Murat Akagündüz’s exhibition Vertigo brings together 13 paintings from the “Kaf” series. In this new series the artist depicts some of world’s highest mountain peaks as seen on Google Earth. How is the act of painting transformed once we rely upon the mediation of digital data to depict an actual physical landscape? The exhibition thus refers to the ontological consequences of such digital mediation in our relationship to the Earth and its implications in terms of vision and image production. While the series, named after the Kaf Mountain, emphasises a mythological narrative, each painting in the “Kaf” series takes its title from the latitude and longitude values defining the position of the images on Google Earth. Akagündüz offers us views over the peaks of the Alpide Belt, spreading across three continents, and provides us with the coordinates of the Kaf Mountains at the same time.
Starting with concepts such as “performative, time, light, meditation, vertigo” in Akagündüz’s “Kaf” series, we designed the poster using an optical illusion. The visibility of the title “Vertigo” changes according to parameters like distance, angle, lighting, and duration, just as the viewing experience of the paintings in the “Kaf” series does.
