FW Spotlight: Top Submissions of January

Perception is an unstable process, always hovering between what we believe to be real and what slips beyond our grasp. Objects and environments that initially seem familiar become distorted, taking on unexpected nuances that expose the fragility of our presumed knowledge. In this setting, the body wavers between tangible presence and near absence, tested by images that appear and vanish. Light, whether natural or from a screen, offers no reliable point of reference; instead, it disrupts our view: it highlights certain details, obscures others, and compels us to constantly reassess what we think we see. Faced with these works, it becomes clear how easily perception can fracture and just how much uncertainty underpins our interpretation of reality.

This month, we traverse a landscape of illusions, fragmented narratives, and liminal spaces, where vision deceives, memory dissolves, and control flickers in and out of grasp. Whether through the deceptive shimmer of a desert mirage, the ghostly presence of lost words, or the encoded rhythms of surveillance, these exhibitions question our ability to truly see, to know, and to inhabit the world with certainty.

As part of this journey, we have selected three submissions that stood out this month: works that left a lasting impression on us for their depth, innovation, and resonance. These pieces challenge perception, blur the boundaries between reality and fiction, and invite us to rethink how we engage with the visible and the unseen.

In Bursa, Burak Kabadayı fractures the line between what is visible and what is known, constructing an environment where mirages and reflections destabilize our perception of reality. At La Centrale, Andréa Spartà lingers in the half-light of memory, where found objects and forgotten phrases gesture toward histories both personal and collective. In Lecce, Soil Thornton lays bare the mechanics of control, where light itself is harnessed, fragmented, and mirrored in a perpetual cycle of screening and scrutiny.

Each of these artists confronts us with the limits of our own perceptual habits, offering spaces where vision fails, where presence becomes spectral, and where control is revealed as a flickering construct, both omnipresent and elusive.

Burak Kabadayı, “Whether it’s a desert or not is irrelevant”

IMALAT-HANE, Bursa (02.11.2024－11.01.2025)

In Kabadayı’s installation, perception becomes a mirage, a site where meaning shimmers, refracts, and ultimately evades our grasp. The interplay between glass and desert is not accidental; both are born of sand, yet one solidifies into transparency while the other swallows light in infinite grains. The three new video works here feel like heatwaves rippling across the horizon, unsettling the viewer’s sense of orientation.

The exhibition is not just about what is seen but about the act of seeing itself, the ways in which our gaze is trained by habit, expectation, and illusion. At times, reflections and distortions make it impossible to discern where the screen ends and where space begins, creating a cognitive estrangement that reveals the precariousness of perception. The desert, then, is not merely a place but a condition: a space where knowledge falters, where certainty erodes like sand slipping through fingers.

Kabadayı’s work asks us to reconsider what it means to know, to acknowledge that all knowledge is contingent, site-specific, and filtered through the medium of our own embodiment. In doing so, it turns the viewer into both wanderer and mirage, caught in the shimmering tension between presence and dissolution.