The exhibition from Istanbul realized for Crazy Space in Santa Monica, Los Angeles in 2003 dealt with two facts concerning the geographical, cultural distance between two metropols. The most profound similarity between these two cities is their past centrifugal positions as peripheral territories in reference to the archetypal centers of Europe and USA and to the contemporary art-market and system axis of Berlin-Paris-London-New York. A further common ground is their post-modern centripetal positions as melting pots of global human movements, i.e. immigrations. Worth mentioning is that both cities are thresholds to the so called Eastern Civilizations, embracing both ends of the vast territory called Asia and the Pacific.

Evidently, this common ground of evaluation is not enough to cover the continental, oceanic and cultural gap that should be overcome by the productions of the artists of Istanbul and Los Angeles. However, even if there is a complication, it should not overshadow the concepts and production of the artists that have exciting, unique and peculiar works within the heterogeneity and distopia of the cultural and social context of Istanbul and Los Angeles. Janet Owen and Max Presneill, in their joint text describe the context of the artists in Los Angeles, in depth. Evidently, re-organizing this show in Istanbul with artists from Los Angeles is the proof of the sustainable communication and mutual empathy in contemporary art.

I have calculated the exhibition in two components: One component is connected to the artists' inherent/original production; the other to the process of creating a work for Istanbul, i.e. for a remote territory.

The inherent/original art production predestined to the gaze of the viewer can be useful in illustrating Lacan's cryptic remarks, or Lacanian theory is applicable to the art productions. Here, i am indicating to the suture concept of Lacan.

Suture is sewing together or joining of two surfaces, specially of a cut or a wound or it is a line where two bones, specially of the skull join in an inmovable joint or it is the line beetween adjoining parts of a plant or an animal, such as clamshells. Simply, the term is being used in film theory and technique, indicating shooting / countershooting during a dialogue of two persons that convinces the viewer to be in the scene. Suture gives the viewer the sense of being in the scene and at the same time disguises the intention of the filmmaker.

For Lacan suture is the connection between imaginary and the symbolic as a hole or as an empty space where the subject is forced to integrate, in order to regain and proclaim its individuality. Exhibiting art works with concealed ideologies and messages provide a kind of suture space where the artist and the viewer confront each other to this occurrence of fulfillment. The viewer is not only the pursued perceiver of the artwork but also directly or indirectly represented in the work. As a perceiving subject he/she is integrated into the artwork by the artist who tries to transpose his gaze into the viewers gaze in order to impose him his own gaze.

Lacan also declares that the suture is the pseudo-identification that exists between the time of terminal arrest of the gesture and the dialectic of identifying haste, which is the moment of seeing. He says: "The two overlap, but they are certainly not identical, since one is initial and the other is terminal. . . This terminal time of the gaze , which completes the gesture, I place strictly in relation to what I later say about the evil eye. The gaze in itself not only terminates the movement - it freezes it. Take those dances I mentioned - they are always punctuated by a series of times of arrest in which the actors pause in a frozen attitude. . . The evil eye is the fascinum, it is that which has the effect of arresting movement, and, literally, of killing life. At the moment the subject stops, suspending his gesture, he is mortified. The anti-life, anti-movement function of this terminal point is the fascinum, and it is precisely one of the dimensions in which the power of the gaze is exercised directly. The moment of seeing can intervene here only as a suture, a conjunction of the imaginary and the symbolic, and it is taken up again in a dialectic, that sort of temporal progress that is called haste, thrust, forward movement, which is concluded in the fascinum. (*)

The reception of the works in a remote and unknown exhibition context might create additional complications and the expected fulfillment may not be achieved so effortlessly. Evidently, the viewer will approach the works created by the artists coming from an "unfamiliar" territory in an ambiguous manner. Whether fascination or enticement, or rejection and denunciation, in many ways, it is the desire of the viewer to be a part of the event, or to perceive the other gaze, the gaze of the artist or of the other viewer.

Moreover, the art work is not completed without the evil eye of the viewer, which is resolved by multifaceted voyeurism, fetishism or curiosity. Whatever the attitude, here, the dialectic of identification will determine the message of the work. And, this is the prevailing risk the artist is taking on himself/herself by being in a foreign/remote territory, a fact that is not all the time properly taken into account by curators.

The title of the exhibition directly refers to the process of developing the work and the exhibition for "foreign" territory and space. Here, my objective and intention is to make this process as natural and inherent as possible. Thinking that the artist as soon as he/she is invited to this exhibition will mentally be engaged in this task and in his imagination the journey will begin. Precisely this fact should build the formal structure of the exhibition, namely thinking on and creating for Istanbul in Los Angeles. This can be a kind of recording the events between Istanbul and Los Angeles, transporting narratives and metaphors from Los Angeles, or a collection of concepts and theories conceived between now and the opening of the exhibition. Here again, the art work produced within this time limit, between reality and imagination, between absence and presence is a kind of suture.

Beral Madra