ATLAS, a solo exhibition by Arhun Aksakal

At its centre are light boxes featuring photographs by Timothy O’Sullivan, made during nineteenth-century geographical surveys of the American West commissioned by the US War Department. Titled HELLO AMERICA, the work introduces a further layer of meaning through its reference to J. G. Ballard’s eponymous 1981 science-fiction novel, in which the same continent is revisited in a post-catastrophic future following an energy crisis. Transformed into illuminated black-and-white images, colour anaglyphs and their separated red and blue layers, the historical photographs acquire a renewed spatial presence, bringing into focus their dual status as documents and constructions. In this process, scientific observation, cultural imagination and territorial appropriation emerge as intertwined forces in the making of landscape.

The exhibition brings together a range of material and graphic investigations into the ways landscapes and infrastructures are constructed, perceived and transformed. Hand-drawn interpretations of CAD renderings of tunnel-boring machines shift technical structures towards ornament, while an architectural model developed in response to the earthquakes in southeastern Türkiye reflects on the precarious relationship between shelter and impermanence. Elsewhere, the geological strata of industrially quarried stone emerge in relief, and frottages made in cities along the routes to Rome capture the corporate signage of communication networks. Moving between geological formations, architectural propositions and systems of circulation, these works trace the overlapping temporalities and material conditions that shape the built and natural environment.