Günbike Erdemir
Love’s Executioner16 April—09 June 2023
Opening: 15 April, h.18
Love’s Executioner is the first solo exhibition by Günbike Erdemir and outcome of a research residency realized in Turin during the fall 2022 in partnership with Morpho.
Love’s Executioner presents a new body of works that arose from Erdemir’s exploration of the symbology and the urban tales related to the city of Turin and its architecture.
In her practice, drawings and sculptures reframe narratives drawn from mythology, tales and history into contemporary and intimate settings, addressing themes such as death, desire, queerness, fertility.
A dark and demonic imagery germinates from elements and settings encountered in the streets and buildings of the city.
Death and eroticism, voyeurism and power are experienced through the eyes of three recurrent characters: an executioner, a ghost and a lurker. Their ambiguous natures, hung in between relentless urges and tender devotion, find themselves into otherness, their object of desire, to reconstruct their fragmented being.
Sacredness and perversion pervade the space. Two lovers embracing each other are framed in what could be either an altar or a gallows: a memento of human finitude and of our need for relation.
Outside, a young wisteria blossoms from a ceramic vase which depicts the mystical figures that inhabit these narratives of death and desire.
What does physical eroticism signify if not a violation of the very being of its practitioners? - a violation bordering on death, bordering on murder?
Eroticism is to strike to the inmost core of the living being, so that the heart stands still. - Georges Bataille
The project is realized in partnership with Morpho.

Almanac Inn is supported by Fondazione CRT, Fondazione Compagnia di San Paolo and Regione Piemonte.



Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023, glazed ceramic pot, wisteria, 43 x 32 cm

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023

Installation view

Untitled (bad habit), 2023, pencil on paper, coloured birch artist’s frame, 78 x 41cm

Untitled (bad habit), 2023. (Detail)

Installation view

So close, 2022, pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cm / 35,5 x 28,5 cm (framed)

Suspend, 2022, pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cm / 35,5 x 28,5 cm (framed)

his(her) own business, 2022, pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cm / 35,5 x 28,5 cm (framed)

Delurking, 2022, pencil on paper, 28 x 21 cm / 35,5 x 28,5 cm (framed)

Period, 2023, oil painting on paper, glazed ceramic frame, 18 x 21 cm

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023, glazed ceramic pot, wisteria, 43 x 32 cm

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023

Executioner, Lurker, Ghost, 2023