Ayse Erkmen: One Two Three

Ayse Erkmen's arrival on the world stage of art has come as no surprise, though still with actions of great conceptual strength. The artist, who studied classical sculpture in Istanbul in the early 1970s and now lives both there and in Berlin, caused a worldwide sensation with her helicopter flight around M nster Cathedral as part of SkulpturProjekte 1997--tethered to the helicopter was a sculpture damaged in World War II--and again twenty years later with her work "On Water," also created for SkulpturProjekte, that allowed visitors to walk on water in the harbor basin in M nster. The contrast between East and West, however, is of little artistic relevance to her, since she tends to examine "what the place and the situation demand (of her)." Over five decades, an oeuvre rooted in sculpture and characterized by sharpness of thought, sensuality, and formal consistency has been created, whereby a variety of concepts, forms, media, and materials intersect on a number of different levels. The book provides a brilliant overview of this artistic development, with additional insights revealed by curator Rita T uber's highly instructive text.