Insanely Joyful
:mentalKLINIK is a Brussels-based artist duo from Istanbul composed of Yasemin Baydar & Birol Demir who began their collaborative practice in 1998. :mentalKLINIK strides with undisguised dexterity through the invisible political strategies and social dynamics with ultra-contemporary devices of apparent lightness. Like a discoball, mentalKLINIK shows are a selection of their multifaceted approach to their universe. Resisting the limitations of a single vocabulary or style, their world is a playful one full of hedonistic appeal, which can be experienced as festive and glamorous but also surprising, as one approaches and, with a closer view, discovers an underlying violence suggestive of a bad trip after-party or a creepy beginning of the end.
Their works shift between emotional and robotic attitudes. The artist duo reclaim the sparkling and authoritative visual language of the media and night spheres in a climate of sensory hyperstimulation created by multiple neons, slogans, light beams, mirror balls, and confetti, while playing with our universal attraction to glittering, seductive objects. It is all the work of encryption to which they summon us, between the true and the false, the artificial and the superficial, as if everything were a case of falsification.
