cevdet erek - them and us

Cevdet Erek’s them and us , his second solo exhibition at neugerriemschneider, presents recent stadium-like sculptural constructs as microcosms of societal dynamics, expanding his ongoing exploration of the sonic potential of architecture, and the architectural potential of sound. With the soccer arena as a paradigm of this negotiation, Erek’s large-scale sonic installation of compressed earth blocks and wall-mounted works visualize otherness, employing natural dyes and gold leaf to demarcate the “away” corners of each - zones to which visiting crowds are relegated. Cleared of their fans, void of sporting symbols, banners, regalia or performed spectacle, the works become suspended in time, existing in equal measure as models of antiquity and of the modern world. Typifying and questioning in-group, proto-ancestral bonds, they come to function as distilled invocations of the unions, divisions and allegiances that pervade our present. A driving, primeval multichannel soundtrack suffuses the exhibition, its percussive, enrapturing rhythms heightening this inquiry and standing in for the pulses of a hypothetical, fervent public. The exhibition’s centerpiece, Away Terrace (Us and Them) - Berlin (2026), first realized for the 13th Liverpool Biennial in 2025, sees earth blocks rise in stacked tiers. For its new iteration in Berlin, the work’s rows of blocks, composed of repurposed soil dug from local construction sites, are elemental in presence, descending in terraces toward a dirt playfield. With the pitch’s game absent, associations and projections accrue unhindered - those of a colosseum, an arena or a hippodrome, an archeological find at once excavated out of the past and culled from the present - continuing Erek’s probe of historical narratives and built relics. At the installation’s corner, a tinted segment denotes the away team’s sanctioned spectator section, its bounds dictated at will by a speculative home team. This spuriously traced cluster, its full-scale equivalent often equipped with limited fittings and facilities, here exceeds its socio-athletic context to take on broader political and economic analogs. Exclusive and exclusionary, this separation sees parallel in Erek’s structure as a whole and how its properties dictate behavior: Unable to be entered, the work explicitly denies immersion. Remaining physically inaccessible, it renders a viewer as a third-person observer. The work’s soundtrack heightens this notion, emanating from loudspeakers embedded throughout the assembly’s grandstands. Each speaker emitting a distinct rhythmic layer, movement from one to the next is encouraged, inviting a visitor to partake in the same mobility denied to those invoked by the work’s away corner. Apprehended separately as one rounds Erek’s stadium at close range, the tracks meld to a unified arrangement when heard at distance, sharing a musical idiom, colliding with and pushing against one another, refracting off of their gallery surroundings to become entwined. Surrounding Erek’s central installation are his Away Terrace works (2024 and 2025). Comprised of four wooden profiles joined at their corners - scaled reflections of his earth-block composition - the sculptures reference stadiums in Istanbul, depicting changes witnessed firsthand by the artist, and in Liverpool, their asymmetrical designs occupied in reality by rival clubs. Each assume a form that suggests a picture frame. Their depth and visual weight become allusions to the highly ornamented surrounds of centuries past, while their geometric structure becomes a pared-down interpretation of these embellishments. Applications of gold leaf span various lengths of the works, taking on new positions or disappearing entirely to indicate, like their analog’s dyed corner, similar away enclosures - marks of exclusion, separation and displacement. Together, Erek’s engagements highlight his ongoing concern with how difference is represented, at once casting critical analysis upon this split and lending consideration to the ways in which shared affinity becomes connection. In this vein, them and us , its title brought together by a conjunction evoking a collaborative spirit, is an exhibition that prompts understandings of space as both shared and oppositional. This fall, SculptureCenter in New York hosts Americas , a solo exhibition of new work by Erek (September 19 - December 28). Also in September, Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt opens Not All Travellers Walk Roads—Of Humanity as Practice (September 12 - December 6). Geographically and spatially translating last year’s 36th Bienal de São Paulo, the institution presents Erek’s landmark sound installation and graphic intervention Rampa rítmica (Rhythmic Ramp) (2025), commissioned for the original presentation. The work of Cevdet Erek (b. 1974) has been the subject of international solo exhibitions at Secession, Vienna (2025); Hamburger Bahnhof – Museum für Gegenwart, Berlin (2019); Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago (2019); Museum of Contemporary Art, Antwerp (2018); Museo Universitario Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City (2017); Pavilion of Turkey, 57th Venice Biennale, Venice (2017); Spike Island Artspace, Bristol (2014); and Kunsthalle Basel, Basel (2012). He has also taken part in the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, São Paulo (2025); the 13th Liverpool Biennial, Liverpool (2025); Manifesta 14, Pristina (2022); the 7th Singapore Biennale, Singapore (2022); the 7th Ruhrtriennale, Bochum (2019); the 11th Shanghai Biennale, Shanghai (2016); the 20th Biennale of Sydney, Sydney (2016); the 14th Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul (2015); the 5th Marrakech Biennale, Marrakesh (2014); Sharjah Biennial 11, Sharjah (2013); the 7th Asia Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane (2012); and dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel (2012). Erek lives and works in Istanbul. For further information, please contact: mail@neugerriemschneider.com.