In 2021, while Viron Erol Vert spent six months at Mülheim’s Makroscope – Zentrum für Kunst und Technik (Centre for Art and Technology) as part of the artist-in-residence programme Zu Gast bei Urbane Künste Ruhr, he noticed the empty kiosk on a nearby street corner. Back then, the idea already came to transform the deserted little booth into a mobile-like sculpture. For Ruhr Ding: Schlaf, the artist has now expanded the original architectural structure to include modules; and through shapes, colours, textures, and reflections, he engenders a place for encounter, daydreaming, and ephemeral moments between everyday life and fantasy. In terms of both, form and content, he refers here to the original function and etymology of the kiosk, a term derived from the Persian word kūšk (pavilion, garden house), which found its way into moern Turkish as köşk (Castle, House of Divans).
While growing up, Viron Erol Vert (b. 1975) moved between northern Germany, Istanbul, and Athens. He now lives and works in Berlin and the Mediterranean region. In his artistic practice, the artist examines and challenges – against the backdrop of his own personal intercultural heritage – identity constructions and different aspects and perspectives of the self and the other. In works distinguished by a state and atmosphere of being ‘in between’, he interweaves various cultures, materials, languages, forms of expression, and even attitudes about life to spawn a hybrid, correlative identity.
- Address
Ehem. Kiosk am Rathausplatz
Friedrich-Ebert-Straße 56
45468 Mülheim an der Ruhr