Remembering Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin
Hüseyin B. Alptekin from InEnArt on Vimeo.
Hüseyin Bahri Alptekin left us five years ago and that is the only action we’ll never forgive him.
By remembering Hüseyin as a friend and artist there are thousands of valuable moments coming to my mind.
I loved his work for the Istanbul Biennial 2005. He had convinced the Monsignore of the St. Marco Cathedral in Venice to send Replicas of the Quadriga to Istanbul. They had been stolen by the Venetians during the Forth Crusade (1202-1204).
They were part of the Hippodrom in the old part of the city of Konstantinopolis and are probably of Roman origin. The robbery was part of one of the bloodiest invasions of a Capital with no mercy for the Christian population or their toppled head of state.
Hüseyin produced tiles with Horse motives for the show and was searching for a sponsor out of the the circle of the Turkish tile-industry. I am not sure if he was successful with this. His biggest problem was the lack of interest of collectors for his art during his lifetime.
It is fanatstic, that the MoMa made the work “H-Fact: Hospitality/Hostility” part of its collection last year. The evaluation of Hüseyins work he really deserved so much. Salt Istanbul did a wonderful retrospective in 2009 with the title: “I am not a studio artist”. No Hüseyin really wasn’t.
R.i.P. Love and sunshine for his wife Camilla und his son Marino.
