DUSSELDORF.- The Istanbul and Berlin based artist Ayşe Erkmen has arranged a further location-specific installation for the large area beneath K21’s glass cupola. She focused on the room’s shell by weaving a textile structure into the roof’s steel construction.

Large coloured panels of material trace the building’s basic lines – rather like an architectural survey. Erkmen’s choice of a course between architectural integration and an autonomous artistic gesture both literally and figuratively places this work in an intermediate zone. The textile structure does not only subtly change the light and the room’s colours, it also puts the dominance of technology into perspective thus creating a new “room climate”.

Apart from a barely four inch high sculpture portraying the artist herself and a ball of fabric into which her name has been woven, the remaining space beneath the cupola has been left empty.

Ayşe Erkmen develops her works according to the concrete situations in specific places. Spatial, formal and also social situations may serve as starting points. Her work is defined by a great economy of means. Instead of adding to a room, she tries to incorporate something which is already there and to reinterpret it. The rooms in all their material and emotional dimensions are not only occasions but also essential participants in her works. The artist is neither dedicated to a particular style nor to specific media. Her works range from architectural and also urban interventions and objects, texts and videos, to acoustic interferences. These works are created for the present, for the specific moment in which they are experienced. Apart from a few exceptions, they disappear after an exhibition. However, some may resurface in a changed form in a different place.

Ayşe Ermen was born in Istanbul in 1949. She works both there and in Berlin. She has shown her works in numerous international museums and galleries. She has also participated in many important exhibitions such as the Biennales in Berlin, Kwangju and Istanbul, the Manifesta and the “Skulpturprojekte Münster”. Currently a retrospective show can be seen at the Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Berlin.

At the same time as the opening of the project for K21, the sculpture Crystal Rock which was created for the roof of the NRW.BANK building will be presented to the public just a few steps away from the museum. A catalogue which is to appear at the end of 2008 will document and comment on both projects.