KETELEER GALLERY is pleased to present its first solo exhibition with German Artist Nasan Tur.

Since the 1990s, Turkish-German artist Nasan Tur (°1974, Offenbach, Germany. Lives and works in Berlin, Germany) has created quite a stir with his daring performances. In 1998, he sang about love and humanity, from a spire, in different languages, five times a day and for the whole city of Offenbach. Not much later he presented playful "performances" in the streets. From making somersaults in public places in different cities to lying dead still in a puddle in the middle of a street. The responses were mixed. Sometimes passers-by experienced these acts as absurd, while elsewhere they were seen as radical, controversial political statements.

Nasan Tur grew up in a non-political environment. In the mid-sixties, his parents moved – mainly for economic reasons, not as political refugees – from a small village in the Turkish mountains to Germany. As 'guests' in Germany, they had no right to call into question the political structure in which they lived. They shared this apolitical attitude with quite a few other 'guest worker' families. This environment informed the childhood experience of Tur, as well as the way he looked at himself in society. At the beginning of his artistic career, he saw himself more as a sociologist than as an artist. The core of his work still consists of observation, analysis and reproduction. Every work is politically charged and highly topical. In this way, he places himself within a tradition of artists who try to engage with, and give expression to, the daily deluge of depressing reports in the media, even if they are aware that their own position is too weak to actually change anything.