Second Nature #64, 2022
Kaya & Blank is a US-based Turkish-German artist duo whose work explores the ways in which humans shape and inhabit the world. Their research heavy approach is deeply rooted in documentary practices. However, by pushing the boundaries of how reality can be depicted, they transcend the domain of representation and create completely independent, often hyperreal visual worlds. As a result, the boundaries between reality and fiction in their work become blurred. Their projects often focus on traces of economic infrastructures and how neoliberal politics determine the ways we live.
Thus, examining politics in built environments and how man’s dominance over nature finds its manifestation in everyday architecture has been an important part of their practice in recent years. In their work, they erase the physical distance in between existing structures and creates dense compilations of industrial fragments to construct new landscapes that look both alien and familiar at the same time. By framing their subjects almost exclusively at night, they aim to accentuate the artificial and uncanny qualities of contemporary urban environments and human settlements. This visual strategy often has the effect that the documentary parts of the works are interpreted by viewers as computer-generated images.
In exhibitions they turn their research and discoveries into multi layered installations. Photographs and videos are frequently suplemented by texts, objects and performative interventions. Their work often has a direct material connection to the topics depicted in their videos and photographs, for example the found objects from the series Second Nature or the bitumen prints from the body of work Crude Aesthetics. By creating these complex, spatial compilations they offer spectators an immersive experience that in equal measures show conceptual depth as well as a rigorus formal execution.
Thus, examining politics in built environments and how man’s dominance over nature finds its manifestation in everyday architecture has been an important part of their practice in recent years. In their work, they erase the physical distance in between existing structures and creates dense compilations of industrial fragments to construct new landscapes that look both alien and familiar at the same time. By framing their subjects almost exclusively at night, they aim to accentuate the artificial and uncanny qualities of contemporary urban environments and human settlements. This visual strategy often has the effect that the documentary parts of the works are interpreted by viewers as computer-generated images.
In exhibitions they turn their research and discoveries into multi layered installations. Photographs and videos are frequently suplemented by texts, objects and performative interventions. Their work often has a direct material connection to the topics depicted in their videos and photographs, for example the found objects from the series Second Nature or the bitumen prints from the body of work Crude Aesthetics. By creating these complex, spatial compilations they offer spectators an immersive experience that in equal measures show conceptual depth as well as a rigorus formal execution.