State of Concept presents the first solo exhibition in Greece of the work of Ahmet Öğüt entitled “Labour after Pay, Love before Work – An Artworkers VIP Lounge”, followed by a public program. The exhibition’s opening will take place on the 23rd of June at 19:00 accompanied by the performance “Fair Wage for a Made Up Job” starting at 19:30.  

 The solo show presents a wide range of Öğüt’s individual as well as collective and collaborative parts of his practice, all works that have never been on display in Greece before. Öğüt’s exhibition is based on a critical interrogation of the art institution, exploring how artist, viewer and curator intersect. In a newly commissioned installation that includes previous works, the artist is re-creating visually a VIP Lounge for precarious cultural workers, making a potent comment on the precarious conditions of freelance art workers in Greece and beyond, that many times work for free, without contracts or with short term zero hour contracted jobs. The work comes in a poignant time when discussions in the Greek art scene are leading to the formation of a union and collective struggles for contemporary art work to be recognised in the tax system. Within the installation previous pieces of the artist will be activated, and the viewer can see examples of past collaborative and collective projects, but also other cultural workers will be hosted, invited to present their work. A film program will be running in the VIP Lounge in July and September. 

Ahmet Öğüt lives and works between Amsterdam and Berlin. He works with a broad range of media including video, photography, installation, drawing and printed media. Öğüt has exhibited his work throughout the world, at venues such as the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven; Contemporary Art Centre of South Australia, Adelaide; Kunstinstituut Melly (formerly known as Witte de With Centre for Contemporary Art), Rotterdam; Kunsthalle Lissabon; and Künstlerhaus Bremen. 

Public Program

June 23rd 2023, 19:30 – 22:30

Performance: Fair Wage for a Made-Up Job 

Öğüt’s performance consists of hiring three performers to work in shifts. They are spinning monitors displaying Öğüt’s film and as part of the project, the performers are paid per hour as much as the Director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMST). The project tends to expose and re-evaluate the hierarchies of pay and repute within cultural production.

Performers: Konstantina Barkouli, Evi Psaltou, Xenia V.Koghilaki

With the support of the Mondriaan Fonds. 

Part of  The Bureau of Care research platform