Lot 23: - Hale Tenger , B. 1960 Invainers of the Lost Ark II bronze, screw conveyor, iron and sump oil

bronze, screw conveyor, iron and sump oil

measurements note 150 by 32 by 32cm.; 59 1/8 by 12 5/8 by 12 5/8 in.

Vasif Kortun, Mission Impossible, Istanbul 1998, p. 19, illustrated in colour
Ali Artun and Haldun Dostoglu, Muzekitap: 1950-2000 Türkiye'de Çagdas Sanat, Istanbul 1999, p. 583, illustrated in colour

Executed in 1992, this work is accompanied by installation instructions provided by the artist.
In Conversation with Hale Tenger... As a multi-media artist your work has traversed many art forms, how have these various mediums affected the relationship between the subject matter and the viewer? My career began in the early 1990s and I first started to work with freestanding objects and sculptures, and shortly moved onto producing installations. I found myself very interested in constructing spaces and atmospheres with tension, which would create questions in the mind of the viewer. I have always been concerned with social and political issues and have attempted to manifest these within my work. How have you used readymade objects to convey your political views? In the work Invainers of the Lost Ark ll, a play on the popular adventure Hollywood movie "Raiders of the Lost Ark," I used children's (boys') He-Man thumb wrestler figures made from cast brass. These figures were arranged so that they appear to be sliding down into a void and empty space. In the piece there was this wish for me to get rid of the symbolic meaning of whatever the figures were standing for, whether it be power, violence or aggressive masculinity, I wanted to banish the negative charge and send it sliding on a downwards spiral. Would you say that art imitates life in your practice? Living in this geography you cannot separate yourself from the issues surrounding you. Turkey is a country on the cusp of the East and West and does not belong to either region entirely, but Turkey does have similar histories with the East in terms of political tensions. Also my family lived in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon so I had some personal ties to the Middle East. Sotheby's is indebted to Sara Raza and ArtAsiaPacific for the permission to reproduce this interview transcript.