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  Galerie
in der Walpenreute, Stuttgart/Germany 2003 3/3 |
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Balance
It sits between the smiling photographs, harmonious with his
surroundings. Like a normal thing, it smiles and tries to balance the
lightness of the moon -yes, now it’s light- in its embrace. The Sun
weighs it, let its heaviness go, just like the Moon lets its lightness
go to it... However, it’s not possible to tell which balances which.
Each of Cem Sağbil’s small bronze sculptures seem to have a story like
this. It’s apparent that each of them has a different world but their
purpose is the same:
Forming a balance between the Sun and the Moon, the West and the East.
Would you like to know why?
We have to go a long way back in history to understand the reason. Back
to the very beginning of the story: the mythology. The basis of the
civilizations, the power, the human and the love. Then we see Apollon,
the symbol of Western philosophy and Dionysos the symbol of the Eastern
philosophy. Apollon is the son of Leto and Zeus, the God of medicine,
art, poetry, sports and great loves. And Dionysos is the son of Moon
Goddess Semele and Zeus, the God of nature (the relationship between
human and nature), wine, music and amusement. Cem Sağbil has chosen
Apollon for the West in his expressions. But his East comes to life in
semi human-semi bull Minotauros. The bull was sent to King Minos by
Poseidon. Minos had to sacrifice the bull but he didn’t. So he was
damned; his wife Pasiphae had a relationship with the bull and
Minotauros was born.
Cem Sağbil makes his wooden and bronze sculptures, earthenware jars and
paintings by the concept which is related with the duet between the West
and the East and Apollon and Minotauros. Now, this duet concludes with
the human being going in between. The human builds up the balance in the
whole that’s being tried to be created. He’s sometimes strong, sometimes
wasting power, sometimes incompetent and fragile. But whatever happens,
human is intelligent and good.
Each of them has a different story. Each of them tries to balance the
differences created by the civilizations today by feeding from the lives
in the past / mythology.
One of them tries to reach the hill (the top of the Moon) by pushing a
huge rock (the Sun) just like Sisyphos. The work Sisyphos does is
pointless and helpless but he is in charge of doing it forever. He can’t
even hope that this terrible torture will end one day. Sisyphos is a
hopeless hero but human is a hero because he’s conscious.*
This is the way Albert Camus tells Sisyphos in his “Le Mythe de Sisyphe”
titled essay. Camus claims that Sisyphos enjoys this torture in spite of
everything and with the enjoyment that comes from the conscious, he
could reach a kind of happiness born from hopelessness. Camus symbolizes
Sisyphos as a human hero who was able to defeat meaninglessness with the
power of intelligence and conscious. Although the Gods punish him, they
can’t really daunt him.
Human is not defeated in spite of his fragility. He keeps his will to
live. He takes the Sun on his arm and the Moon onto the other -keeping
the answer that which is heavier and which is lighter to himself- than
goes on his way...
Raife Polat
* Resource: The Dictionary of Mythology, Azra Erhat, Remzi Bookstore,
1989
Translation: Aslı Onat |
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