Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister: Orhan Pamuk. Consolation of Objects

Orhan Pamuk. The Consolation of Objects

Based on its own collections, the SKD would like to deepen knowledge about Turkey's past and present through artistic approaches and is planning a multi-year programme series on Turkish art and culture. Orhan Pamuk, one of the most important contemporary novelists and the first Turkish author to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature, needs no special introduction as a writer. This exhibition kicks off the series and focuses on a perhaps lesser-known side of Pamuk's creativity - his work as a visual artist.

Exhibition Site Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister

DATES 06/10/2023—07/04/2024

Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge | Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (6.10.2023—7.4.2024)

Orhan Pamuk usually tells his stories focusing on objects. Museum of Innocence is one of his most prominent projects of this kind. In the novel published in 2008, an upper-middle class İstanbul man falls in love so dramatically with his beloved cousin, and he collects everything she touches, everything that they enjoyed together in happier times. When their love affair ends in tragedy Kemal creates a museum that exhibits thousands of objects reminding him of Füsun. At the same time, this collection evokes the texture of daily life in Istanbul between 1950’s and 2000’s.

So does the real museum with the same name opened in 2012 in backstreet of central Istanbul. Being filled with Pamuk’s poetic three-dimensional collages stylized as curiosity cabinets, it reconstructs the life of the fictional lovers and the elusive atmoshere of the time in a physical reality of an old Istanbul mansion. The logic and sequence of it’s display correspond to the chapters and chapter headings of the novel. In its turn, the book can also be read as an annotated catalog of the museum.

Innenraum mit Vitrinen — **Ausstellungsansicht "Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge"**

**Ausstellungsansicht "Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge"**

**Detail "Sex im Büro" in der Ausstellung "Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge"**

viele kleine Fotos schweben in einer Vitrine — **Detail "Auf die Lippen küssen" in der Ausstellung "Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge"**

Vitrine mit Engel und Schrift — **Detail "Rilke und die Engel im Islam" in der Ausstellung "Orhan Pamuk. Der Trost der Dinge"**

The second part of the exhibition features Pamuk's all-new artworks, created especially for the project in the style of his Istanbul installations. The new works tell stories inspired by objects from the Dresden museum's collections, interwoven with associations from many of Pamuk's other novels. Reflecting on the special kind of consolation that objects can give us, Pamuk continues to develop the themes he has been exploring for many years: cultural change, Occidentalism and Orientalism, the immanent nature of collecting, fiction, and memory, and even the role of museums in the modern world.

Inspired by the collections of the Dresden Museum Association, he is further developing the style of his Istanbul presentation in an installation-like manner and will show works that were created especially for the exhibition. The project will also show another dimension of Orhan Pamuk's visual oeuvre - his photographs, including works that have never been published before. In 2024, further stops of the exhibition are planned at Lenbachhaus in Munich and DOX in Prague.