Softly But Firmly

Ahmet Ögüt, one of Turkey’s influential young artists, brings the diversity of specific local determinations, which appear to take place in a particular temporal and spatial relationship, to his work. Ögüt’s art, and its patent subjectivism, is anchored in the significant role that the media plays in constructing and manipulating reality. As result, he uses the images of events that appear in the daily digestive methodologies such as newspapers and television, recapturing those images in a totally different frame.

In Somebody Else’s Car (20 pieces photo series), Ögüt transforms two found cars using readymade paper cut outs. Without requesting the owners’ permission he clads the first all in yellow and with the final addition of a boxed sign on the roof, the car adopts its new identity as a standard İstanbul taxi. On the flanks of the second car he applies graphics and on the roof a blue, white and red emergency siren and again, with remarkable dexterity and finesse, the originally plain white car is transformed into a police car. Öğüt accomplishes each makeover as if performing an act of vandalism and yet his actions result in no more damage than the owners’ confusion and likely amazement on returning to their vehicles.
Light Armoured is a short animation that shows a camouflaged Land Rover being hit by small stones thrown by an unknown source. It is obvious that this vehicle belongs to the army and yet the attack is pathetic, almost comical, as the stones bounce off its armour without causing damage, or miss altogether.
Played on a constant loop, the work presents a symbol of what is happening and what will, unfortunately keep on happening in the world. It is both an anti-war gesture, against all camouflaged and normalized tools, which harm humanity and world peace, as well as a comment on the futility of combat.
The video Death Kit Train shows an ordinary, simple activity in an extraordinary slow manner in detail. A red car comes into the frame slowly. At first everything seems to be in order and apparently there is nothing unusual going on. However, after a few seconds of time the viewers come to be aware of the fact that the car is not moving on its own and that actually there are people pushing it strenuously. Eventually, in the last frame, viewers realize that people are pushing each other.
For the wall painting the artist used the image of a vehicle with a machine gun on the top. The car in question is a white Renault 12, once widely used by civilian police officers in the rural areas back in 90s and thus represents a symptom connecting the legacy of the militarism of the 90s and the spare-parts economy. A car is once again used in Short Circuit. In this video piece,Ögüt shows as a street on the outskirts of a town that is lit only by a weak street light and occasionally by the lights of cars passing by. A viewer is able to discover what is going on in the dark only sporadically with the help of the car lights; or rather - the artist forces the viewer to discover it. Rather than the running down of a child by a car, the process and the production of speculation about what is going on in the dark is emphasized.These speculations point to our subjective constructions about everything that could happen in a street at night.