Green Art Gallery announces Balloons on the Sea, Hale Tengerʼs first solo exhibition at the Gallery. Opening on March 14th 2011 and on view until April 28th, the exhibition will introduce Tengerʼs new 7 channel video installation, entitled Balloons on the Sea, with music composed by her long-time audio collaborator Serdar Ateşer.

Balloons on the Sea takes its subject directly from a popular pastime practiced along the Bosphorus in Istanbul and along the coastlines of Turkey; a game of shooting at balloons laid on the sea. A very radiant visual impact is created by a string of colorful balloons and their reflections on the sea, as they keep floating from side to side with the waves and the wind. In her installation Tenger reverses this image and thus fabricates an ambiguity where reflections become beings and beings become reflections. It is as if the reality is no more the reality that we take for granted. The continual floating of balloons in the image is still lyrical but there is an accompanying uncanny feeling to it. This hinted feeling finds its reason as the viewer crosses to the other side of the space where the balloons are randomly blown up, yet surprisingly every single one of them comes back to life in an almost ghostly manner. A tension is built up with the expectancy of a burst yet not knowing which one and when it will. This subtle atmosphere leaves the viewer in between two worlds: while one charmingly invites to indulge oneself in the joyful reverberations of the gently floating balloons, the other almost as soft as a whisper brings the spectral side of their existence into focus.

Similar to some of her earlier work, Balloons on the Sea bears a dominant dreamlike aspect that contains references to childhood and is based on the reflections of various psychological conditions. In this work the artist creates a fairy-like atmosphere surrounding the viewer, thus pulling the viewer to the field of dreams, the subconscious, the desires and fears that lie in the depth of collective memory.

Born in Izmir in 1960, Hale Tenger is a multimedia artist whose works cut across conventional boundaries. Her large scale environments, video installations as well as objects and video works explore the dichotomy between nature and culture and consider the power relations and the importance of observation.