bekkerman

THE SONG OF PSYCHE: Nicola Turner, Edward Bekkerman

The Song of Psyche: Corners of a Soul's Otherworlds steps into a realm where the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary, and the familiar takes on an otherworldly allure. As the chill of winter looms, the atmosphere becomes charged with an eerie, fairy-tale-like energy, an anticipation that transcends the mundane. During this prelude to the winter holiday season, we invite you to delve into the human condition's mysterious, uncanny, and enchanting aspects. The exhibition presents the dialogue of seemingly opposite, albeit intuitional, dreamscapes. The juxtaposition of difference, however, is a key to the uncharted territories of imagination, where the lines between reality and fantasy blur.

Psychology is the science of the soul; however, the definition of its very core subject remains somewhat mysterious. What constitutes our consciousness, awareness, and feelings — is the fundamental question of ontology, phenomenology and neuroscience. Artistic responses tap into the areas of our cognition with aesthetic take, presenting us with the sensation of thinking through intuitive emotional response. Is the appearance constituting its realness? Is the very fact of rationalisation of the problem of existence a sufficient condition for legitimisation of our reality? Or are we and the surrounding mere projectiles of neurons and our brain as an arch-complex mysterious computing machine?

Edward Bekkerman's colourful paintings manifest the bright complexity of the kaleidoscopic mind. Consisting of rich colour schemes, the countless swirls blend and dissipate one another as the thoughts in restlessly curious minds. "All that is solid melts into air" — the artist said once in an interview. Just as the material solids are temporary, so are the solids of the thoughts and concepts. The swirl and consecrated circles are sacred symbols in many pre-historical cultures. Archaeologists presume that spirals in the Minoan civilisation, for example, could have been the most fundamental depiction of the life span. The metaphysical depth of its essence counterweights the symbol's simplicity — before time became a line, clearly outlining the border between past, present and future, the "spiral" or "circular" time presented life as a conscious pathway from the beginning to the beginning. The linear timeline of nowness shows the end of the line as a tragic cliff, a rapturous lot, which disrupts the gift of life and sends the living away to the dark, unwanted depths of the unknown land of death. Bekkerman's bright canvases hint at the ethereal worlds beyond the visible by our retinas, the reality which might not be graspable by the limited instruments of our phenomenological perception. In the spirit of Robert Smithson's “Spiral Jetty” or Jackson Pollock’s engagement with the unspeakable in mind, the artist’s language continues the complex tradition and legacy of abstraction, walking on the infinitely sharp line between heresy and sanctity.

Nicola Turner's sculptures, reminiscent of Louise Bourgeois's oeuvre, can appear to the viewer as something dreadful. Voluminous, dark and somewhat intimidating, they occupy furniture, climb the walls, linger on the floor, and block the doorways. They are like the thoughts always with us, beacons of the perception — as indicators of possibility or opportunity and danger or fear. The sculptures evoke the chill sensation of bodily presence without the potential to identify them as spirits from the Ghibli Studio universe or props from the play directed by Tim Burton. The taxonomy is thrown into confusion: the creatures are ageless, genderless, and a-aesthetic (as not identifiable as beautiful or ugly). Despite that, their presence is strikingly "real." Turner's sculptural practice throws the perception and definition of "being," the core question of ontology, in the state of stasis — as if she suspends the possibility of categorisation. This gesture opens the potential for a radical democracy of bodies — something that Antonin Artaud, the theorist of radical theatre, dreamed about as a tool of ultimate emancipation for the human soul. The sculptures can appear as cocoons ready to metamorphose into something new: forms of life, ideas, or a whole new being. They open a door for fantasy, and what seems macabre in the beginning turns somewhat familiar and close as a horizon for possibility within the reach of one's imagination.

Our minds are realms where the ordinary transforms into the extraordinary, and the mundane takes on an otherworldly allure. During this prelude to the winter holiday season, we invite you to delve into the human condition's mysterious, uncanny, and enchanting aspects. The duo exhibition of Nicola Turner and Edward Bekkerman presents the dialogue of seemingly opposite, albeit intuitional, dreamscapes. As the chill of winter looms, the atmosphere becomes charged with an eerie, fairy-tale-like energy, an anticipation that transcends the mundane. The juxtaposition of difference, however, is a key to the the uncharted territories of imagination, where the lines between reality and fantasy blur.

by Denis Maksimov-Gupta