Is There a World You Long to See?
One of the works Turkish artist, Ahmet Öğüt, is known for constructing is a “barricade” in art galleries from locally sourced traffic materials. Öğüt was inspired by the anarchist, Mikhail Bakunin, who once proposed to use art from the National Gallery to construct a barricade for protestors during an uprising in Dresden in 1849. Bakunin’s idea implied that the soldiers wouldn’t attack the uprising because they wouldn’t want to destroy the art. While Bakunin’s idea never came to fruition, Öğüt has inverted the original thought and displayed it in a gallery, instead of art being used as a barricade outside of a museum, a barricade of more traditionally scavenged materials is being displayed as art inside the museum.
As art handlers, our job was to help Öğüt’s idea come to life. Two, hollowed-out pick-up trucks were waiting for us in a parking lot of Allen Memorial Art Museum, to be moved into their gallery for Öğüt’s piece. Luckily, the in-house preparators removed the engines and seats, as well as cut the vehicles in half, for ease of transportation ahead of time. With their guidance and our expertise in rigging we carefully lifted the pieces of trucks onto our moving van, transported them to the dock, and wheeled them to the elevator and through to their final spot in the gallery. Once the trucks were in the gallery, we had to tilt one on its side to form the barricade. These heavy items required our expertise and patience to maneuver them through the maze of the museum.
Luckily for us, we routinely move heavy, strange, and unusual objects. Our art installation experts are adept at on the spot problem-solving to make sure everything goes as seamlessly as possible. Bakunin’s Barricade is now on display at The Allen Memorial Museum.
For further information about Ahmet Öğüt:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahmet_Öğüt
https://amam.oberlin.edu/exhibitions-events/exhibitions/2022/07/14/bakunins-barricade-ahmet-t
