beachcomber

2012 − 16 Beler’s newly constructed surfaces are formed by the visual and text-based information that seeps through the holes that she produces by combing her phone and the Internet. “Combing” here by no means refers to researching or looking for things. Rather, there is a very refreshing active passivity in Beler’s artistic process; she lets things happen, she lets things find her, she lets things change her. It is within this at times violent serendipity that Beler’s visual vocabulary finds itself— as viewers, we recognize almost everything that we see, but they are removed from our realm and are now constituents of a new place. [...] The spread of the images across the space make us hyper-aware of our architectural relationship to the images, removing us from the realm of our screens and pulling us into an environment controlled and populated by the artist’s images. What are the implications of Beler’s constructive nihilism in which objects and images and moments are decimated and in their demise bring about an awareness of a new form of perception? While it is increasingly more difficult to comprehend where and how information resides, we do have a sense of slippage—as boundaries become more permeable, the result is not one of liberation but rather of a loss of the sense of self. Beler seems to take comfort in that loss and embraces it violently—her works are at once eerie, familiar, realistic, traditional, and bizarre. She works with everything and nothing, worlds of intermixed sensualities. - Merve Ünsal, 2017