Letter to a Friend

“I hope that (lithography) will soon spread all over the world,
bring mankind diverse uses through many excellent products and be used
for their greater refinement, but never be misused for an evil purpose.
May the Almighty give this! Then the hour should be blessed in which I invented it!”
- Alois Senefelder, 1818 

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Derived from the “Eureka!” moments that shape our environment, senses, and ideas; the exhibition titled “Letter to a Friend” brings together artists with distinct artistic practices with an authentic production method away from their own background. Even though each work in which the theoretical and creative essence of the artist has meshed together with the technical analysis of the master printer considers the subject matters prevalent in their own practices such as space, nature, identity, memory, and time; they stand detached from one another through their distinct techniques and contexts while remaining arrayed on the 160-million-year-old stones one after the other as layers.

Reflecting on the idea of the stone-printing found by the Bavarian playwright Alois Senefelder through sheer accident and the dissemination of its voice throughout generations, movements, and realms, its artisanal work, the boundlessness of its technique, and its proneness to accidents and happenstances throughout the process of lithography, as well as the role of nature in this collaborative dynamic between the artist and the master printer, the exhibition titled “Letter to a Friend”, is a letter of thanks to Alois who is turning 250 on the 6th of November.
 

- Yazın Öztürk