Post by Sami Aslan

#Tbt Green Mold- Mixer Art Gallery/Istanbul-2019 In the 21st century, art brings along lots of questions and discussions while becoming more popular. In the first quarter of 2017, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Salvator Mundi” was presented for sale at Christie’s Auction House. “Salvator Mundi” is written up in history as the most expensive work ever sold in an auction house, whilst the issue of whether or not it is actually the work of Leonardo Da Vinci is still being discussed by experts. This has resulted in the relationship between artistic value and economic value being questioned once again. The biggest problem here is the explanation of the artistic value of the work in an aesthetic context, because the relationship between the object and the subject in art, unfortunately, carries traces of the formalist roots that have been discussed since Kant. Maurizio Seracini, Professor of Art History at the University of San Diego, and his team discovered some findings on the walls of Hall of the Five Hundred at the Palace of Vecchio, which can also be classifıed as culture archaeology. This research was focused on the wall painting of the Battle of Anghiari by Leonardo Da Vinci and the wall painting of the Battle of Marciano by Vasari. Vasari’s painting was covering Da Vinci’s like a green mold. This analogy – from which the exhibition’s name was derived – describes the work of Leonardo as corroded under the soil. The name of the exhibition project, developed by Sami Aslan, was inspired by the green mold metaphor that was mentioned by Emre Zeytinoğlu in his article about New Popularization in Art. It was a metaphor strikingly used by Walter Benjamin in Passages “Chemical analysis of green mold on a bronze work can help determine the authenticity of that work.” The exhibition is questioning the true work of art, is it the one under the mold, or is it the work that exists together with the mold? The audience will experience archaeological excavation while having a chance to be a researcher and a part of the process of history writing. #painting #art #artgallery #exhibition #culture #project #contemporary