Serkan Özkaya
Serkan Ozkaya’s work »Proletarians of all Countries« have become more topical than ever in recent years. Shown for the first time in 2001 in a Socialist Club in Istanbul and subsequently presented in various museums and galleries, it can now be seen in Halle, in a very concrete historic place of a proletarian mass movement. From the windows of the exhibition space, looking beyond an avant-garde flyover, visitors see one of the great visions of the GDR: a socialist metropolis for the working class. A vision that foundered with the mass demonstrations in Leipzig, a mere thirty kilometres from Halle. The visions of today’s mass movements are as flexible as Ozkaya’s foam figures; when masses assemble, certitudes falter. Ozkaya’s work asks an unresolved question in a historic place. Visitors are encouraged to walk over or lay down on the masses, but they bounce back, evidencing their indestructibility, resilience and collective might – like the clouds of plastic floating on the oceans of the world.
