Ahmet Gunestekin. Million Stone

Curated by Matthew Drutt, well-known American editor, writer, and independent curator, and commissioned by one the world’s five most influential galleries – the Marlborough Gallery – this exhibition presents eight recent new works by Güneştekin, works capable of evoking atavic symbolisms and bring powerful messages in a display that will surely capture people’s attention. 
With the almost four meters in black marble sculpture Million Stone, Güneştekin denies the phallus, symbolic element at the cultural basis of Million Stone, and indicates the degenderalization. Just positioned in front of this, the three works inspired by the legend of Lilith, aim to attribute a meaning of rejection and opposition of the masculine power. Woman and man are together on an equal basis, sharing the same rights. 
Particular attention is also given to the history of Istanbul: in order to reveal the several layers of names, the workKostantiniyye,hugesculpture consisting of thirteen-letters of the word itself,reunites all these former names, which with the monuments of the city have accumulated in the cultural memory for centuries; Byzantion, Byzantium, New Rome, Constantinople, Constantinopolis, Dersaadet, Islambol, Asitane, Dar-ul-Hilafet. It encourages the comprehension of the history within the context of power relations, rather than within a historicist context. By emphasizing that the past is a phenomenon constructed in the present, it reunites the traces left in the collective memory in a timeless present. The aim is to constitute a threshold that enables one to question the nature of power relations.
The Holy Encounter series, attempts to create common concepts and values. It expresses the possibility of developing an equal point of view for different religions.
Following the extraordinary success of “Momentum of Memory” (Ahmet Güneştekin’s first solo exhibition in Italy which Massimiliano Gioni himself praised as one of the ten must-see shows of the last Biennale), the artist’s current project voices the degenderalization and the mystical soul of his country, revealing stories, power relations and legends trespassing geographical borders testifying to the common roots of different cultures.

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